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College Admissions , College Essays

ChatGPT has become a popular topic of conversation since its official launch in November 2022. The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can be used for all sorts of things, like having conversations, answering questions, and even crafting complete pieces of writing.

If you’re applying for college, you might be wondering about ChatGPT college admissions’ potential.  Should you use a ChatGPT college essay in your application ? 

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll know much more about ChatGPT, including how students can use it responsibly and if it’s a good idea to use ChatGPT on college essays . We’ll answer all your questions, like:

• What is ChatGPT and why are schools talking about it?
• What are the good and bad aspects of ChatGPT?
• Should you use ChatGPT for college essays and applications?
• Can colleges detect ChatGPT?
• Are there other tools and strategies that students can use, instead?

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Schools and colleges are worried about how new AI technology affects how students learn. (Don't worry. Robots aren't replacing your teachers...yet.)

What Is ChatGPT and Why Are Schools Talking About It?

ChatGPT (short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer”) is a chatbot created by OpenAI , an artificial intelligence research company. ChatGPT can be used for various tasks, like having human-like conversations, answering questions, giving recommendations, translating words and phrases—and writing things like essays. 

In order to do this, ChatGPT uses a neural network that’s been trained on thousands of resources to predict relationships between words. When you give ChatGPT a task, it uses that knowledge base to interpret your input or query. It then analyzes its data banks to predict the combinations of words that will best answer your question. 

So while ChatGPT might seem like it’s thinking, it’s actually pulling information from hundreds of thousands of resources , then answering your questions by looking for patterns in that data and predicting which words come next.  

Why Schools Are Concerned About ChatGPT

Unsurprisingly, schools are worried about ChatGPT and its misuse, especially in terms of academic dishonesty and plagiarism . Most schools, including colleges, require students’ work to be 100% their own. That’s because taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own is stealing someone else’s intellectual property and misrepresenting your skills. 

The problem with ChatGPT from schools’ perspective is that it does the writing and research for you, then gives you the final product. In other words, you’re not doing the work it takes to complete an assignment when you’re using ChatGPT , which falls under schools’ plagiarism and dishonesty policies.  

Colleges are also concerned with how ChatGPT will negatively affect students’ critical thinking, research, and writing skills . Essays and other writing assignments are used to measure students’ mastery of the material, and if students submit ChatGPT college essays, teachers will just be giving feedback on an AI’s writing…which doesn’t help the student learn and grow. 

Beyond that, knowing how to write well is an important skill people need to be successful throughout life. Schools believe that if students rely on ChatGPT to write their essays, they’re doing more than just plagiarizing—they’re impacting their ability to succeed in their future careers. 

Many Schools Have Already Banned ChatGPT

Schools have responded surprisingly quickly to AI use, including ChatGPT. Worries about academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation have led many high schools and colleges to ban the use of ChatGPT . Some schools have begun using AI-detection software for assignment submissions, and some have gone so far as to block students from using ChatGPT on their internet networks. 

It’s likely that schools will begin revising their academic honesty and plagiarism policies to address the use of AI tools like ChatGPT. You’ll want to stay up-to-date with your schools’ policies. 

ChatGPT is pretty amazing...but it's not a great tool for writing college essays. Here's why.

ChatGPT: College Admissions and Entrance Essays

College admissions essays—also called personal statements—ask students to explore important events, experiences, and ideas from their lives. A great entrance essay will explain what makes you you !  

ChatGPT is a machine that doesn’t know and can’t understand your experiences. That means using ChatGPT to write your admissions essays isn’t just unethical. It actually puts you at a disadvantage because ChatGPT can’t adequately showcase what it means to be you. 

Let’s take a look at four ways ChatGPT negatively impacts college admissions essays.

#1: ChatGPT Lacks Insight

We recommend students use u nexpected or slightly unusual topics because they help admissions committees learn more about you and what makes you unique. The chat bot doesn’t know any of that, so nothing ChatGPT writes can’t accurately reflect your experience, passions, or goals for the future. 

Because ChatGPT will make guesses about who you are, it won’t be able to share what makes you unique in a way that resonates with readers. And since that’s what admissions counselors care about, a ChatGPT college essay could negatively impact an otherwise strong application.  

#2: ChatGPT Might Plagiarize 

Writing about experiences that many other people have had isn’t a very strong approach to take for entrance essays . After all, you don’t want to blend in—you want to stand out! 

If you write your essay yourself and include key details about your past experiences and future goals, there’s little risk that you’ll write the same essay as someone else. But if you use ChatGPT—who’s to say someone else won’t, too? Since ChatGPT uses predictive guesses to write essays, there’s a good chance the text it uses in your essay already appeared in someone else’s.  

Additionally, ChatGPT learns from every single interaction it has. So even if your essay isn’t plagiarized, it’s now in the system. That means the next person who uses ChatGPT to write their essay may end up with yours. You’ll still be on the hook for submitting a ChatGPT college essay, and someone else will be in trouble, too.

#3: ChatGPT Doesn’t Understand Emotion 

Keep in mind that ChatGPT can’t experience or imitate emotions, and so its writing samples lack, well, a human touch ! 

A great entrance essay will explore experiences or topics you’re genuinely excited about or proud of . This is your chance to show your chosen schools what you’ve accomplished and how you’ll continue growing and learning, and an essay without emotion would be odd considering that these should be real, lived experiences and passions you have!

#4: ChatGPT Produced Mediocre Results

If you’re still curious what would happen if you submitted a ChatGPT college essay with your application, you’re in luck. Both Business Insider and Forbes asked ChatGPT to write a couple of college entrance essays, and then they sent them to college admissions readers to get their thoughts. 

The readers agreed that the essays would probably pass as being written by real students—assuming admissions committees didn’t use AI detection software—but that they both were about what a “very mediocre, perhaps even a middle school, student would produce.” The admissions professionals agreed that the essays probably wouldn’t perform very well with entrance committees, especially at more selective schools.  

That’s not exactly the reaction you want when an admission committee reads your application materials! So, when it comes to ChatGPT college admissions, it’s best to steer clear and write your admission materials by yourself. 

Can Colleges Detect ChatGPT?

We’ve already explained why it’s not a great idea to use ChatGPT to write your college essays and applications , but you may still be wondering: can colleges detect ChatGPT? 

In short, yes, they can! 

Software Can Detect ChatGPT

As technology improves and increases the risk of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation, software that can detect such technology is improving, too. For instance, OpenAI, the same company that built ChatGPT, is working on a text classifier that can tell the difference between AI-written text and human-written text .  

Turnitin, one of the most popular plagiarism detectors used by high schools and universities, also recently developed the AI Innovation Lab —a detection software designed to flag submissions that have used AI tools like ChatGPT. Turnitin says that this tool works with 98% confidence in detecting AI writing. 

Plagiarism and AI companies aren’t the only ones interested in AI-detection software. A 22-year old computer science student at Princeton created an app to detect ChatGPT writing, called Zero GPT. This software works by measuring the complexity of ideas and variety of sentence structures.  

Human Readers Can Detect ChatGPT 

It’s also worth keeping in mind that teachers can spot the use of ChatGPT themselves , even if it isn’t confirmed by a software detector. For example, if you’ve turned in one or two essays to your teacher already, they’re probably familiar with your unique writing style. If you submit a college essay draft essay that uses totally different vocabulary, sentence structures, and figures of speech, your teacher will likely take note.

Additionally , admissions committees and readers may be able to spot ChatGPT writing, too. ChatGPT (and AI writing, in general) uses more simplistic sentence structures with less variation, so that could make it easier to tell if you’ve submitted a ChatGPT college essay. These professionals also read thousands of essays every year, which means they know what a typical essay reads like. You want your college essay to catch their attention…but not because you used AI software! 

If you use ChatGPT responsibly, you can be as happy as these kids.

Pros and Cons of ChatGPT: College Admissions Edition

ChatGPT is a brand new technology, which means we’re still learning about the ways it can benefit us. It’s important to think about the pros and the cons to any new tool …and that includes artificial intelligence!

Let’s look at some of the good—and not-so-good—aspects of ChatGPT below. 

ChatGPT: The Good

It may seem like we’re focused on just the negatives of using ChatGPT in this article, but we’re willing to admit that the chatbot isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be a very useful tool for learning if used responsibly !

Like we already mentioned, students shouldn’t use ChatGPT to write entire essays or assignments. They can use it, though, as a learning tool alongside their own critical thinking and writing skills.

Students can use ChatGPT responsibly to:

• Learn more about a topic . It’s a great place to get started for general knowledge and ideas about most subjects.
• Find reputable and relevant sources on a topic. Students can ask ChatGPT for names and information about leading scholars, relevant websites and databases, and more. 
• Brainstorm ideas for assignments. Students can share the ideas they already have with ChatGPT, and in return, the chatbot can suggest ideas for further exploration and even organization of their points.
• Check work (that they’ve written themselves!) for errors or cla rity. This is similar to how spell- and grammar-checking software is used. ChatGPT may be even better than some competitors for this, because students can actually ask ChatGPT to explain the errors and their solutions—not just to fix them. 

Before you use ChatGPT—even for the tasks mentioned above—you should talk to your teacher or school about their AI and academic dishonesty policies. It’s also a good idea to include an acknowledgement that you used ChatGPT with an explanation of its use. 

This guy made some bad decisions using ChatGPT. Don't be this guy.

ChatGPT: The Bad

The first model of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) was formally introduced to the public in November 2022, and the newer model (GPT-4) in March 2023. So, it’s still very new and there’s a lot of room for improvement .  

