As AI is becoming more and more prominent, students everywhere are wondering how it will affect their college admissions process. Will your essay be read by an unfeeling AI? Could that possibly ruin your chances to get into your dream college? The short answer is no, but there are still some things you should be aware of regarding AI and your admission.
When asked about how she thinks AI will affect college admissions, BC Sophomore Suhani Maheshwari said, “I personally don’t think AI will have a positive effect upon the college admissions process because I think schools will try to have AI scan through applications as a shortcut leading to students catering to robots instead of people and it’s a slippery slope from there. As our writing becomes more catered to our system and culture we lose expression and value in free thoughts.”
Suhani expresses a common concern in her statement, but it’s a good thing for her and any other students worrying about this that only two colleges, UNC-Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech, use AI to grade essays. UNC-Chapel Hill only uses AI to check for grammatical errors and complexity in writing and has humans reading the essays as well who have the ability to override the AI given score. Virginia Tech takes a slightly different path with AI. They are using AI to confirm a reader’s score and essentially take out the need for a second human grader. It is very important to understand that AI is never in charge of the actual admission, and according to Virginia Tech News, “Final admissions decisions will be made exclusively by qualified and trained admissions professionals.” This is not to say that Suhani’s and other students’ concerns are completely without merit. Virginia Tech does use AI to scan for key words and themes in letters of recommendation. Suhani hits the nail on the head by suggesting that people will cater to what AI was programmed to find, leading to potentially untruthful or exaggerated recommendations from educators. In addition, poorly written letters of recommendation could harm a student’s chances for admission.
Another Brookfield Central student, Emma Gordon, worries, “It will make it harder for people who are actually trying and actually putting in effort to get accepted into colleges because of people who are using AI to make it easier for themselves.” Circumstances like this are already happening in high schools across the country. Students who spend a great deal of time and effort on assignments and projects can end up getting the same grade as students who get away with using AI to do their work for them. Some teachers work to stop this from happening using AI checkers. While this does help with the issue, teachers need to be careful because studies have shown that AI checkers only have an overall accuracy rate of about 63%. Colleges are also aware of this. While many do use AI checkers, no college utilizes that as their only decision maker. Whether an essay is marked as 100% or 0% generated by AI, it will always be read by a human who will be making the final decision.
Hopefully this eases some of your stress about the college admission process, but keep in mind that you want to put true effort into your essays and encourage your teachers to write quality recommendations. AI is always growing and being used more every day, so keeping up with news on colleges and their uses of AI will benefit you and your future.
