EP 016: Using ChatGPT to Write Your Admissions Essay
In this episode of the Admittedly Podcast, Thomas gives his perspective on this topic, highlighting the risks of relying on ChatGPT to write the most flawless essay.
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If you don't know ChatGPT, it's a new technology that can - among other things - create well-written texts for many purposes. An admission essay would not be different. But what are the positive and negative points of using such technology?
In this episode of the Admittedly Podcast, Thomas gives his perspective on this topic, highlighting the risks of relying on ChatGPT to write the most flawless essay. One of the most important things in an admission essay is recognizing the writer’s personality in the words. Automated technology will create a perfect but impersonal essay.
However, ChatGPT can be helpful when it comes to generating ideas and being an inspiration. Thomas gives you tips to utilize this new tool the right way.
Key Highlights
Learn whether or not you can and should use ChatGPT.
Tips on the efficiency and legality of this new technology.
ChatGPT can be very insightful and good at generating ideas.
The personality of the writer needs to come through the essay.
Why outsource your effort to write the perfect essay?
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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TikTok: @admittedlypodcast
Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes. But I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me an email and said, Hey, Thomas, take a look at this admissions essay I wrote, I was born, and I wrote this admissions essay for Harvard. So I looked at it, I thought it was a little bit strange because he and I were MBA classmates together at Wharton. And I wondered why he was applying to Harvard undergrad, but went to read the essay. And he said, Call me when you finish it. So I did. And I said, Okay, well, what's the story? He said, Well, it's this new thing that's just launching called Chat GPT. And all I did was type in a prompt, right knee, and admissions essay to Harvard. And this is what it came up with. What do you think it's great, isn't it? And I said, you know, I wrote and sent you my thoughts before I called you because I wanted to get it down. And the reality is that it was a well-written essay.
And by the way, at least several times a week since the launch of chat GPT. Somebody I know will send me an essay that they write through their admissions essay and ask me my thoughts. The issue of chat GPT and academia has been heavily debated. And that's what we're going to talk about.
Today, we're going to talk about whether or not you can and should use chat GPT to help you write your admissions essays. Now, there are two main things we need to think about here. The first is effectiveness, will it write an effective essay? And the second one is, for lack of a better term of legality? Is it okay to use chat GPT to write your admissions essay, in many cases, in many areas of academia, and business, there are no clearly defined guidelines or rules that specifically address chat GPT.
There was an article recently in the New York Times that talked about how professors are scrambling to figure out what this technology means in terms of papers, in terms of assignments in terms of exams, is it legal? Should they embrace it? Should they try and counter-program against it? And this is an ongoing debate, but for today, we're going to look at the admissions case. Now, I would urge you to not use chat GPT. And I know I know, you know, I'm the old fuddy-duddy stuck in the past. But there's a very specific reason I think that chatty BT is good to generate ideas.
So you can certainly use it to say, Okay, what would an essay look like kind of if I use this idea, or if I went this direction? Now, the problem with this and the warning I'm going to give you on this is that our brains tend to anchor to an example that we see. So it's like in negotiations, remember my negotiations class from Wharton, but common wisdom is the first person to put out a number in a negotiation generally loses.
Now, of course, there are a lot of exceptions. But what happens is, once you read that Chechi BTSA, it's now anchored in your brain. And the problem is this to an untrained reader, right to your mother, your father, even your English teacher, your best friend, they're gonna read that essay, they're gonna say, Oh, wow, Thomas, this is a great essay. It's clear, it's articulate. It makes your points. It resolves nicely. It complies with all of the rules of grammar, and they are 100% Correct.
But if you've been listening to our podcast, I would urge you to go back and listen to my conversation with Dr. Lauren Rubin, and other episodes that I've done on writing essays. The problem we have is you want the admissions committee to know you as a person. Okay, so when you put yourselves in the shoes of the admissions reader, the admissions officer, they are reading dozens of files a day thousands of essays a week. And when they dive into your application, assuming that your numbers pencil out and you're qualified and they're reading your essays, they really want to get a sense of who you are, and you get this very two-dimensional picture from a Chat GPT.
And by the way, not just a chat GPT a lot of students will write their essays in this kind of sterile, detached, removed tone, right, which is actually just as bad as an overly dramatic pull on your heartstrings tone. Right? What we really want is something that is not perfect, has a little bit of roughness to it something that the admissions officer when they read the essay says, Okay, I can feel this person's personality coming out.
So when we talk about art, we talk about the fact that art has a soul or it has a voice within it. And it's, it's almost impossible to quantify, too, to put a value on to identify what is it so when you look at a great piece of art, when you look at the Mona Lisa, when you look at David, when you look at these, these classic works that have survived time, there is something that speaks to you about that piece, there is something that the Creator has endowed that piece with painting, sculpture, architecture, whatever it might be, that resonates with the person looking at it.