There are many misconceptions about ChatGPT. One of the most extreme is that the AI is all-knowing and can make its own decisions. Another is that ChatGPT is a search engine that, when asked a question, can just surf the web for timely, relevant resources and give you all of that information. Both of these beliefs are incorrect because ChatGPT is limited to the information it’s been given by OpenAI . 

Remember how the ‘PT’ in ChatGPT stands for “Pre-trained”? That means that every time OpenAI gives ChatGPT an update, it’s given more information to work with (and so it has more information to share with you). In other words, it’s “trained” on information so it can give you the most accurate and relevant responses possible—but that information can be limited and biased . Ultimately, humans at OpenAI decide what pieces of information to share with ChatGPT, so it’s only as accurate and reliable as the sources it has access to.

For example, if you were to ask ChatGPT-3.5 what notable headlines made the news last week, it would respond that it doesn’t have access to that information because its most recent update was in September 2021!

You’re probably already familiar with how easy it can be to come across misinformation, misleading and untrue information on the internet. Since ChatGPT can’t tell the difference between what is true and what isn’t, it’s up to the humans at OpenAI to make sure only accurate and true information is given to the chatbot . This leaves room for human error , and users of ChatGPT have to keep that in mind when using and learning from the chatbot.

These are just the most obvious problems with ChatGPT. Some other problems with the chatbot include:

• A lack of common sense. ChatGPT can create seemingly sensical responses to many questions and topics, but it doesn’t have common sense or complete background knowledge.
• A lack of empathy. ChatGPT doesn’t have emotions, so it can’t understand them, either. 
• An inability to make decisions or problem solve . While the chatbot can complete basic tasks like answering questions or giving recommendations, it can’t solve complex tasks. 

While there are some great uses for ChatGPT, it’s certainly not without its flaws.

Our bootcamp can help you put together amazing college essays that help you get into your dream schools—no AI necessary.

What Other Tools and Strategies Can Help Students Besides ChatGPT?

While it’s not a good idea to use ChatGPT for college admissions materials, it’s not the only tool available to help students with college essays and assignments. 

One of the best strategies students can use to write good essays is to make sure they give themselves plenty of time for the assignment. The writing process includes much more than just drafting! Having time to brainstorm ideas, write out a draft, revise it for clarity and completeness, and polish it makes for a much stronger essay. 

Teachers are another great resource students can use, especially for college application essays. Asking a teacher (or two!) for feedback can really help students improve the focus, clarity, and correctness of an essay. It’s also a more interactive way to learn—being able to sit down with a teacher to talk about their feedback can be much more engaging than using other tools. 

Using expert resources during the essay writing process can make a big difference, too. Our article outlines a complete list of strategies for students writing college admission essays. It breaks down what the Common Application essay is, gives tips for choosing the best essay topic, offers strategies for staying focused and being specific, and more.  

You can also get help from people who know the college admissions process best, like former admissions counselors. PrepScholar’s Admissions Bootcamp guides you through the entire application process , and you’ll get insider tips and tricks from real-life admissions counselors that’ll make your applications stand out. Even better, our bootcamp includes step-by-step essay writing guidance , so you can get the help you need to make sure your essay is perfect.  

If you’re hoping for more technological help, Grammarly is another AI tool that can check writing for correctness. It can correct things like misused and misspelled words and grammar mistakes, and it can improve your tone and style. 

It’s also widely available across multiple platforms through a Windows desktop app, an Android and iOS app, and a Google Chrome extension. And since Grammarly just checks your writing without doing any of the work for you, it’s totally safe to use on your college essays. 

The Bottom Line: ChatGPT College Admissions and Essays

ChatGPT will continue to be a popular discussion topic as it continues evolving. You can expect your chosen schools to address ChatGPT and other AI tools in their academic honesty and plagiarism policies in the near future—and maybe even to restrict or ban the use of the chatbot for school admissions and assignments.

As AI continues transforming, so will AI-detection. The goal is to make sure that AI is used responsibly by students so that they’re avoiding plagiarism and building their research, writing, and critical thinking skills. There are some great uses for ChatGPT when used responsibly, but you should always check with your teachers and schools beforehand.

ChatGPT’s “bad” aspects still need improving, and that’s going to take some time.Be aware that the chatbot isn’t even close to perfect, and it needs to be fact-checked just like other sources of information.

Similarly to other school assignments, don’t submit a ChatGPT college essay for college applications, either. College entrance essays should outline unique and interesting personal experiences and ideas, and those can only come from you.  

Just because ChatGPT isn’t a good idea doesn’t mean there aren’t resources to help you put together a great college essay. There are many other tools and strategies you can use instead of ChatGPT , many of which have been around for longer and offer better feedback. 

What’s Next?

Ready to write your college essays the old-fashioned way? Start here with our comprehensive guide to the admissions essays. 

Most students have to submit essays as part of their Common Application . Here's a complete breakdown of the Common App prompts —and how to answer them. 

The most common type of essay answers the "why this college?" prompt. We've got an expert breakdown that shows you how to write a killer response , step by step. 

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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POV: With ChatGPT’s Arrival, Should Educators Be Mourning the End of the College Essay?

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“With these advances in AI technology, we have an opportunity to think deeply about our ‘why’ and reevaluate what we can and should be teaching in a changing world”

Naomi caselli, christina dobbs, derry wijaya.

In the weeks since the release of ChatGPT , a new AI technology that can write convincingly humanlike passages of text, we have seen a flood of worry among educators that students will use AI to write their term papers and that “ ChatGPT will make cheating easier than ever .” While this technology will certainly impact how we use writing assignments, plagiarism isn’t high on our list of concerns. Rather than focusing on work-arounds—so we can use the same assignments we have always used—we think we need to have a much bigger conversation. In the midst of a changing world, we need to ask ourselves what we teach students and why, and sort out which learning objectives we should retain, which will become obsolete, and which we should add to the curriculum. 

Automated text generation has the potential to be as transformative as the printing press. Trying to prevent students from using this technology, as the New York City education department has attempted , seems as impossible and unnecessary as trying to force people to travel by horse and buggy after cars were invented. Moreover, trying to maintain the status quo might actually do a disservice to our students. This technology will change many of the professions where our students will ultimately work. They’ll have to navigate a world that makes use of language generation technology once they graduate, and we should let them explore how to use these tools appropriately in spaces designed for learning and exploration.

Instead of trying to preserve writing assignments just because it is how we’ve always done things, let’s look at the purposes these assignments serve and consider how best to achieve these functions. Through writing, students learn to organize their thoughts, draw together evidence, synthesize complex ideas, develop compelling arguments, and much more. While AI can help with some of the mechanics of writing, students will still need to hone many of these skills. In one course this semester, we spent several class meetings on how to prepare and format a research manuscript. If formatting a paper is not a skill students will need in the future, perhaps that time could have been better spent working on these deeper intellectual skills. Writing assignments are also a way for instructors to evaluate what students have learned, and what more we need to teach them. In some cases, we imagine writing assignments are still the best means of serving these functions, but in other cases, other kinds of assignments might be more useful.

Just as society had to build literal guardrails to make driving cars safe, we are going to need to figure out how to prepare students to handle risks inherent to the new technology. With the ability to generate text instantly, we will have to redouble our efforts to teach students how to wade through the coming influx of text to identify misinformation. ChatGPT can make spectacular mistakes that students will need to learn to spot. In an essay where we asked it to write about American Sign Language, it wrote, “A sign for ‘I’m scared’ might be made by pressing a flat hand against the forehead.” This gesture—::facepalm::—is not correct. Students will need to know when AI works well, and when it doesn’t (e.g., in smaller fields, like deaf education, the technology doesn’t have much text to learn from and so it doesn’t work very well). We will need to teach (and create) conventions for properly attributing sources so readers can differentiate between AI- and human-written text. AI is trained to write based on human writing, and so it has learned to reproduce our ableism, racism, sexism, and other biases , especially in response to biased prompts. We will need to teach students how to root out and respond to toxic, biased, and harmful text , no matter how it is produced. Students will also need to learn strategies for getting useful output, and employing it in constructive ways. For fun, we tried to prompt ChatGPT to write this essay, and while the essays were not very creative (they shared much of the same content, structure, and words), the prompt makes a big difference in essay quality. These are just some of the foreseeable skills students will need to learn.

This is hardly the first time educators have had to grapple with how and when to use a new technology, or the first time people have feared that new technologies would destroy students’ thinking. Even Socrates worried that teaching students to write at all would lead to a populace with weak memories. Before calculators and computers, statistics was taught by paper and pencil. Now most statistics courses not only allow students to use computers, they explicitly teach students how to use the software. Certainly, there are times when it is pedagogically important to ask students to put their calculators away, but we have also made space for technology in our instruction. By delegating the tedious parts of the calculations to a computer, statistics courses can spend more time on “why” and delve into much more sophisticated techniques that would be impractical to carry out by hand. With these advances in AI technology, we have an opportunity now to think deeply about our “why” and reevaluate what we can and should be teaching in a changing world. In the end, making our assignments more meaningful to students may actually be a very effective way of dealing with plagiarism, as students are less likely to cheat when they are engaged in work they believe will help them become the future selves they envision.

Note: This essay was generated by human beings, with the help of spell-check. 

Naomi Caselli (Wheelock’09, GRS’10) is a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development assistant professor of deaf studies and deaf education and codirector of BU’s AI and Education Initiative . She can be reached at [email protected] . Christina Dobbs is a Wheelock assistant professor and codirector of the English Education for Equity & Justice program. She can be reached at [email protected] . Derry Wijaya is a College of Arts & Sciences professor of computer science and codirector of the AI and Education Initiative. She can be reached at [email protected] . 

