Do applicants to your college or university know whether they can use GenAI to write application essays? The answer, according to one new study, is probably not.
Just 2% of colleges surveyed explicitly allow prospective students to use GenAI to write admissions essays, according to the education company Kaplan. And only about three in 10 schools ban GenAI in admission essays.
That leaves two-thirds of the schools surveyed with no official policy. Still, admissions officers told Kaplan that GenAI “can strip essays of their personal touch, producing generic content that doesn’t reflect a student’s authentic voice or unique experiences.”
“It’s somewhat surprising that most colleges and universities, nearly three years after ChatGPT’s debut, continue to take a laissez-faire approach to how prospective students use GenAI in their admissions essays,” said Jason Bedford, senior vice president at Kaplan. “While this gives college applicants a fair amount of discretion, it also creates uncertainty.”
Here are more findings from the survey
- 50% of admissions officers have an unfavorable attitude about GenAI use in college admissions essays.
- 27% of admissions officers say their college has an official policy allowing applicants to use GenAI programs to brainstorm essay ideas; 4% ban this use.
- 21% of admissions officers say their college has an official policy allowing GenAI programs to provide feedback for essays that applicants independently draft; 5% ban this use; the remaining 73 percent have no existing official policy.
Colleges are likely to restrict use of GenAI when they set policies for applicants, according to Kaplan.
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