My ds started using a site that helps create essay ideas and outlines and gives feedback on essays for improvements. So far he has been pretty impressed with it, but I’m curious if anyone else has used AI sites and what they thought of the essay suggestions and feedback?
(Edited by moderator to comply with forum rules)
I’m sure current students are using AI…but I’m also not sure this is the best plan. Your college essays are supposed to be in your voice, talking about yourself.
We have an essay review here on College Confidential that you might want to consider. Write your own essays…and someone here will review them.
@Lindagaf can you please post the link for the essay reviewers?
I believe OP is asking about using AI to suggest ideas and create outlines — not to write the entire essay, as well as using AI for review and feedback.
@Mellome, I use AI extensively at work (not for college essays, but in contexts with significant overlap). Here are my thoughts:
Topic suggestions can be useful, but it’s important that your son evaluates whether a suggested topic truly reflects who he is and what he wants colleges to understand about him. A well-written essay on the wrong topic isn’t very effective.
Most Gen AI models are quite good at creating outlines that you can then develop and personalize.
They’re very strong at grammar, clarity, and sentence-level edits.
I’d avoid having AI write full sentences or paragraphs. Those often sound generic and feel “AI generated”, which admissions readers are probably well attuned to by now.
I also second the recommendation to use the CC essay review service, particularly to ensure the topic isn’t an overused or cliche one.
People give feedback so I’m not sure why not AI?
The issue becomes - colleges are screening for AI so what if she goes beyond feedback and ends up using what is deemed an AI essay and then is denied for that.
Seems dangerous to me.
It will be hard to separate feedback from re-writes.
this tool is different than most. you answer 30 questions and the app creates a number of different essay ideas based on what you wrote. you can then generate an essay outline where the tool pulls from the content and things you actually wrote. so the outline generated is actually in your own words, not AI. After you write the essay you can analyze it and get very specific feedback based more upon the content in the essays than the writing quality (ex more details in this section, this part is too cliche…). It’s different than grammarly and those sorts of things because it seems to focus more on content than writing quality….Im mostly wondering if the outlines and feedback given are good.
I’d be out.
Hopefully someone can give you the feedback you want tho - but just what you wrote there makes it suspect in my mind.
Is your kid aiming high? Don’t do it.
I’ve seen kids use AI on essays. To me, it’s noticeable. Lots of kids are using it. The ones who aim high are generally avoiding it. Admissions officers can spot it a mile away.
Here is the link for help on this forum.
I would avoid it. First of all, an experienced reader can spot AI use easily, even if they can’t prove it. Second, who knows your kid better than him (and you)? How would an AI generator know better than him what topics really reveal what your kid is all about? How could an AI generator offer a useful outline for a very personal topic? Third, the work of brainstorming a useful topic is worth the effort and an important part of the writing process – in fact, brainstorming can help the writer build an outline that works for the topic. AI dulls creativity, individuality, and spark – the elements that admissions officers are looking for in essays.
I’m not familiar with it, but it sounds interesting. If you try it, please report back on your experience. I’d be curious to hear how it goes.
I’d also note that you could probably recreate what it’s doing with some good prompt engineering in a free AI tool. If you know more or less what that tool does, you might just try putting in your own prompts to see what you get back.
I have recently used AI for a health condition. So not entirely opposed to it if used properly.
However, as an essay reader, I do not work with any student who has used AI (If they tell me that is…)
Much of the work done by AI for an essay (including brainstorming, making an outline, reviewing ideas) really should be done by the student.
The essay should evaluate the student readiness to do these things in college. Using AI basically misrepresents that ability.
I really hope that students are not using AI at college, but I am a realist. Thanks to technology students apparently no longer read. Now with AI they will no longer write.
Your student has to look at each school’s AI policy regarding common app essays to make sure this using this service is acceptable. Many schools don’t have an AI policy yet. Some specifically allow AI use for brainstorming…BC, GA Tech, CMU, Vandy, Cornell.
Some colleges do have a no-AI at all policy, which IMO is hypocritical as I expect some professors in their school allow AI use for brainstorming, grammar check, structure recommendations. Regardless my opinion though, if you want to apply to those schools you have to follow their rules.