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact John O’Rourke at [email protected] . BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 9 comments on POV: With ChatGPT’s Arrival, Should Educators Be Mourning the End of the College Essay?

Absolutely great article Thanks for tackling this topic

I still remember grade school teachers warning us against cheating: “The only person you are cheating is yourself, because you didn’t learn the material.”

If the student’s only objective is to complete a class, then AI can probably help with that. However, there is still no substitute for genuine learning.

Remember what the A stands for in AI!

I couldn’t agree more that education reform is a necessary step forward rather than a push back against new technology. It’s important to focus on improving the education system and incorporating technology in a way that enhances the learning experience, rather than being resistant to change. This is the key to ensuring that students are well-equipped for the future.

I really appreciated the unique perspective the writer brought to the piece. It was not at all what I had expected and it made for a refreshing read. Great job!

-this message was written with ChatGPT

I don’t believe that AI will be used to cheat in essays for college. While AI technology is rapidly advancing it still lacks the ability to fully replicate human thought and creativity. Additionally, measures such as plagiarism detection software and the expertise of professors and teachers will likely be able to detect any attempts to cheat via AI.

-This message was written by ChatGPT

I don’t really agree with this. One of the biggest concerns I have is that students might use AI to cheat on assignments, and the article doesn’t really address that. Instead, it talks about how we should embrace this technology in education. But in my opinion, we should be focusing on teaching students how to do their own research and how to avoid plagiarism.

Another thing that worries me is that if we rely too much on AI-generated text, students might stop thinking for themselves and just take whatever the AI tells them. It is important that we still teach students how to think critically and how to write well.

Also, The article doesn’t mention anything about how AI-generated text can be biased. It’s important to remember that the AI is only as unbiased as the data it was trained on. So, it’s crucial to be aware of this when using AI-generated text in any context.

I think that while AI-generated text could be useful in some cases, we should be careful about how we use it in education. We should focus on teaching students how to use it responsibly and how to identify and avoid biases and misinformation.

–message written by ChatGPT

Excellent article. I completely agree that we need to be having these conversations and not get too obsessed with the “plagiarism” aspect. But I would add that we also need to be looking at the proliferation of AI-powered writing tools that integrate tightly into Google Docs and Word, and that encourage what we might call “micro-generations.” There’s a huge gray area here, and we need to help students understand how to use them appropriately and how much help is too much help.

Thank you for the insightful and concise article. You captured it as part of a continuum of challenges educators had to face and will continue to do so in the future. It is a good test for our academic society’s adaptability to waves of change. I envision that these events will determine the projection of an academic environment. I wonder if we may have to rethink “cheating,” which I prefer to think of as misappropriation (misusing resources in our care), requiring a conducive trio of incentive, opportunity, and rationalization. Now that there is a tectonic shift in the landscape, how will institutions and society re-establish a new norm? I would enjoy reading follow-up perspectives as the discussion continues.

This is a great take on ChatGPT, as it is really controversial in classrooms. However, I think it is also important to note that education systems can use it to their benefit. I did a project on this previously and there were many ways to implement ChatGPT in classrooms, like for essay editors and personalized essay prompts. While ChatGPT can’t be prevented to write these essays, we definitely can alter the way essays are assigned. AI is very powerful, but lacks genuine emotion. We can use this to our advantage to prevent cheating and plagiarism to have assignments that require creativity, emotion, and personalized experience. Additionally, many writing assignments rely on other readings, like books and articles. Doing this encourages original thinking and not using AI to write these essays.

As a student who has made use of chatGPT for various tasks, writing essays is not one of them. The voice of an AI pales in comparison to the amount of imagery, emotion, and feeling that you can derive from reading human-generated work. Therefore, while they may pose a threat to certain curriculums, I feel as though teachers will be able to know whether or not such a resource was used in the first place, especially following the implementation of AI detection software for submission platforms like turnitin. I think that the goal for educators should not be to prevent the use of ChatGPT, because it is inevitable. Rather, implementing it into curriculum in a creative way or constructing essay ideas that can only be poorly created by ChatGPT.

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More From Forbes

Here’s how forbes got the chatgpt ai to write 2 college essays in 20 minutes.

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Not only does ChatGPT write clear, compelling essays, but it can also conjure up its own personal ... [+] details and embellishments that could up a students’ chance of acceptance and would be difficult to verify.

Forbes’ full conversation with ChatGPT, OpenAI’s newest natural language model, is pasted below. Each of the college admissions essays took less than 10 minutes to complete. Read our story about ChatGPT’s capacity to write college applications here .

Prompt #1, The Common App:

Forbes: Hi GPT, I’d like you to write a college application essay as if you were an 18-year-old high school senior whose parents are from Bangalore, India but who now own a restaurant in Newton, Mass. He is a competitive swimmer, and in 10th grade he broke his shoulder. He is interested in majoring in business. Please make the essay a maximum of 650 words, and write it in response to this prompt: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

ChatGPT: As a competitive swimmer and the son of Indian immigrants who own a restaurant in Newton, Massachusetts, my background and interests make me a unique and valuable addition to any college campus. Growing up in a culturally diverse and economically vibrant community has given me a unique perspective on life and a desire to explore and understand different cultures and industries.

My love for swimming began at a young age, and it has always been a central part of my life. I began competing in local swim meets when I was just nine years old, and by the time I reached high school, I was a member of the varsity swim team. In my sophomore year, I suffered a major setback when I broke my shoulder in a swimming accident. Despite this injury, I was determined to return to the pool and continue competing.

After months of grueling physical therapy and hard work, I was finally able to return to the water. I was not as fast as I used to be, but I was still a valuable member of the team and I continued to improve throughout the season. By the end of my junior year, I was back to my top form and I was able to compete at the state championship meet. My hard work and determination paid off, and I helped lead my team to a second-place finish.

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In addition to my passion for swimming, I have also been deeply influenced by my parents and their experiences as immigrants and small business owners. Growing up, I spent many hours in the restaurant, watching my parents work hard to build a successful business from the ground up. I have seen firsthand the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship, and I have developed a strong interest in pursuing a career in business.

As a business major, I hope to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to start my own business one day, or to help other small businesses succeed. I am excited to explore the diverse opportunities and challenges that a business degree will present, and I am confident that I will be able to make a valuable contribution to the college community.

In conclusion, my background as a competitive swimmer, the son of Indian immigrants, and a member of a thriving business community has given me a unique perspective and a strong set of skills and interests. I believe that I would be a valuable addition to any college campus, and I am excited to explore the opportunities and challenges that a college education will provide.

Forbes: Thanks GPT, this is a great start. Please keep what you have, but add more information about our student's background and work in the restaurant.

ChatGPT: Sure, I can add more information about our student's background and work in the restaurant.

Growing up in a household where my parents owned and operated a successful restaurant gave me a unique insight into the world of business. I often spent my afternoons and weekends working in the restaurant, performing a variety of tasks and gaining valuable experience in the hospitality industry. From a young age, I learned the importance of hard work, dedication, and customer service, and I have come to appreciate the challenges and rewards of owning and operating a small business.

As I grew older, my responsibilities in the restaurant increased, and I took on more managerial roles. I helped my parents with inventory management, staff scheduling, and customer relations. I also assisted with marketing and advertising efforts, and I helped develop new menu items and promotions. This hands-on experience has given me a strong understanding of the ins and outs of running a business, and it has helped shape my interest in pursuing a career in business.

In addition to my work in the restaurant, my Indian heritage has also had a significant impact on my life. My parents instilled in me a deep appreciation for Indian culture, and I have always been proud of my heritage. I have also been exposed to the challenges and opportunities that come with being a first-generation immigrant in the United States. I have seen firsthand the difficulties that my parents faced as they worked to build a new life in a foreign country, and I have also seen the incredible rewards that come from hard work and determination.

My Indian heritage and my experience in the restaurant industry have given me a unique perspective on life and a strong set of skills and interests. I am excited to bring this perspective to a college campus, and I am confident that I will be able to make a valuable contribution to the college community. Thank you for considering me for admission.

Forbes: Thanks GPT. Please combine your first and second drafts.

My love for swimming began at a young age, and it has always been a central part of my life. I began competing in local swim meets when I was just nine years old, and by the time I reached high school, I was a member of the varsity swim team. In my sophomore year, I suffered a major setback when I broke my shoulder in a swimming accident. Despite this injury, I was determined to return to the pool and continue competing. After months of grueling physical therapy and hard work, I was finally able to return to the water. I was not as fast as I used to be, but I was still a valuable member of the team and I continued to improve throughout the season. By the end of my junior year, I was back to my top form and I was able to compete at the state championship meet. My hard work and determination paid off, and I helped lead my team to a second-place finish.

Growing up in a household where my parents owned and operated a successful restaurant gave me a unique insight into the world of business. I often spent my afternoons and weekends working in the restaurant, performing a variety of tasks and gaining valuable experience in the hospitality industry. From a young age, I learned the importance of hard work, dedication, and customer service, and I have come to appreciate the challenges and rewards of owning and operating a small business. As I grew older, my responsibilities in the restaurant increased, and I took on more managerial roles. I helped my parents with inventory management, staff scheduling, and customer relations. I also assisted with marketing and advertising efforts, and I helped develop new menu items and promotions. This hands-on experience has given me a strong understanding of the ins and outs of running a business, and it has helped shape my interest in pursuing a career in business.

