Edited personal statement essays

[Anonymous]

Maybe other colleges will soon follow Duke in not assigning a score to essays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

First, make sure you are using the paid version...but, not even sure what you mean by a "plagiarism tracker"?

For the record, there are a fair number of schools that explicitly say you can use AI for essay editing. Each year, more-and-more are fine with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

No...here is an example...ask it...

"Write me an essay about a dog riding a surfboard on a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico"

Then you see what it comes up with.

[Anonymous]

PP. You just make short queries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

No...here is an example...ask it...

"Write me an essay about a dog riding a surfboard on a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico"

Then you see what it comes up with.

Huh. I think that would be a shitty impersonal essay. I don’t know how that’s helpful in this situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

No...here is an example...ask it...

"Write me an essay about a dog riding a surfboard on a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico"

Then you see what it comes up with.

Huh. I think that would be a shitty impersonal essay. I don’t know how that’s helpful in this situation.

PP. My point is just that you ask AI to complete the prompt. You don't dump your own work into it.

I just asked AI "Write an essay about the friendship between the French and Italian peoples". That's it.

And it gave back 461 words, organized in an essay structure. Headers are "Historical Ties", "Cultural Exchange", "Political Cooperation", "Social Bonds", "Challenges and Resilience", "Conclusion".

Let me explain what you could learn from this (reasoning by analogy...this is not an app essay topic).

You could figure out if you left out an angle or discussion point (e.g., French admiration of Italian opera). You could infer whether you have a punchier opening and conclusion than an averagely competent discussion of a theme. You could look at your vocabulary...are you using jargon correctly? Is there a better turn of phrase (e.g., "deep and multifaceted relationship").

My reco is just a suggestion that addresses OP's concerns. Try it or don't. I gave other suggestions that don't involve AI.

Most of the examples of "really good college essays" that I've seen seem intentionally quirky or calculated to me. But the quality of the (non-AI-assisted) writing carries the day. I do believe there are precocious writers among the high school set.

A final AI example. Try "Write an essay about overcoming a high school sports injury" then as a second step ask AI to make it personal. The result sounds like most of the many, many essays on this theme that I read pre-AI while participating as a reader on a scholarship committee. Insert proper names, sport, body part and you'd basically have the whole flow.

I'd argue that if finished work is too similar to AI, it's not interesting enough to enhance the app for a highly-selective college. It might still check the box.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Worried that my kids personal statement sounds a bit too polished.

Paid for a private essay coach and I can’t tell if this type of polish is normal? What’s the best way to check?

It's OK as long as the Coach crushed the SATs for your kid, too.

[Anonymous]

Using AI to generate an essay or using a coach to ghost an essay will disqualify the kid is detected. Abd you think with hundreds of kids using that coach over the years there isn't a signature?
Have the kid write their own essay and figure out how to cut length.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

No...here is an example...ask it...

"Write me an essay about a dog riding a surfboard on a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico"

Then you see what it comes up with.

Huh. I think that would be a shitty impersonal essay. I don’t know how that’s helpful in this situation.

PP. My point is just that you ask AI to complete the prompt. You don't dump your own work into it.

I just asked AI "Write an essay about the friendship between the French and Italian peoples". That's it.

And it gave back 461 words, organized in an essay structure. Headers are "Historical Ties", "Cultural Exchange", "Political Cooperation", "Social Bonds", "Challenges and Resilience", "Conclusion".

Let me explain what you could learn from this (reasoning by analogy...this is not an app essay topic).

You could figure out if you left out an angle or discussion point (e.g., French admiration of Italian opera). You could infer whether you have a punchier opening and conclusion than an averagely competent discussion of a theme. You could look at your vocabulary...are you using jargon correctly? Is there a better turn of phrase (e.g., "deep and multifaceted relationship").

My reco is just a suggestion that addresses OP's concerns. Try it or don't. I gave other suggestions that don't involve AI.

Most of the examples of "really good college essays" that I've seen seem intentionally quirky or calculated to me. But the quality of the (non-AI-assisted) writing carries the day. I do believe there are precocious writers among the high school set.

A final AI example. Try "Write an essay about overcoming a high school sports injury" then as a second step ask AI to make it personal. The result sounds like most of the many, many essays on this theme that I read pre-AI while participating as a reader on a scholarship committee. Insert proper names, sport, body part and you'd basically have the whole flow.

I'd argue that if finished work is too similar to AI, it's not interesting enough to enhance the app for a highly-selective college. It might still check the box.

Most of the stuff posted in this thread from UVA is highly polished and sounds like other famous PS - all following the style of college essay coaches/counselors. There is a generic formula here. What you see as "model" is already a template and polished....

[Anonymous]

super polished essays are grounds for an auto-rejection. something to keep in mind.

take a look at these essays: https://essaysthatworked.com/

some of them are pretty basic tbh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

No...here is an example...ask it...

"Write me an essay about a dog riding a surfboard on a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico"

Then you see what it comes up with.

Huh. I think that would be a shitty impersonal essay. I don’t know how that’s helpful in this situation.

PP. My point is just that you ask AI to complete the prompt. You don't dump your own work into it.