So it's very important. And I know that I sound very kind of high up in the sky on this, but it's very important when you read an essay that, that the personality of the writer comes through, right, because again, remember, we're dealing with 10s, and 10s of thousands of applications. And so the reader, it's not incumbent on the reader to go in and figure out what you mean, or overly dissect your essay, you need to connect with that reader, you need to communicate clearly to that reader, and you need to make a compelling case for why you are a good candidate for their program. And it's very hard to do this with a chat GPT it's much the same way that I warned against, over-relying on an English teacher to edit your essays. And having too many people comment on and edit your essays.
Because you lose your authentic voice, that sense of self is not there, I would much rather read an essay that has flaws, that is imperfect. But when you read it, you really, really, really feel that the writer is so anxious and so excited to tell you about themselves to tell you about this thing that brings them joy or excites them or was a turning point in their life and or something that they went through. And that's something certainly that needs to come from deep within you, it needs to come from a place of reflection. And that's something that not only should you not let chat GPT gloss over.
But you should be very aware of it as people are editing what you really want. When people are giving you feedback on your essays. You want them to comment but not change not edit.
Because as an experienced reader, I can absolutely read an essay and tell you where the tone of voice changes. And to you the writer, you probably don't notice it. But to me, somebody who's read now hundreds of thousands of essays over the years, I can very quickly identify, Okay, somebody else's hand is in here. Okay, somebody definitely changed the order of the words here. And that's very, very important to keep in mind.
So number one, we want to avoid this kind of slick, overly polished, sterile essay. The second question is, if you do use chat GPT, can you get in trouble? That's a very gray area. And I don't want you to take this as you know, absolute gospel. This is my opinion. And my opinion is that when you submit your application, you signed something that's basically like a statement of integrity that says this work is entirely my own, not copied or plagiarized or derived from anywhere else. And my general feeling on this is that while using chat GPT is not nearly as egregious or bad as say copying somebody else's essay or repurposing an essay that somebody else has written. I think that it violates most definitely the spirit of that agreement.
And so if a school is looking to make an example, if a school, for example, finds that you may be slightly misrepresented something else or you get in academic trouble at school or a disciplinary problem at school, it's something that can weigh against you and to me, it's really not worth it. Because if chat GPT for example, would turn out a perfect essay that guaranteed you admission to the school of your dreams, then okay, then you need to make your own decision and do your own risk-reward. I always believe in erring on the side of doing the right thing, the ethical thing, the correct thing.
But everybody makes their own decision and some people might decide that it's worth the risk, I would again tell you that the downside is not worth it.
Because if you get three, four years into your undergraduate education, or you're almost done with your graduate school, and you are discovered, let's say they are already working on tools to detect chat GPT, there are some in place, there are some that are going to be even more widely used. If they go back and start running files through that to see, it could end very badly for you. I'm not saying it will, but I'm saying that it could. And to me, that's not worth it, especially because writing these essays should be something if you're doing it right, that you really look forward to this is and I know I hear many of you laughing, I know many of you are saying, Boy, this person's this Thomas guy is really out of touch. How could writing essays be fun, if you go back and listen to our previous episodes, you'll realize that what we advocate for is talking about yourself talking about those things that you love, right?
So if you've done the work that we've talked about in terms of figuring out your goals, working backward from that, and being excited about the application, you're presenting, because you are saying this is my true and authentic self. This is who I am, this is what I think I want to do. This is what I'm truly passionate about. This is what I care about. This is what brings me meaning and brings me joy, then these are great essays to write you're excited to write them you're excited to tell this application committee about who you are, and what you want to do.
And one of the things I really love when I speak with students when they speak with the young generation is that so many of you are passionate about what you do. So many of you do have these tremendous missions in life, these things that you care about so much earlier than previous generations. These are things that you're deeply passionate about. And we want to bring that to life in the essays. We want to bring that to life in these applications. And if you outsource your passion to something like chat GPT, you will never get an authentic picture of who you are.
So to sum it up, I think, yes, chat GPT is revolutionizing many, many areas of our life. I don't think we're even remotely aware at this point, of the magnitude of the impact it's going to have across all areas of our existence. But in this instance, I think that it will do you more harm than good.
Again, some people might advocate using it as a way to test out different essay themes. But in my mind, as soon as you see it, it's imprinted in your brain, you're tired, you're stressed and you will revert to it. And even using part of it will throw off the rhythm and continuity of your voice. So I think it's an unnecessary risk. I think it's a great tool that you can apply and use elsewhere. But I would caution you strongly against using it in admissions. Thank you.