Prompt #2: University of Wisconsin-Madison supplemental essay

Forbes: Thanks GPT. I have another one for you. This time, please write a college application essay to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in response to this prompt: "Tell us why you decided to apply to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition, please include why you are interested in studying the major(s) you have selected. If you selected undecided please describe your areas of possible academic interest. (80-650 words)" Write as if your intended major is Business Administration and Marketing, you love Badgers football, and you work part-time at your family's restaurant.

ChatGPT: I decided to apply to the University of Wisconsin-Madison because it is a top-ranked university with a strong reputation for its business and marketing programs. As an aspiring business major, I am excited about the opportunity to study at such a prestigious institution and learn from some of the best minds in the field.

I am also excited about the potential to explore the many different facets of business and marketing through a variety of courses and extracurricular activities. I have always been interested in the world of business, and I am eager to gain a deeper understanding of the theories and practices that drive the field.

In addition to my interest in business, I am also drawn to Wisconsin-Madison because of its vibrant campus community. I am a big fan of Badgers football, and I can't wait to experience the energy and excitement of game days at Camp Randall Stadium. I am also looking forward to exploring the many other opportunities that Wisconsin-Madison has to offer, such as clubs and organizations, student events, and recreational activities.

I am also drawn to Wisconsin-Madison because of its strong sense of community. As a student who works part-time at my family's restaurant, I know the value of hard work and collaboration. I am excited to be part of a community of students and faculty who share my passion for learning and success.

Overall, I am confident that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the perfect fit for me. I am excited about the opportunity to study business and marketing at a world-class institution, explore the many extracurricular opportunities on campus, and be part of a vibrant and supportive community. I am eager to begin this new chapter of my academic journey and contribute to the success of Wisconsin-Madison.

Forbes: Great, thank you. Please include more detail about why our student wants to study business, perhaps by including a story about a challenge they faced or skill they learned at their restaurant job.

My interest in business was sparked at a young age, when I began working at my family's restaurant. I started out as a dishwasher, but over time, I was given more responsibilities and opportunities to learn. I quickly became fascinated by the many different aspects of running a successful business, from managing finances and inventory to marketing and customer service.

One of the biggest challenges I faced at the restaurant was helping to increase sales during slow periods. I was given the task of coming up with a marketing strategy to attract more customers, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to put my ideas into action. I researched the competition and identified our unique selling points, and I developed a marketing plan that included promotions, discounts, and special events.

The marketing plan was a success, and we saw a significant increase in sales during the slow periods. I was thrilled to have made a real contribution to the success of the business, and I was grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow.

I am excited to continue exploring the world of business and marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am eager to learn from experienced professionals and gain a deeper understanding of the theories and practices that drive the field. I am confident that this knowledge and experience will prepare me for a successful career in business and help me to make a positive impact in the world.

Forbes: Great! But let’s add back in the parts about our student’s love for Badger football. Please also make the essay longer, about 500 words.

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Should I Use ChatGPT to Write My Essays?

Everything high school and college students need to know about using — and not using — ChatGPT for writing essays.

Jessica A. Kent

ChatGPT is one of the most buzzworthy technologies today.

In addition to other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, it is expected to change the world. In academia, students and professors are preparing for the ways that ChatGPT will shape education, and especially how it will impact a fundamental element of any course: the academic essay.

Students can use ChatGPT to generate full essays based on a few simple prompts. But can AI actually produce high quality work, or is the technology just not there yet to deliver on its promise? Students may also be asking themselves if they should use AI to write their essays for them and what they might be losing out on if they did.

AI is here to stay, and it can either be a help or a hindrance depending on how you use it. Read on to become better informed about what ChatGPT can and can’t do, how to use it responsibly to support your academic assignments, and the benefits of writing your own essays.

What is Generative AI?

Artificial intelligence isn’t a twenty-first century invention. Beginning in the 1950s, data scientists started programming computers to solve problems and understand spoken language. AI’s capabilities grew as computer speeds increased and today we use AI for data analysis, finding patterns, and providing insights on the data it collects.

But why the sudden popularity in recent applications like ChatGPT? This new generation of AI goes further than just data analysis. Instead, generative AI creates new content. It does this by analyzing large amounts of data — GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of data, or a quarter of the Library of Congress — and then generating new content based on the patterns it sees in the original data.

It’s like the predictive text feature on your phone; as you start typing a new message, predictive text makes suggestions of what should come next based on data from past conversations. Similarly, ChatGPT creates new text based on past data. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can write marketing content, code, business forecasts, and even entire academic essays on any subject within seconds.

But is generative AI as revolutionary as people think it is, or is it lacking in real intelligence?

The Drawbacks of Generative AI

It seems simple. You’ve been assigned an essay to write for class. You go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a five-paragraph academic essay on the topic you’ve been assigned. You wait a few seconds and it generates the essay for you!

But ChatGPT is still in its early stages of development, and that essay is likely not as accurate or well-written as you’d expect it to be. Be aware of the drawbacks of having ChatGPT complete your assignments.

It’s not intelligence, it’s statistics

One of the misconceptions about AI is that it has a degree of human intelligence. However, its intelligence is actually statistical analysis, as it can only generate “original” content based on the patterns it sees in already existing data and work.

It “hallucinates”

Generative AI models often provide false information — so much so that there’s a term for it: “AI hallucination.” OpenAI even has a warning on its home screen , saying that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This may be due to gaps in its data, or because it lacks the ability to verify what it’s generating. 

It doesn’t do research  

If you ask ChatGPT to find and cite sources for you, it will do so, but they could be inaccurate or even made up.

This is because AI doesn’t know how to look for relevant research that can be applied to your thesis. Instead, it generates content based on past content, so if a number of papers cite certain sources, it will generate new content that sounds like it’s a credible source — except it likely may not be.

There are data privacy concerns

When you input your data into a public generative AI model like ChatGPT, where does that data go and who has access to it? 

Prompting ChatGPT with original research should be a cause for concern — especially if you’re inputting study participants’ personal information into the third-party, public application. 

JPMorgan has restricted use of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in March 2023 after a data breach, and Security Intelligence advises that “if [a user’s] notes include sensitive data … it enters the chatbot library. The user no longer has control over the information.”

It is important to be aware of these issues and take steps to ensure that you’re using the technology responsibly and ethically. 

It skirts the plagiarism issue

AI creates content by drawing on a large library of information that’s already been created, but is it plagiarizing? Could there be instances where ChatGPT “borrows” from previous work and places it into your work without citing it? Schools and universities today are wrestling with this question of what’s plagiarism and what’s not when it comes to AI-generated work.

To demonstrate this, one Elon University professor gave his class an assignment: Ask ChatGPT to write an essay for you, and then grade it yourself. 

“Many students expressed shock and dismay upon learning the AI could fabricate bogus information,” he writes, adding that he expected some essays to contain errors, but all of them did. 

His students were disappointed that “major tech companies had pushed out AI technology without ensuring that the general population understands its drawbacks” and were concerned about how many embraced such a flawed tool.

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How to Use AI as a Tool to Support Your Work

As more students are discovering, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as advanced or intelligent as they may believe. While AI may be a poor option for writing your essay, it can be a great tool to support your work.

Generate ideas for essays

Have ChatGPT help you come up with ideas for essays. For example, input specific prompts, such as, “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write on topics related to WWII,” or “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write comparing characters in twentieth century novels.” Then, use what it provides as a starting point for your original research.

Generate outlines

You can also use ChatGPT to help you create an outline for an essay. Ask it, “Can you create an outline for a five paragraph essay based on the following topic” and it will create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. Then, you can expand upon the outline with your own research and original thought.

Generate titles for your essays

Titles should draw a reader into your essay, yet they’re often hard to get right. Have ChatGPT help you by prompting it with, “Can you suggest five titles that would be good for a college essay about [topic]?”

The Benefits of Writing Your Essays Yourself

Asking a robot to write your essays for you may seem like an easy way to get ahead in your studies or save some time on assignments. But, outsourcing your work to ChatGPT can negatively impact not just your grades, but your ability to communicate and think critically as well. It’s always the best approach to write your essays yourself.

Create your own ideas

Writing an essay yourself means that you’re developing your own thoughts, opinions, and questions about the subject matter, then testing, proving, and defending those thoughts. 

When you complete school and start your career, projects aren’t simply about getting a good grade or checking a box, but can instead affect the company you’re working for — or even impact society. Being able to think for yourself is necessary to create change and not just cross work off your to-do list.

Building a foundation of original thinking and ideas now will help you carve your unique career path in the future.

Develop your critical thinking and analysis skills

In order to test or examine your opinions or questions about a subject matter, you need to analyze a problem or text, and then use your critical thinking skills to determine the argument you want to make to support your thesis. Critical thinking and analysis skills aren’t just necessary in school — they’re skills you’ll apply throughout your career and your life.

Improve your research skills

Writing your own essays will train you in how to conduct research, including where to find sources, how to determine if they’re credible, and their relevance in supporting or refuting your argument. Knowing how to do research is another key skill required throughout a wide variety of professional fields.

Learn to be a great communicator

Writing an essay involves communicating an idea clearly to your audience, structuring an argument that a reader can follow, and making a conclusion that challenges them to think differently about a subject. Effective and clear communication is necessary in every industry.

Be impacted by what you’re learning about : 

Engaging with the topic, conducting your own research, and developing original arguments allows you to really learn about a subject you may not have encountered before. Maybe a simple essay assignment around a work of literature, historical time period, or scientific study will spark a passion that can lead you to a new major or career.

