Chatgpt common app essay blew me away..

[Anonymous]

and I’ve taught AP English Lit in a DCUM community for 25 years. A coworker asked me for prompts to illustrate how quickly the quality is evolving - it was an authentic, heartfelt, well written essay that I would never be able to tell was AI generated. God help us all

[Anonymous]

They're have to hand write in pen soon.

[Anonymous]

Does that matter though? Couldn't they just write still using AI? I guess they could bring back the writing prompts during the Exams. Might make things actually more fair.

[Anonymous]

Did you run it through an AI detector? Are you suggesting that an AI-generated essay can outsmart AI?

[Anonymous]

This is a good thing. 90% of people don’t need to be great writers they just need to convey information,

[Anonymous]

After you've read hundreds of them for the same school, you will appreciate the honest, funny, or plain-spoken kid who isn't cliche.

Someone on here linked to a good Reddit post about this. I will try to find it.

I personally think that writing tearjerking, heartwarming essays to get something you want (admittance) is kind of gross. I don't know if AOs get tired of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I personally think that writing tearjerking, heartwarming essays to get something you want (admittance) is kind of gross. I don't know if AOs get tired of it.

heaven forbid the AOs get tired of it!

then change the prompts

[Anonymous]

Stupid thread. Anyone with one ounce of intelligence can tell it’s AI bot generated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I personally think that writing tearjerking, heartwarming essays to get something you want (admittance) is kind of gross. I don't know if AOs get tired of it.

heaven forbid the AOs get tired of it!

then change the prompts

The common essay prompts are open-ended. That's fair. But you can write essays without pandering.

[Anonymous]

I either don't believe it or you must have sadly low standards for college essay writing.

I'm a writer who works with AI (and has even worked to train AI chatbots before). AI can be an incredibly useful writing tool, but there's no way any of the bots I've used could generate a truly compelling personal essay. A generic essay that checks a bunch of boxes for someone with very mundane standards? Sure. But not something original and truly moving. It's a robot. It doesn't think and has no soul. You can always tell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I either don't believe it or you must have sadly low standards for college essay writing.

I'm a writer who works with AI (and has even worked to train AI chatbots before). AI can be an incredibly useful writing tool, but there's no way any of the bots I've used could generate a truly compelling personal essay. A generic essay that checks a bunch of boxes for someone with very mundane standards? Sure. But not something original and truly moving. It's a robot. It doesn't think and has no soul. You can always tell.

IMO it can get you 80% there. 20% editing after that!

[Anonymous]

A PP.

Here's the recent thread which linked to an interesting Reddit post.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1242522.page

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1h0vhlq/in_the_past_three_days_ive_reviewed_over_100/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[Anonymous]

I just asked ChatGPT to write my college essay and it was impressive and also pretty funny in how contrived and fake it sounded. Recommend trying it. It is quite fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I either don't believe it or you must have sadly low standards for college essay writing.

I'm a writer who works with AI (and has even worked to train AI chatbots before). AI can be an incredibly useful writing tool, but there's no way any of the bots I've used could generate a truly compelling personal essay. A generic essay that checks a bunch of boxes for someone with very mundane standards? Sure. But not something original and truly moving. It's a robot. It doesn't think and has no soul. You can always tell.

IMO it can get you 80% there. 20% editing after that!

PP here. For professional, corporate, writing, I agree.

For personal essays, I think it's the opposite. You need to provide 80%, and AI can improve it that last 20% if you use the AI properly.

Of course, most personal essays written by students are pretty trite and mediocre. But even those are trite and mediocre in a way that usually reveals the humanity of the person behind it. AI-written essays are trite and mediocre in exactly the way you'd expect a robot trained on an LLM to be. It can even be perfectly structured. A good personal essay will reveal something essential about the writer. An AI chatbot cannot do that. Any revelations will be fake or stolen, and this is generally easy to spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A PP.

Here's the recent thread which linked to an interesting Reddit post.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1242522.page

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1h0vhlq/in_the_past_three_days_ive_reviewed_over_100/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I am the writer PP and this is spot on. The discussions on the use of tricolons, common phrases in conclusions, and the tendency to overwrite and get repetitive towards the end of the essay are particularly on point, in my experience. I could this fooling someone who doesn't spend a lot of time reading student work, or reads without an eye towards details like this. However, an AP English teacher wouldn't fall in these categories.