I just asked AI "Write an essay about the friendship between the French and Italian peoples". That's it.

And it gave back 461 words, organized in an essay structure. Headers are "Historical Ties", "Cultural Exchange", "Political Cooperation", "Social Bonds", "Challenges and Resilience", "Conclusion".

Let me explain what you could learn from this (reasoning by analogy...this is not an app essay topic).

You could figure out if you left out an angle or discussion point (e.g., French admiration of Italian opera). You could infer whether you have a punchier opening and conclusion than an averagely competent discussion of a theme. You could look at your vocabulary...are you using jargon correctly? Is there a better turn of phrase (e.g., "deep and multifaceted relationship").

My reco is just a suggestion that addresses OP's concerns. Try it or don't. I gave other suggestions that don't involve AI.

Most of the examples of "really good college essays" that I've seen seem intentionally quirky or calculated to me. But the quality of the (non-AI-assisted) writing carries the day. I do believe there are precocious writers among the high school set.

A final AI example. Try "Write an essay about overcoming a high school sports injury" then as a second step ask AI to make it personal. The result sounds like most of the many, many essays on this theme that I read pre-AI while participating as a reader on a scholarship committee. Insert proper names, sport, body part and you'd basically have the whole flow.

I'd argue that if finished work is too similar to AI, it's not interesting enough to enhance the app for a highly-selective college. It might still check the box.

Most of the stuff posted in this thread from UVA is highly polished and sounds like other famous PS - all following the style of college essay coaches/counselors. There is a generic formula here. What you see as "model" is already a template and polished....

It's presented as a model but my point is...if your kid's essay sounds like that but your kid doesn't usually write at that level, you need to have them rewrite. Their essay is too polished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:super polished essays are grounds for an auto-rejection. something to keep in mind.

take a look at these essays: https://essaysthatworked.com/

some of them are pretty basic tbh

Topics like: When I was 13 I couldn't stop myself from pulling an all-nighter to learn more about Fermat's Last Theorem..."

GMAFB, lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't believe people are suggesting using AI! Why bother sending your kids to college at all if you encourage them to check out their brains before they even got through the door?

I suggested seeing what AI puts out for a similar exercise AFTER the essay is written.

AI wil provide averagely polished, generic, and occasionally wrong adult-voice answers.

You can evaluate this to determine if your kid's work has been genericized and sounds too adult (the original question).

The other thing it might do is help identify some parts of the story/structure that are not present in the kid's own work.

As a teen, when writing to persuade, I affected a wordy, academic, long paragraph style that mimicked what I read. It's been hard to train myself out of it.

I think people learn best by comparing writing samples.

I do not think people should use AI to create the base of their essays. Although others do disagree.

Are you suggesting inputting the kid’s essay into AI? Won’t that trigger some sort of plagiarism tracker if it’s now in the public domain?

No...here is an example...ask it...

"Write me an essay about a dog riding a surfboard on a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico"

Then you see what it comes up with.

Huh. I think that would be a shitty impersonal essay. I don’t know how that’s helpful in this situation.

PP. My point is just that you ask AI to complete the prompt. You don't dump your own work into it.

I just asked AI "Write an essay about the friendship between the French and Italian peoples". That's it.

And it gave back 461 words, organized in an essay structure. Headers are "Historical Ties", "Cultural Exchange", "Political Cooperation", "Social Bonds", "Challenges and Resilience", "Conclusion".

Let me explain what you could learn from this (reasoning by analogy...this is not an app essay topic).

You could figure out if you left out an angle or discussion point (e.g., French admiration of Italian opera). You could infer whether you have a punchier opening and conclusion than an averagely competent discussion of a theme. You could look at your vocabulary...are you using jargon correctly? Is there a better turn of phrase (e.g., "deep and multifaceted relationship").

My reco is just a suggestion that addresses OP's concerns. Try it or don't. I gave other suggestions that don't involve AI.

Most of the examples of "really good college essays" that I've seen seem intentionally quirky or calculated to me. But the quality of the (non-AI-assisted) writing carries the day. I do believe there are precocious writers among the high school set.

A final AI example. Try "Write an essay about overcoming a high school sports injury" then as a second step ask AI to make it personal. The result sounds like most of the many, many essays on this theme that I read pre-AI while participating as a reader on a scholarship committee. Insert proper names, sport, body part and you'd basically have the whole flow.

I'd argue that if finished work is too similar to AI, it's not interesting enough to enhance the app for a highly-selective college. It might still check the box.

Most of the stuff posted in this thread from UVA is highly polished and sounds like other famous PS - all following the style of college essay coaches/counselors. There is a generic formula here. What you see as "model" is already a template and polished....

It's presented as a model but my point is...if your kid's essay sounds like that but your kid doesn't usually write at that level, you need to have them rewrite. Their essay is too polished.

Most of those UVA essays were heavily edited. They follow the same model that is taught in all of these college essay workshops. You can see the telltale signs if you read them and if you read enough of these CA essays.

The best thing to do would be to have kids submit a graded essay from their English or humanities class in 11th grade/ high school. And call it a day.