Resources to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills

While there are many rewards to writing your essays yourself, the act of writing an essay can still be challenging, and the process may come easier for some students than others. But essay writing is a skill that you can hone, and students at Harvard Summer School have access to a number of on-campus and online resources to assist them.

Students can start with the Harvard Summer School Writing Center , where writing tutors can offer you help and guidance on any writing assignment in one-on-one meetings. Tutors can help you strengthen your argument, clarify your ideas, improve the essay’s structure, and lead you through revisions. 

The Harvard libraries are a great place to conduct your research, and its librarians can help you define your essay topic, plan and execute a research strategy, and locate sources. 

Finally, review the “ The Harvard Guide to Using Sources ,” which can guide you on what to cite in your essay and how to do it. Be sure to review the “Tips For Avoiding Plagiarism” on the “ Resources to Support Academic Integrity ” webpage as well to help ensure your success.

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The Future of AI in the Classroom

ChatGPT and other generative AI models are here to stay, so it’s worthwhile to learn how you can leverage the technology responsibly and wisely so that it can be a tool to support your academic pursuits. However, nothing can replace the experience and achievement gained from communicating your own ideas and research in your own academic essays.

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

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A.I. Could Be Great for College Essays

Every year, the artificial intelligence company OpenAI improves its text-writing bot, GPT. And every year, the internet responds with shrieks of woe about the impending end of human-penned prose. This cycle repeated last week when OpenAI launched ChatGPT —a version of GPT that can seemingly spit out any text, from a Mozart-styled piano piece to the history of London in the style of Dr. Seuss . The response on Twitter was unanimous: The college essay is doomed. Why slave over a paper when ChatGPT can write an original for you?

Chatting with ChatGPT is fun. (Go play with it !) But the college essay isn’t doomed, and A.I. like ChatGPT won’t replace flesh and blood writers. They may make writing easier, though.

GPT-3, released by OpenAI in 2020, is the third and best-known version of OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer—a computer program known as a large language model. Large language models produce language in response to language—typically, text-based prompts (“Write me a sonnet about love”). Unlike traditional computer programs that execute a series of hard-coded commands, language models are trained by sifting through large datasets of text like Wikipedia. Through this training, they learn patterns in language that are then used to generate the most likely completions to questions or commands.

Language is rife with repetition. Our ability to recognize and remember regularities in speech and text allows us to do things like complete a friend’s sentence or solve a Wordle in three tries. If I asked you to finish the sentence, The ball rolled down the … you’d say hill, and so would GPT-3. Large language models are, like people, great at learning regularities in language, and they use this trick to generate human-like text. But when tested on their ability to understand the language they produce, they often look more like parrots than poets.

Gary Marcus, an emeritus professor at NYU and the author of Rebooting AI , is a vocal critic of the idea that bots like GPT-3 understand what they’re writing . In a recent preprint (an academic paper that hasn’t been peer-reviewed), Marcus and two co-authors used OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 to demonstrate the limitations of large language models. DALL-E 2 , like GPT-3, responds to text-based prompts. But instead of producing language, it creates images. DALL-E 2 was trained to learn associations between images and their captions to produce entirely new images based on the text users enter. If you ask it for, say, “an impressionist painting of Albert Einstein surfing” you get the four images below.

Not bad, right? DALL-E 2 was recently used to win an art competition .

But as Marcus and his co-authors point out in their paper , DALL-E 2 doesn’t understand the relationship between the words that users enter. If, for instance, you ask it to produce an image of “an old man talking to his parents,” you get four images of three people talking. The AI fails to understand that, however old the old man looks, the people he’s talking to must, by definition of being his parents, look older.

Compared with DALL-E 2, ChatGPT appears to have a better grasp of the text users enter and the responses it spits out. This might be why the Internet responded to its release so enthusiastically. ChatGPT “is causing jaws to drop and brows to furrow,” wrote Axios .

I had trouble stumping it with some classic riddles from cognitive psychology. Take the Lily Pad problem:

Prompt: A lily pad, in a pond, doubles in size every day. On the 20 th day, it covers the entire pond. On what day did it cover half the pond?

ChatGPT: A lily pad in a pond that doubles in size every day will cover half the pond on the 19 th day, one day before it covers the entire pond.

The A.I. got that the question described exponential growth—a phenomenon that, as the pandemic demonstrated, many humans fail to understand. But I did fool ChatGPT with the bat and ball problem made famous by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow :

Prompt: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

ChatGPT: If the bat costs $1 more than the ball, and the bat and ball cost $1.10 in total, then the ball must cost $1.10 - $1.00 = $0.10.

The correct answer is 5 cents. (Trust me.)

ChatGPT might fail at tests of reasoning, but it’s great at generating humanlike text to different lengths and in various styles. This brings us back to the college essay—an easy task for ChatGPT, many commentators claimed on Twitter. “We’re witnessing the death of the college essay in realtime,” tweeted one Google employee . Ethan Mollick, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania, had ChatGPT write an essay question , create a grading rubric for said question, answer the question, and grade its own answer. (It got an A minus.) How could the essay not be doomed?

This isn’t the first time that large language models have been predicted to fell the essay or worse. “To spend ten minutes with Sudowrite [a GPT-3-based A.I.] is to recognize that the undergraduate essay, the basic pedagogical mode of all humanities, will soon be under severe pressure,” wrote journalist Stephen Marche in a 2021 New Yorker piece. (On Tuesday, Marche wrote an article for the Atlantic titled “ The College Essay Is Dead .”) And in 2019, when GPT-2 was created, OpenAI withheld it from the public because the “fear of malicious applications” was too high .

If any group were to put an A.I. to malicious use, essay-burdened undergraduates would surely be the first. But the evidence that A.I. is being used to complete university assignments is hard to find. (When I asked my class of 47 students recently about using A.I. for schoolwork, they looked at me like I was mad.) It could be a matter of time and access before A.I. is used more widely by students to cheat; ChatGPT is the first free text-writing bot from OpenAI (although it won’t be free forever). But it could also be that large language models are just not very good at answering the types of questions professors ask.

If you ask ChatGPT to write an essay contrasting socialism and capitalism, it produces what you expect: 28 grammatical sentences covering wealth distribution, poverty reduction, and employment stability under these two economic systems. But few professors ask students to write papers on broad questions like this. Broad questions lead to a rainbow of responses that are impossible to grade objectively. And the more you make the question like something a student might get—narrow, and focused on specific, course-related content—the worse ChatGPT performs.

I gave ChatGPT a question about the relationship between language and colour perception, that I ask my third-year psychology of language class, and it bombed . Not only did its response lack detail, but it attributed a paper I instructed it to describe to an entirely different study. Several more questions produced the same vague and error-riddled results. If one of my students handed in the text ChatGPT generated, they’d get an F.

Large language models generate the most likely responses based on the text they are fed during training, and, for now, that text doesn’t include the reading lists of thousands of college classes. They also prevaricate. The model’s calculation of the most probable text completion is not always the most correct response—or even a true response. When I asked Gary Marcus about the prospect of ChatGPT writing college essays his answer was blunt: “It’s basically a bullshit artist. And bullshitters rarely get As—they get Cs or worse.”

If these problems are fixed—and, based on how these models work, it’s unclear that they can be—I doubt A.I. like ChatGPT will produce good papers. Even humans who write papers for money struggle to do it well. In 2014, a department of the U.K. government published a study of history and English papers produced by online-essay writing services for senior high school students. Most of the papers received a grade of C or lower. Much like the work of ChatGPT, the papers were vague and error-filled. It’s hard to write a good essay when you lack detailed, course-specific knowledge of the content that led to the essay question.

ChatGPT may fail at writing a passable paper, but it’s a useful pedagogical tool that could help students write papers themselves. Ben Thompson, who runs the technology blog and newsletter Stratechery, wrote about this change in a post about ChatGPT and history homework. Thompson asked ChatGPT to complete his daughter’s assignment on the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes; the A.I. produced three error-riddled paragraphs. But, as Thompson points out, failures like this don’t mean that we should trash the tech. In the future, A.I. like ChatGPT can be used in the classroom to generate text that students then fact-check and edit. That is, these bots solve the problem of the blank page by providing a starting point for papers. I couldn’t agree more.

I frequently used ChatGPT while working on this piece. I asked for definitions that, after a fact-check, I included. At times, I threw entire paragraphs from this piece into ChatGPT to see if it produced prettier prose. Sometimes it did, and then I used that text. Why not? Like spell check, a thesaurus, and Wikipedia, ChatGPT made the task of writing a little easier. I hope my students use it.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate , New America , and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

Two professors who say they caught students cheating on essays with ChatGPT explain why AI plagiarism can be hard to prove

• Two philosopher professors said they caught their students submitting essays written by ChatGPT.
• They said certain red flags alerted them to the use of AI.
• If students don't confess to using the program, professors say it can be hard to prove.

A few weeks after the launch of the AI chatbot ChatGPT , Darren Hick, a philosophy professor at Furman University, said he caught a student turning in an AI-generated essay . 

Hick said he grew suspicious when the student turned in an on-topic essay that included some well-written misinformation.

After running it through Open AI's ChatGPT detector , the results said it was 99% likely the essay had been AI-generated. 

Antony Aumann, a religious studies and philosophy professor at Northern Michigan University, told Insider he had caught two students submitting essays written by ChatGPT .

After the writing style set off alarm bells, Aumann submitted them back to the chatbot asking how likely it was that they were written by the program. When the chatbot said it was 99% sure the essays were written by ChatGPT, he forwarded the results to the students.

Both Hick and Aumann said they confronted their students, all of whom eventually confessed to the infraction. Hick's student failed the class and Aumann had his students rewrite the essays from scratch.

