Admissions essays being flagged for AI?
My admissions essay is showing a 29% ai score and 26% mixed score when running through GBT Zero. I haven’t used AI, but what do I do? Should I re write? Is this high enough to worry about? Will admissions even check for this?? Please let me know. I thought I perfected this and I’m in love with it.
I don’t think you should worry. They probably don’t have time to check and they could never prove it for 100% sure.
Edit to add:
I just ran my own essay through an AI detector. It says 80% ai generated. It definently was not. I have gotten into many great schools so I really, really would not worry. They probably know the detectors are garbage.
But I’m freaked out because I want to get into my dream college and don’t want this to be something that rejects my application. Any admissions officers on here that could give me better insight?
This is a known issue, false positives with this sort of detector. I really would not worry about it.
Is there any sort of reliable checker ? If you see my other post, I have really unique and successful EC’s. So I’m worried my application will be scrutinized even more.
It is theoretically possible a college with a database of past essays it knew were written by humans could customize an AI checker until it was no longer generating false positives.
I am not aware of a public version of such a thing.
Well this didn’t calm my nerves
It should! If you did not use AI, then a well-trained detector will not flag it. And I am confident colleges will either use well-trained detectors, or no detectors at all.
What makes you so confident
Because it is well-known that most detectors are notoriously awful, so they don’t pay attention to that.
As the other poster noted, this is a known issue. So it would make no sense for colleges to use off the shelf detectors known to have this problem.
Do you think they have their own checkers
Don’t worry about detectors. If you don’t get into your dream school and you wrote a good essay without AI…Lol… Then that won’t be the reason you didn’t get in.
They probably wouldn’t say if they did. But when people like the Yale Admissions Podcast addressed the topic, they didn’t seem concerned. Their view was AI was unlikely to write a really helpful essay, it could actually be counterproductive.
This level of AI ‘use’ run thru an inaccurate AI detector will not trigger a review, anywhere.
I am certain the UCs use a plagiarism checker, of course there’s plagiarism that isn’t AI. That’s what I am familiar with being flagged by a UC…applicants copying essays from each other, or essays on the web.
Even if some AI detector showed your essay to be a substantial proportion of AI, you would be able to show your writing and revision history, like in google docs, no?
Do not worry about a small proportion of AI use detected by an inaccurate detector.
You think my posted percentage of ai use is « small »?
Yes.
Ai and mixed both ??
Direct your worry to something more consequential. Keep busy with volunteering or whatever you enjoy doing at the moment.
Your dream school is probably receiving 10,000+ applications this year and they are not going to run 10,000+ personal statements through Turnitin. All the decisions will be out soon anyway. It’s too late and unnecessary to write a new essay, especially when you love the one you have.
UC receives about a quarter-million applications each year. They run all of them thru a plagiarism checker according to the Counselor Bulletin at UC Counselors and Advisers Bulletin - November 2023
As earlier threads on CC by kids that were caught show, not only do they use public sources but apparently the checker has seen every previous Personal Insight essay submitted to UC (at least since digital applications started)