For students of color hoping to get into America’s most elite universities, application essays are more important than ever.
The Supreme Court’s June 29 decision to overturn affirmative action eliminated most race-conscious admissions practices, but allowed applicant-led discussions to leave a critical loophole. “Nothing prohibits a college from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affects the applicant’s life,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s majority opinion in the case.
Now, some key universities are encouraging students to emphasize “identity” and “life experience” in their essay prompts, sharing their growth and background experiences. But students who rely on ChatGPT to write papers, as shown by data Most of them need to work on themselves if they want to stand out.
Tips for this year’s Johns Hopkins read: “Tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, community, etc.) or life experience that has shaped you personally, and how it affects the goals you pursue in college at Hopkins University.” The prompt also bluntly acknowledged the Supreme Court ruling, citing Chief Justice Roberts, telling applicants that “any part of your background, including but not limited to your race, may be discussed,” but it would Being seen “only based on” how it affects… your experience as an individual. “
The change is notable from last year, when prompts asked students more mundane topics such as books they’d read, volunteer experiences and how they spent their summer, New York Times The report said.
Naturally, students struggling with essay ideas turned to the hottest new technology to help them through: OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Since going viral in late 2022, chatbots have revolutionized higher education, with students using it to cheat and teachers scrambling to “ChatGPT-proof” their classrooms.According to a survey, more than half of the students admit to using ChatGPT to write essays Study.com surveysBut whether AI will actually kill the college paper remains to be seen.
Of course, robots can spit out Plato’s analysis republicbut can it succeed in writing an engaging, heartfelt essay—and on complex and nuanced themes of race?
Disadvantages of ChatGPT
In this regard, the news is not good for essay writers. AI seems to make the same mistake that many high school students attempting narrative writing for the first time.
Education consultant Christopher Rim says ChatGPT articles ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ wrotewhich means that it illuminates the gist of the story, rather than using literary techniques such as characterization and imagery to allow the reader to gather his own gist—the exact opposite of the golden rule of effective narrative writing: “Show, not tell.”
This isn’t entirely surprising: as a large language-generating AI model, ChatGPT is trained to mimic the speech patterns of vast amounts of existing text, putting it at a disadvantage when it comes to creating the original ideas and self-reflection these papers require.
Admissions essays ask students to stand out, emphasizing their creativity and experience as a fit for a particular school, but ChatGPT essays are dated, lack a unique voice, and fail to showcase a student’s true identity, Rim said.
Of course, the more users edit and criticize ChatGPT, the better the results. Asking the bot to be more conversational in its responses or to add sarcastic jokes could go a long way, but its articles still seem to be missing the wow factor.
“ChatGPT performed worst on the most important part of a college essay: self-reflection,” wrote Sanibel Chai, a college essay advisor who tested artificial intelligence. New York Magazine.
“Can ChatGPT bring together different parts of your life and use a summer job to shed light on a fraught friendship? Can it connect a favorite song to an identity crisis? So far, no ,” Chai wrote. “Crucially, ChatGPT can’t do one important thing that all my clients can do: think randomly.”
Requiring ChatGPT to include the topic of race in its papers introduces a whole new set of pitfalls. AI can instantly provide generic anecdotes describing experiences of racism, but it doesn’t accurately convey the complexities of people who actually experience racism. Instead, it forms a simplified caricature of a student of color who lacks emotional depth.
It took a reporter 45 minutes to prompt ChatGPT to write an article targeting racism, and even after repeatedly instructing it to stop using clichés, the bot continued to generate embarrassing sentences like this: “When I think about the road ahead, I know Embracing my legacy and sharing my story is the best way for me to contribute to a world that is rich, diverse and united by the stories we tell.”
Those who have tried ChatGPT seem to have come to the same conclusion: Sure, with a lot of prompting and editing, it can make for a decent essay, but it certainly won’t make for a great essay that college admissions committees will remember. This is currently only possible with human students.
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