'It was really well-written wrong'

There were certain red flags in the essays that alerted the professors to the use of AI. Hick said the essay he found referenced several facts not mentioned in class, and made one nonsensical claim. 

"Word by word it was a well-written essay," he said, but on closer inspection, one claim about the prolific philosopher, David Hume "made no sense" and was "just flatly wrong."

"Really well-written wrong was the biggest red flag," he said.

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For Aumann, the chatbot just wrote too perfectly. "I think the chat writes better than 95% of my students could ever," he said. 

"All of a sudden you have someone who does not demonstrate the ability to think or write at that level, writing something that follows all the requirements perfectly with sophisticated grammar and complicated thoughts that are directly related to the prompt for the essay," he said.

Christopher Bartel, a professor of philosophy at Appalachian State University, said that while the grammar in AI-generated essays is almost perfect, the substance tends to lack detail.

He said: "They are really fluffy. There's no context, there's no depth or insight."

Hard-to-prove plagiarism  

If students don't confess to using AI for essays, it can leave academics in a tough spot.

Bartel said that some institutions' rules haven't evolved to combat this kind of cheating. If a student decided to dig their heels in and deny the use of AI, it can be difficult to prove. 

Bartel said the AI detectors on offer were "good but not perfect." 

"They give a statistical analysis of how likely the text is to be AI-generated, so that leaves us in a difficult position if our policies are designed so that we have to have definitive and demonstrable proof that the essay is a fake," he said. "If it comes back with a 95% likelihood that the essay is AI generated, there's still a 5% chance that it wasn't." 

In Hick's case, although the detection site said it was "99% certain" the essay had been generated by an AI, he said it wasn't enough for him without a confession.

"The confession was important because everything else looks like circumstantial evidence," he said. "With AI-generated content, there is no material evidence, and material evidence has a lot more weight to it than circumstantial evidence."

Aumann said although he thought the analysis by the chatbot would be good enough proof for disciplinary action, AI plagiarism was still a new challenge for colleges.

He said: "Unlike plagiarism cases of old where you can just say, 'hey, here's the paragraph from Wikipedia.' There is no knockdown proof that you can provide other than the chat says that's the statistical likelihood."

Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.

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Can Chat GPT Write your College Essay?

Can chatgpt write your college essay.

Bonus Material: PrepMaven’s 30 College Essays that Worked

If you’re getting ready to start the college application process, you might already be dreading all the admissions essays you’ll have to write. Between the Common App essay and additional supplementals, college essay writing ends up being a lot of work. 

Naturally, some students wonder whether ChatGPT can help them write their college admissions essay. But there are a lot of questions: is it plagiarism? Can admissions committees tell if you use ChatGPT? Is ChatGPT actually helpful?

At PrepMaven, we’ve coached students in test prep, academics, and college applications for over two decades, and we know what works to get students into selective universities. In fact, our co-founder Kevin Wong was actually interviewed by Business Insider about ChatGPT-generated application essays!

In this guide, we’ll use those decades of experience to break down the benefits and risks of using ChatGPT to help with your college application essays. Plus, we had ChatGPT draft a sample college essay that we then break down. 

Below, you can download our collection of 30 College Essays That Worked, getting students into top schools like Princeton. In the meantime, read on to learn about what ChatGPT can do in the college application process. 

Download 30 College Essays that Worked

Jump to section: Is Having ChatGPT Write Your College Essays Plagiarism? Can Colleges Detect If You Used ChatGPT? Sample ChatGPT Common App Essay and Analysis 4 Good Uses of Chat GPT Next steps

Is Having ChatGPT Write Your College Essays Plagiarism?

First thing’s first: if you submit a finished product that you didn’t write yourself, then that would typically be considered plagiarism. 

So, if you simply go into ChatGPT and have it write you an essay that you then submit, you’d be passing off something you didn’t write as your original work. 

The lines can get a bit blurry (more on that below), but generally here’s a good rule of thumb: if entire sentences in your college application essay weren’t written by you, you’ve probably crossed the line into plagiarism. 

Can Colleges Detect If You Used ChatGPT?

Admissions departments can indeed tell when AI is used in writing assignments–to some extent. If you want to read more about the science of AI-detection, you can check out a detailed analysis from PC-Guide here , but we’ll give you the key information you need to know below. 

Different tools exist to analyze text and suggest the likelihood that it was generated by AI. Even though ChatGPT is fairly new technology, universities already have the technology to detect ChatGPT-generated text. The most prominent of these is probably GPTZero , a tool specifically created to detect ChatGPT. 

For the most part, these tools can’t give a 100% certain determination that your essay was written by AI, especially if you’ve made your own edits and changes to it. But it is certainly the case that if you have large AI-generated sections of text in your college application essays, university admissions committees will be able to tell . 

Ultimately, this is as good a reason as any to avoid having ChatGPT write your entire college application essay for you. It might save you some work, but it also risks immediately flagging your application as plagiarized, sinking your chances of admission. 

For examples of real–non-ChatGPT–college essays, click the button below. These are the kinds of essays that helped get students into top colleges like Ivies. Take a look, and then compare them with the AI-generated essay we analyze in the next section. 

Sample ChatGPT Common App Essay and Analysis

I asked ChatGPT to write a 600-word essay in response to the first Common App Prompt. To make it more specific, I gave GPT directions about style and content. Below, you can read the essay in its entirety–lower down, we’ll briefly analyze whether this essay would work and what the drawbacks of ChatGPT are. 

In the vast tapestry of my life, one thread stands out prominently – the intricate game of chess. From the moment I first laid eyes on the checkered board, I was captivated by its allure. Little did I know that this simple board game would evolve into a profound journey, shaping my identity and character in profound ways. Chess is more than just a game; it is a reflection of life itself. Each piece represents a facet of human existence – the king, a symbol of power and vulnerability; the queen, embodying strength and versatility; the pawns, the foot soldiers of our ambitions; the knights, rooks, and bishops, the allies and adversaries we encounter on our path. Every move carries consequences, every decision a ripple effect that reverberates throughout the game. My journey with chess began at a young age, in the quiet corners of my childhood home. I remember the first time my father introduced me to the game, his eyes alight with anticipation as he laid out the pieces on the board. With each match, he imparted not only the rules of the game but also valuable lessons about strategy, foresight, and perseverance. As I delved deeper into the world of chess, I discovered that it was not just about outmaneuvering my opponent on the board but also about understanding the subtle nuances of human psychology. The game taught me to anticipate my opponent’s moves, to think several steps ahead, and to remain calm under pressure – skills that have proven invaluable both on and off the chessboard. Playing chess became my sanctuary, a place where I could escape the chaos of the world and immerse myself in a realm of logic and order. It taught me the importance of discipline and dedication, as mastering the game required countless hours of practice and study. But more than that, it instilled in me a sense of humility, as I learned to accept defeat graciously and to glean wisdom from my mistakes. One of the most profound lessons I learned from chess is the concept of sacrifice. In order to gain an advantage on the board, one must sometimes be willing to sacrifice a piece – a pawn, a knight, even the queen – for the greater good. This principle extends beyond the confines of the game, teaching me to prioritize long-term goals over short-term gains and to make difficult decisions with courage and conviction. But perhaps the most meaningful aspect of my journey with chess has been the sense of community it has provided. Through local tournaments and online forums, I have connected with fellow enthusiasts from all walks of life, forging friendships that transcend language and cultural barriers. In the company of fellow chess players, I have found a sense of belonging and camaraderie that has enriched my life in countless ways. In the end, chess is not just a game; it is a metaphor for life itself – a complex tapestry of choices, challenges, and triumphs. It has taught me to approach every situation with a strategic mind and a resilient spirit, to embrace adversity as an opportunity for growth, and to always strive for excellence in all that I do. As I embark on the next chapter of my journey, I carry with me the lessons of the chessboard – a timeless reminder of the beauty and complexity of the human experience.

We’ve already talked about why using ChatGPT to write your college application essays is so risky, but here we’d like to briefly break down why it’s just not going to get you very good writing. Let’s take a look at the problems with this AI-generated essay. 

We can give ChatGPT points for grammar and spelling, but certainly not for style! While AI, naturally, does well with the mechanics of the English language, it struggles to sound like a real, believable person–especially a high schooler! 

One key aspect of the college admissions essay is that it needs to be written in your own voice. This gives the admissions committee a sense of your personality, which is a major factor in admissions! But the language here is stiff, formal, and–well–robotic!

Real high schoolers don’t use phrases like “the vast tapestry of my life” or “the foot soldiers of our ambitions.” At best, this essay makes you sound like you’re pretending to be older than you are. At worst, like you’ve gotten someone else to write your essay for you. 

Another main aspect of your Common App essay should be that it conveys your emotions and feelings. That’s what makes a personal statement personal! 

In this sample AI essay, we get a lot of discussion of the chessboard and its lessons, but we never see what the writer actually feels. This will always be a major failing of AI-generated essays: at best, they can mimic some of the emotional language used by real people, but they can’t get at the raw feelings the way a person can. 

• Generic Takeaways

Although this essay isn’t bad and uses some specific language, its lessons are generic. A great college essay combines personal experiences with unique insights that show how you’ve learned and grown as a person.

This essay mimics that: it talks about “the lessons of the chessboard” and “shaping my identity in profound ways.” But these lessons remain generic, the kind of things that anyone could say: “striving for excellence” and “embracing adversity” are the exact kinds of phrases a good college essay tutor would tell you to avoid.

Why? Because university admissions committees have read these phrases again and again and again! They’re cliche, they’re boring, and they’ll make it seem like you’re both of those things as well.

