Things have changed since students pored over a dog-eared black-and-white copy of the “Princeton Review’s 331 Best Colleges,” surrounded by college application paperwork.
For the first time ever, students can use artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the college admissions process. ChatGPT, billed as a “virtual assistant” when it launched at the end of 2022, was receiving about 1.8 billion visits per month by February 2023, when most regular admissions applications were due.
foundry10, a Seattle-based education research organization, has followed technological developments in education for more than a decade. Dr. Jennifer Rubin, principal investigator of foundry10’s Digital Technologies and Education Lab, led a study to determine how the newest world-changing technology had affected college admissions. AI technology is so new, Rubin says she didn’t know what to expect.
“This is the first application cycle in which generative AI has been publicly available. Since this is an emerging area of research, we did not have a hypothesis regarding the rate of student use,” she said.
foundry10’s report, Navigating College Applications with AI, released in July 2024, offers valuable insight and recommendations for traversing this rapidly changing admissions environment.
Cautious about AI for school, cool with AI for applications
Rubin and her team surveyed a demographically diverse group of more than 500 high school students from across the country. They found that while AI experimentation was relatively widespread—about 67% of teens surveyed said they had used text-generating tools like ChatGPT, Bing, or Google—only 14% of respondents said they used AI for schoolwork frequently. Sixty-five percent said they used AI rarely or never at all.
That said, despite abstaining from using AI for schoolwork, almost one-third of all students surveyed say they used AI to assist with their college applications. Rubin was particularly curious about the college essay since it is the area in the application where generative AI could really help.
“Generative AI, like ChatGPT, can generate new text, respond to complex queries, and engage in conversations that require contextual understanding. It can produce creative content, offer detailed explanations, and adapt its responses based on user input,” explains Rubin.
Spellcheck it is not.
Students who reported using AI technology for their college essays mainly did so to assist with essay writing. Approximately half used AI to brainstorm topics and/or create an outline, a third used AI to refine their essays, and less than a quarter used AI to generate a full first draft.
Students are cognizant of AI complexities
Charlotte Grushkin, a rising senior at Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, offered clarity about how students use AI.
“You can’t use it for answers, but AI can be helpful to streamline your thoughts. It takes a little back and forth, which is where it really helps you brainstorm. In the end, it requires more thought on your end than what AI gives you back.”
According to Rubin’s study, most students who said they would not use AI for their college essays cited ethical and accuracy concerns and a preference for human-generated content. Grushkin, who is also a member of her school’s ethics committee, warns that using AI without due diligence can be risky:
“You have to be really careful and fact-check because it can be wildly inaccurate.”
That said, students reported less concern about using AI for other aspects of the admissions process, like researching colleges and financial aid, managing stress, devising timelines, and preparing for interviews. For busy students with busy teachers, Grushkin explains, AI can serve as a substitute sounding board.
“I would prefer to bounce ideas off a teacher or classmate, but AI is kind of a last resort,” Grushkin says.
AI, Admissions Coach, or Alone
Rubin and her team designed an experiment to gain further insight into perceptions surrounding AI and college admissions.
They asked nearly a thousand participants, 425 high school teachers, and 523 teens college applicants, to read the same introductory paragraph and then randomly told each respondent one of the following scenarios: the student received help from AI, the student received help from a hired college admissions coach, or the student received no help at all.
Respondents demonstrated bias against AI assistance. They deemed the paragraph less authentic, less competent, and less ethical than the same paragraph written by a student who received help from a (human) admissions coach or none at all.
It is too soon to determine whether bias against AI assistance in college applications will persist, but if this report is any indication, high schoolers seem to have a decent grasp of AI’s gravity, pitfalls, and potential.
Charlotte, for one, isn’t planning to use AI in her applications.
“Whoever is reading the essay should feel like they’re talking to you; like you’re sitting in front of them. If I want to portray myself authentically, I have to write it. Otherwise, I think I’d lose part of myself in the process.”
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