AI Is Your Friend — Except When It Comes to Your College Essays

We were about twenty minutes into a session, brainstorming on potential topics for his Personal Statement, when my student looked at me and said, half-joking, "Jesse, I wanna just ask Chat to write this for me." I laughed and shook my head. And then I told him what I'm going to tell all of you right now.

AI is genuinely useful. Get good at it! These tools are remarkable, and if you are not already learning how to use them effectively, you are falling behind. I am talking about tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others that are going to be a part of virtually every professional field by the time you graduate from college.

Interested in pursuing medicine? AI is already being used to assist with diagnostics and research. How about business? It's helping companies analyze data and write reports faster than ever before. Law, engineering, marketing, journalism, education — I could keep going. The point is, AI literacy is no longera niche tech skill. Now, it's just considered a skill. Like knowing how to use Excel, or how to write a professional email. The earlier you get comfortable with it, the better off you’ll be.So, use it. Experiment with it. Learn it. Just not for this.

Your Personal Statement — and your supplemental essays, for that matter — exist for one reason: to let an admissions officer see you beyond the one-dimensional elements of the application (transcripts, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, etc.). You. The real, specific, one-of-a-kind person who has unique experiences and has a story that nobody else on the planet can tell.

And here is what a lot of students don't fully appreciate until they are deep in the process: admissions officers are really good at their jobs. They read thousands of applications every single year. In fact, the UC system received more than 250,000 applications this past year! They know what authentic student writing sounds like. And they can feel — sometimes almost immediately — when something is off. When an essay sounds too formal. Too general. Too much like every other essay. AI-written essays have a particular quality to them that, right now at least, is pretty easy to spot if you know what you're looking for. And admissions officers know what they're looking for.

I always tell my students: write this essay as if you were telling the story to a friend over coffee. That natural, conversational energy — those little detours and specific details that only you would think to include — is exactly what makes a great Personal Statement. You cannot get that from a chatbot. Not really.

"But Jesse, can't I use it just a little?"Okay, I knew this question was coming.There is a difference between using AI as a tool to help you think — and using it to do the thinking for you. If you've already done your reflecting, your brainstorming, figured out your story, written multiple drafts in your own voice, and you want to use something like Grammarly to make sure your piece is polished, that will work. But even then, tread carefully, because it's very easy to let AI "clean up" your writing right into something that no longer sounds like you.

Of course, our goal is to write an essay that helps us gain admission into the schools we are applying to, but there is more to it than that. The process of figuring out your essay is kind of the point. Trying to figure out what story you want to tell, what experience genuinely shaped you, what you want admissions officers to know about you — that reflection is valuable. It's one of the few times in your academic career where you are pushed to really examine who you are and what matters to you. Don't let AI do that for youbecause it matters.

Embrace AI. Learn it, use it, get really good at it — because it is going to be a part of your professional life whether you want it to be or not. That is just reality.

But when it comes to your college essays? Trust yourself. Your story is the one thing on that entire application that no one can replicate, no algorithm can generate, and no admissions officer can scroll past if it's told with honesty and heart.

Write it yourself and take pride in what you create. And if you need help figuring out where to start, that's what we're here for– GRAMMAS JAM LINK HERE

Happy writing!

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