It’s the last thing you want, especially if your college application is getting sent to competitive schools!

Take a look at this collection of real sample essays written by successful college applicants and notice the differences: they have a distinct voice, passion, and unique lessons!

4 Good Uses of ChatGPT for College Essays

Although you absolutely shouldn’t use ChatGPT to write the actual substance of your essay, there are ways you can use ChatGPt to aid in the writing process. 

Below, we’ll list some good ways to use ChatGPT–ones that won’t run the risk of being flagged as plagiarism. 

• Of course, a Common App personal statement should be personal: it should draw on the things from your life that matter to you. Still, using ChatGPT to generate a large list of possible college essay topics isn’t a terrible idea, so long as you make sure to pick a topic that actually connects with your life. (You can read more about good college essay topics here !)
• Starting is often the hardest part of writing a college essay–that’s why we have a whole guide on it here. In addition to the advice we offer in that guide, you can use ChatGPT to draft up some free writing exercises to get you started. 
• While most college application essays are all about you, some– like the “Why us?” essay –require you to do research. ChatGPT can be quite helpful when it comes to finding specific information on a university you’re applying to. Just be sure to always double check what you find–ChatGPT can make mistakes.
• ChatGPT might not be able to understand the emotional stakes of your essay, but it’s excellent at catching grammar, spelling, and other mistakes. You can also ask ChatGPT to analyze your essay for any unclear or confusing sentences. 

Of course, while ChatGPT can help you with all of the above when it comes to your college application essays, it’ll never really be personal. If you think you need help writing your college essays–and our experience has shown us that most students do –then there’s nothing better than personalized essay help from a real human being. 

We’ve done the research (ourselves, without AI) to rank the 14 best college essay services for students applying to college, depending on exactly what kind of support you need. 

Our own tutors–most of whom come from Ivy League colleges–bring an unmatched dedication and expertise. They’ll get to know you, help you brainstorm, and walk you through every step of the college essay writing process. All you have to do is contact us to get started. 

Writing your college application essays can be tough, and it can be hard to know where to start. Sadly, ChatGPT isn’t going to be the solution if you want compelling college essays. 

But, fortunately, we’ve put together all the information you could need to get started. Below, check out our related college essay posts, covering everything from college essay formats to winning application essay conclusions to real sample essays. 

In the meantime, if you’re looking for inspiration, there’s no better resource than PrepMaven’s 30 College Essays that Worked: a real collection of 30 Common App essays that got students admitted to schools like Princeton. 

When you’re ready to start writing, contact us to get paired with a college essay coach and see why we have a perfect track record of 5-star reviews!

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Should you use chatgpt for your college essay, the college essay.

Brad Schiller

I know what you’re thinking. ChatGPT is good at writing. Therefore, why not use it for your college essays? 

But this article is here to convince you not to do it – especially if you’re applying to selective colleges.

First things first, let’s admit that — yes — ChatGPT can write pretty good college admissions essays. In fact, it writes better than many (or even most) applicants:

• The language is engaging and flows well. 
• It uses a solid structure that’s easy to follow. 
• It contains buzzwords related to what colleges are looking for.

There are two problems with using ChatGPT or another AI to write your essays.

• It writes in the AI’s voice – not yours. Not only will the essay not sound like you, but it’ll sound like all other AI-written essays, which are fairly easily detectable by humans and AI checkers.
• Your goal isn’t to write essays that are better than many (or even most) applicants. Your goal is to write essays that are better than nearly all other applicants . 

Essays are crucially important — much more so than most students realize. That’s because selective colleges use essays to differentiate between tens of thousands of academically similar applicants. In fact, our analysis that came out of Harvard admissions litigation shows that strong essays improve admissions chances by 10x at Ivy and equivalent colleges.

Below, we’ll use an example ChatGPT-written essay to show why AI currently fails at this task. At the very end, we’ll show you a few techniques that you can use to have ChatGPT strengthen essays that you yourself write. 

But instead of reading this article, we suggest working with a human writing coach. Prompt’s Writing Coaches have helped over 30,000 students achieve their college admissions goals. Relying on ChatGPT as your coach may be better than nothing (or than relying on Aunt Gertrude) – but it’s not going to help you differentiate your essays from the applicants you’re competing against.

An example essay shows why ChatGPT doesn’t work for college admissions 

Let’s start by looking at an essay ChatGPT wrote. It responded to this prompt that we provided:

Note on prompting ChatGPT — generally, the more detail you provide, the better ChatGPT will do.

Here’s what the paid version of ChatGPT (the GPT-4 model) gave us in return:

Wow. When you first look it over, it seems like a pretty good-sounding essay. The language is easy to follow, the flow is engaging.

But the essay fails on closer inspection. The content is poor - "These experiences have taught me a great deal about myself and others. In Mexico, I learned the immense power of patience and persistence." It sounds good, but doesn't give the depth college admission readers are looking for. They don’t want to hear that you learned something, they want you to demonstrate it. Plus, the voice is clearly AI (“the azure-blue day of my departure,” “my belief in the transformative power of education,” “igniting a flame that has grown into a full-blown passion”).

Let’s dig in to show exactly why and how this kind of AI-written essay will let you down.

 (Note: if you want a few other examples of ChatGPT-written college essays, this article also has a few, with the same issues that we talk about here.)

 1. ChatGPT writes in its own voice – not yours

Your voice is a huge part of your college essays. You’re telling your story related to your most compelling experiences that prove you’ll be successful in college and beyond. An admissions officer is using your essays to picture you as a member of the campus community and as an alumni. They can’t do that if they don’t get a sense of your personality and how you think.

ChatGPT’s voice is not yours. As we said, it’s a mix of all examples of “good” college essays from across the internet. You may think ChatGPT’s writing sounds good (not wrong). But it’s not you, and admissions officers will know that.

Admissions officers read lots of applications – often 50+ per day. While ChatGPT is new this admissions season, they will quickly learn to spot which essays are written by AI. ChatGPT’s voice is obvious. Some schools even will use AI checkers , such as CopyLeaks, which while not perfect, do a decent job of detecting ChatGPT. 

You might think you can outsmart admissions officers — take something written by AI and modify it. Except it doesn’t work. It’s hard not to be influenced by things like an essay that “reads well” and looks grammatically correct and authoritative. Worse, your essay could also end up choppy; your voice interspersed with ChatGPT’s.

Keep in mind – admissions officers spend an average of 8 minutes per application. They don’t have the time to read and think super carefully about whether something is AI-written. It’s easier to dismiss an application and move on to the next if they suspect AI may have written it.

If we apply this to the essay ChatGPT wrote, note that most of the phrases we highlighted above as being weak, also read as having a particular “ChatGPT voice.” Let’s take that delightful phrase: “ igniting a flame that has grown into a full-blown passion .”

This isn’t how normal people write. It especially isn’t how high school students write. But it is how ChatGPT writes — it’s the exact same voices it uses in all of its essays. Which makes it easy for admissions officers (and their AI detection tools) to identify. 

2. ChatGPT doesn’t understand what admissions officers are looking for in essays

ChatGPT is a long way from AGI – artificial general intelligence that can actually think, in the way we do as humans. 

According to computer scientist Cal Newport, ChatGPT was essentially “trained on passages extracted from an immense corpus of sample text that includes much of the public Web.” It generates answers to queries using a “word-voting strategy,” basically, predicting the most common word to follow any particular phrase.

In other words, ChatGPT can only write essays based on what’s available online. Do you think most essays online tend to be excellent? Or would you guess that most aren’t that good? The correct answer is: most are terrible. Yet that’s what ChatGPT will reproduce. 

Moreover, ChatGPT doesn’t understand what colleges are looking for in essays. It produces text that aligns with what it finds online — that is to say: with the myths about what colleges want. “Tell your story.” “Let us get to know you.” 

In reality, selective colleges want you to show you’ll be successful in college and beyond . Specifically, they’re looking for experiences that exemplify one or more of the 5 Traits Colleges Look for in Applicants : Drive, Intellectual Curiosity, Initiative, Contribution, and Diversity of Experiences/Interests. They want to see you’ve done something that other applicants could not have done (or couldn’t have done as well).

What ChatGPT writes (instead of what admissions officers want)

Because of its pattern-matching, when ChatGPT writes an essay (or provides advice on a topic, or gives feedback on a draft), it focuses on the wrong things:

• Its writing and advice align with typical applicants – not those applying to selective colleges. Since it pulls advice and examples from all students, ChatGPT doesn’t follow the pattern of students who get admitted at selective colleges — which involves both making content highly compelling and fitting a lot of that great content into the essay’s word count (ie: writing very concisely). 
• It focuses on descriptive language over content. ChatGPT uses a narrative approach, reflecting college essay advice found online. It will thus prioritize beautiful prose and descriptive language. But for selective colleges, most lovely phrases are missed opportunities to talk about an applicant’s potential for college success (ie: the 5 Traits).  
• It uses buzzwords. ChatGPT pulls common words and phrases it finds across admissions essays and in advice articles into its essays. The phrases sound good – “I have a passion for empowering others.” But these buzzwords aren’t proof. For example, describing a time you actually empowered another person is far more compelling than simply stating you have a “passion for empowering others.”

How the example essay would fail with admission officers

Now, let’s apply what we’ve learned here to our ChatGPT example essay. In broad strokes:

[1] These are things most students would do on a service trip . The essay has nothing about how the student went the extra mile. It doesn’t go into detail on impressive outcomes. It doesn’t show that this student is unique or exceptional.