No school will allow essays written by AI, and some schools, notably the UCs do check this. (As I’ve posted before if the UCs have an accurate AI detector, they should market it, because AFAIK no highly accurate AI detectors are currently on the market.)
Is that an official CC essay editing policy? I don’t think using AI to brainstorm essays, for example, misrepresents one’s writing ability, and that’s probably why some colleges specifically allow it, as I noted above. In the bigger picture, many HS and college classes with required essays do allow AI to be used for brainstorming, grammar check, etc.
I do think that CC should probably address this for essay editing @CC_Sorin? @lindagaf?
No that is not a CC policy! I don’t think there is one so I am glad you brought that up. I just don’t know enough about it and the issue is still murky for me. It seems I can be behind the times very quickly these days!
Another issue is good writers being wrongly accused of using AI, though it tends to happen with a certain kind of writing.
Agreed! As long as a student writes their own essay, I don’t see an issue with the AI model suggesting ideas. After all, if you’ve interacted with it for a while it knows a lot about you.
AI is a tool, and there are good and bad ways to use it.
What kind?
I guess my fear here is, does some of the AI thoughts/words themselves make it into the essay…and are you caught.
There already seem to be false positives out there…
I wouldn’t even want the hint of impropriety.
But agree, if the essay is the students, we’ll it’s the student’s.
To clarify re the student essay feedback service: We give feedback. We use our judgment to help students create an essay that conveys their personality, to the best of the student’s ability. We don’t edit, though we might make suggestions that a student can put their work through grammarly if their punctuation is very poor, or we might make suggestions to shorten an essay. It’s really all about the student doing the work. How much any one reader helps is up to them. Some people spend a lot of time, others provide basic feedback. It’s all more helpful than nothing.
We don’t use AI checkers, but a reader is free to use their judgment and not assist if they feel an essay seems as though it was created using AI.
Trying to create official policies about AI usage is something there is no resource for, in terms of our volunteers’ time and the resources we have (basically… our volunteers’ time, haha.) I agree with @compmom that the issue is murky, and it’s extremely difficult to create a “policy” about it. If a reader feels an essay has been generated with AI, which has definitely happened, the reader can decline to read the essay. We often alert other readers of potential issues that arise within the work students ask for help with.
As a group of volunteers, we simply do our best to provide useful feedback to students, as mentioned already. We get very nice responses from a majority of our students, so we must be useful in some way.
We have learned a lot since starting the volunteer reading service and I think our goal at the moment is to help students who request help in good faith, while trying to simplify the steps they need to take and being clear about who is able to use the service.
In regards to this topic of this post, in my work as a professional, occasionally a student will make use of AI. For example, I had a student who was really stuck on what they wanted to say in a particular paragraph. I suggested they use chatgpt, put in a couple of ideas they wanted to convey, and see what came up. It was useful in this case, as it helped the student clarify the shape they wanted for that paragraph. But the student didn’t simply plug in the chatgpt writing. In this case, AI was a tool.
I think AI is here to stay and we all have to learn how to use it effectively without letting it be a substitute for our personalities. I also think more motivated students will use it as necessary, and students who really aren’t that concerned will use it to make their workload lighter.
Btw, we are always happy to accept new readers. Click here if you would like to learn more.
Just want to add that in no way do I express judgment and I am nice about not working with AI generated material. I am just not knowledgeable. Any student can request a different reader who is more experienced with this.
As a reader I have dealt with outright cheating. Two international students sent me the same essay! Turns out they were best friends. In a situation like that I also strive to be kind but decline the work. I recognize there are cultural differences about “cheating.” (They did not collaborate…one used the other’s essay…)
I hope to learn more about AI so I can be more like @Lindagaf in her judicious personal approach. I used AI for a health issue so that is a start.
ps @IndySceptic I would characterize the essay flagged (the student put it in the system, not the college) as being AI (but the writer said it wasn’t and I believe it) as “a lot of hot air.” Vague, impersonal, cliche. I encouraged the writer- for different reasons- to put more of their personality in it and that would, as an added benefit, take care of the AI flag. Apparently the word “delve” should be avoided!!!
Delve is a new one! Perhaps we should create a list of “AI dead giveaways.”
What others…? If there is interest, we could make a spinoff thread. But then, that could be useless, because nerds like me enjoy double dashes and delving!