By:  Atharava Pandey

Editor-in-Chief

College applications are supposed to answer one question: who is this student? To answer this, colleges design supplemental essay prompts to reveal personal information about a candidate that cannot be measured through plain numbers. While grades and test scores reveal academic preparation, supplemental essays, in theory, reveal how a student thinks, what they value, and what type of person they would be on campus. However, in the age of artificial intelligence, tools like ChatGPT are producing polished writing in a matter of seconds which raises an obvious question: what is even the point of supplemental essays? Colleges should reconsider supplemental essays because although they are intended to reveal details about an applicant’s personality, the cutthroat admissions process has completely changed how they are written.

More colleges are starting to recognize the problem of generic supplemental essays and take action. For this current application cycle, Tulane University got rid of its “Why Tulane” essay and the University of Georgia cut its supplemental essay. Furthermore, Washington University in St. Louis removed its optional writing supplement, whereas Cornell University eliminated its university-wide essay. According to Duke University’s former dean Christoph Guttentag, supplemental essays no longer reflect a student’s actual writing ability: “Essays are very much part of our understanding of the applicant; we’re just no longer assuming that the essay is an accurate reflection of the student’s actual writing ability.”

However, AI is only part of the problem. Even before ChatGPT, the high stakes of college applications forced students to treat supplemental essays as products to be perfected instead of elements of their personalities. Applicants research professors, programs, and campus traditions, while private counselors examine an applicant’s work and determine which experiences will make them look the most appealing. Overall, students are focusing on constructing the version of themselves that they believe an admissions officer wants to see rather than the person that they would actually be on campus. 

This also creates an advantage for people with access to greater resources. One student might have a private counselor reviewing every sentence, while another may be writing alone. Although colleges evaluate every candidate on the same scale, applicants do not have the same level of help. In fact, a study analyzed 240,000 essays from 60,000 UC applicants and found that essay content and style were more strongly correlated with household income than SAT scores. 

The solution is not to eliminate all essays, but to rethink what they are supposed to measure. Instead of asking students to prove their interest in a university, colleges should ask questions that place less emphasis on polished narratives and a greater level of importance on how students think. Supplemental essays should be a window into an applicant, not another test to ace.

(Sources: Applerouth, North Avenue Education, Stanford)