This content just doesn’t cut it as compared to applicants at selective schools. In terms of the 5 traits, while there may be some drive/initiative here, the examples are weak. 

At best, the student decides to teach some English as well as math to the Mexican student Pablo and to go on to tutor another student upon returning home. These are not … super impressive examples of going above and beyond. 

The only way to improve the sense of this applicant’s drive and initiative would be to get more detail on the challenges involved in tutoring these two students and what the applicant did to overcome them. For example, did they seek out books for speed-teaching a child English? Did they consult with a great English-as-a-Second language teacher and use those lessons? Did they meet resistance from the program and overcome it somehow? Did they do this while simultaneously learning Spanish and overcoming jetlag?

We don’t know what the particulars were. And so none of it is in any way impressive.

[2] The essay has way too much descriptive language . Let’s look at the very first phrase: “the azure-blue day of my departure.” This may be nice, but it’s taking up space that is doing nothing for the admissions reader. 

Azure-blue days have nothing to do with this student. The admissions officer is looking for a reason to move this application from the huge reject pile to the tiny accept one. The fact that this student once experienced good weather is not that reason. 

Moreover, there was nothing about lovely departure-day weather in the prompt we fed ChatGPT. It made this fact up! Does it matter? Actually, yes. Your essay should be factual and authentic. This essay isn’t that. 

[3] The essay’s plethora of buzzwords sound nice but add no value. Basically, the last four paragraphs of the essay are nothing but buzzwords. We singled out some examples earlier: “my belief in the transformative power of education,” “igniting a flame that has grown into a full-blown passion.”

Are these phrases going to get the admissions officer excited? Do they have a chance to move the essay from the reject pile to the admit pile? No! 

Where is the proof that the student believes in the transformative power of education? There’s nothing to show that this applicant has done more than tutor two students and had an okay time doing it — barely meeting any obstacles along the way. 

In addition, the essay doesn’t show us what actions the student has taken now that they believe in the transformative power of education. What effect is this “full-blow passion” for education having on the applicant’s life? There’s nothing here to convince us. 

3. ChatGPT fills in gaps with fluff – not compelling, truthful content

ChatGPT uses whatever content you give it to write essays — if you don’t give it enough, it fills the gaps for you. It has a few ways to do this (all bad):

• Waxing philosophical about the world or what you learned about yourself (this is where buzzwords tend to come in – see section above), or
• Adding made-up stories and anecdotes (ie: the azure-blue sky on the departure date). 

Again, this is why the nice-sounding essays ChatGPT produces fail upon closer inspection. In our example essays, once the AI gets past the Loris story, it has multiple paragraphs of fluff where we really learn nothing more about the student. 

In addition, ChatGPT doesn’t yet have word-count capabilities. In other words, you can’t get it to write, say, a great 650-word essay or keep to under 200 words. Combined with its fluff-generating bias, this is a recipe for a lot of weak content. 

We’ve illustrated this concept below. In the ChatGPT-generated essay, all the parts an admission officer would consider fluff are in [Prompt blue] blue. 

How you can use ChatGPT to help you – with the right prompts

ChatGPT isn’t a total loss for college essays. There are ways it can be helpful. What you need are the right prompts. 

We’ve spent many, many hours experimenting with ChatGPT and developing prompts that yield useful results. We’ll share more about the prompts in a future article. Here’s three ways we’ve found to make ChatGPT more helpful. 

• Get ChatGPT to help you think about what to write about. AI can be a not-bad brainstorming guide. We’ve figured out how to get ChatGPT to provide a line of questioning that will help you build out more compelling content. Just be careful – ChatGPT doesn’t have a great understanding of what colleges are looking for in essays. So you need to include that type of content in the prompt you provide (e.g., asking it to use the 5 Traits Colleges Look for in Essays to guide you, copying and pasting the 5 Traits from this article).
• Provide feedback on the content and structure of your draft. You can give ChatGPT a draft you wrote and ask it for feedback on how to make it better. It’s important to add explicit questions you want it to answer (e.g., “What didn’t you learn that you wanted to learn?”). But once again, be careful. Adding relevant content to your prompt (e.g., the 5 Traits) will help ChatGPT provide better feedback. You can even ask ChatGPT for an example outline for restructuring your essay in ways that’ll make it more compelling.
• Help you figure out ways to reduce your word count. As writing coaches, we find many students struggle when writing to a word count. ChatGPT can help – again, with the right prompt. If you ask it to make your draft more concise, it’ll heavily rewrite what you have (even changing your voice) – not a good option. Giving ChatGPT a word count target also doesn’t work, as we said, as ChatGPT doesn’t have a good sense of word count. We’ve found using the language “ minimally edit ” in your prompt does a decent job of identifying words and phrases you could cut without doing much rewriting. This is especially powerful when you also indicate specific things you want ChatGPT to look for as it edits, such as removing unnecessary details or prepositional phrases. You can then take ChatGPT’s output and feed it into a document comparison tool (Google Docs, Word) to see which edits ChatGPT made (ChatGPT isn’t good at comparing documents). Then, you can determine which edits you want to use, not use, or modify.

For more tips on how to use ChatGPT for your college essay, sign up for a free Prompt account . If you want more individualized support, we have 1-on-1 coaching packages with experts that will help you write an article that will stand out to admission officers. 

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Five key insights into ChatGPT students need to know

by Brendan Henry published April 16, 2024

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm in a relatively short time. The creators of the trending chatbot, OpenAI, released a demo for ChatGPT in 2022. Since then, educators have been forced to discuss the artificially intelligent elephant in the room.

Discussions have been rooted in finding a balance between fear of compromising academic integrity and using artificial intelligence as an instructional tool. 

Editor’s note

This story was produced in partnership with the Department of Journalism and Media Communication as part of a special class in which students get hands-on experiences developing and producing content with the Division of Marketing and Communications for SOURCE, the news website of CSU.

In February 2023, the Provost’s Ethics Colloquium held a public discussion at the Lory Student Center at Colorado State University regarding the impact of ChatGPT on academics. Matthew Hickey , the associate dean for research and graduate studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences, moderated the discussion and provided his own insights and advice for the ever-evolving chatbot.

1. Understanding the potency of ChatGPT and AI

Hickey notes that it did not take long for ChatGPT to ascend to the level of proficiency that it has. From the early days of the beta at the end of 2022, the chatbot can now crank out an entire essay in less than a minute, carry out a comprehensive and intelligent-sounding conversation with the user, and even write code. With how quickly the program has developed, Hickey cites the uncertainty that both he and his colleagues faced, especially in terms of academic accountability mechanisms.

Not only is ChatGPT a concern academically, but it has already resulted in job loss – specifically in writing-centric industries. ChatGPT and other programs have become so concerning that OpenAI and other AI experts have signed a statement for mitigating the risk of human extinction as a result of AI. The statement equates the human extinction resulting from AI to that of pandemics and nuclear war.

 2. ChatGPT should be a tool, not a ghostwriter

While using ChatGPT to write an essay for a class is not exactly comparable to nuclear war, it still takes a toll on the student. Hickey says that copying and pasting from ChatGPT can cause intellectual harm.

“We’ve got to create a climate on campus where the students themselves can realize that, ‘I’m actually doing myself harm because I’m not learning, and that’s gonna hurt me when I’m going out looking for a job, etc.,’” Hickey said. “Because we’re not going to be able to rely on these large language models and in every setting we find ourselves in for the rest of our lives.”

 3. Transparent and mindful use of ChatGPT

Hickey does not feel the need to ban ChatGPT from his classroom but instead expects transparency from his students if they use it as a tool. He wants to be sure that his students are turning in their own writing and not dragging and dropping entire sentences or sections from the program, something he considers a violation of academic integrity. Hickey says it can be beneficial to probe the chatbot as if it were another conversational partner in a classroom setting.

While Hickey allows the use of ChatGPT in his classes so long as his students communicate their use to him, he knows that some educators on campus may not have the same policy and disallow the chatbot altogether. In this case, he feels that students should respect the rule and refrain from using it.

 4. ChatGPT runs on an illusion of intelligence

A glaring issue brought up by Hickey and many other users of ChatGPT is how good it is at making things up and sounding confident about it.

“ChatGPT and other large language models are trained to generate plausible texts,” Hickey said. “It’s not trained to deliver truthful text. It’s just plausible.”

Hickey cited a physician’s use of ChatGPT to model the pulmonary blood flow responses to particular stressors. What the chatbot generated was completely implausible for humans, but for medical students who may not know any better, the results could be misleading and problematic. This is why Hickey stresses the importance of knowing that ChatGPT can be used as a tool, but also that it is still full of flaws and requires fact-checking.

5. Artificial intelligence is here to stay

Technology continues to grow and develop, and with that AI. There is no avoiding it, and ignoring the reality, as Hickey suggests, will not be beneficial. Educators will likely be implementing AI like ChatGPT into courses as a tool, similar to how Hickey and other instructors have.

This goes beyond CSU. Abram Anders, the associate director of the Student Innovation Center at Iowa State University, also has been working on AI tools to use in the classroom. Anders was a keynote speaker at the Provost’s Ethics Colloquium last November.

“You don’t have to be a technical optimist or an AI optimist to engage these tools,” Anders said at the Provost’s Ethics Colloquium. Anders referred to a student of his who is pursuing a career in creative writing, and the student initially held a pessimistic view of AI, fearing it would hinder career prospects. However, through the course, the student realized that AI still requires human guidance, alleviating concerns about the impact on their career potential.

Regardless of the future steps universities and educators take, ChatGPT and AI programs are here to stay.

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