philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays.

Rick Clark, the executive director of undergraduate admission at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his staff spent weeks this summer pretending to be high school students using A.I. chatbots to fill out college applications....

“Students on some level are going to have access to and use A.I.,” Mr. Clark said. “The big question is: How do we want to direct them, knowing that it’s out there and available to them?” ...

“Part of the process of the college essay is finding your writing voice through all of that drafting and revising,” said Susan Barber, an Advanced Placement English literature teacher at Midtown High School, a public school in Atlanta. “And I think that’s something that ChatGPT would be robbing them of.”

In August, Ms. Barber assigned her 12th-grade students to write college essays. This week, she held class discussions about ChatGPT, cautioning students that using A.I. chatbots to generate ideas or writing could make their college essays sound too generic. She advised them to focus more on their personal views and voices.

Other educators said they hoped the A.I. tools might have a democratizing effect. Wealthier high school students, these experts noted, often have access to resources — alumni parents, family friends, paid writing coaches — to help them brainstorm, draft and edit their college admissions essays. ChatGPT could play a similar role for students who lack such resources, they said, especially those at large high schools where overworked college counselors have little time for individualized essay coaching. ...

Several high school seniors said in interviews that they had chosen not to use A.I. tools to help draft their essays — partly because they wanted to tell their own personal stories themselves, and partly because many universities have not taken clear stances on applicants’ use of the chatbots. ...

Ritika Vakharia, a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology, said she had tried asking ChatGPT to produce ideas for college admissions essays. But she found the responses too broad and impersonal, even after she gave it details about her extracurricular activities like teaching dance classes to younger students. ...

See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/business/college-admissions-essay-ai-chatbots.html