ChatGPT and the college application essay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone quiet. Are parents busy getting their children to generate new essays?

This thread makes me sad. My kid spent weeks on her essay(s), refining and editing. And now authentic essays will mean nothing.
NP

Your kid will be a better writer for the effort, which will be useful wherever she ends up. Granted, it’s nothing like a lot of the stuff she’ll be asked to write, but being able to edit your own work is an important skill to have.

What your child wrote is hopefully better than what OP got from the bot.

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

They are decent essays given that a computer wrote them. And they will only get better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone quiet. Are parents busy getting their children to generate new essays?

This thread makes me sad. My kid spent weeks on her essay(s), refining and editing. And now authentic essays will mean nothing.
NP

Your kid will be a better writer for the effort, which will be useful wherever she ends up. Granted, it’s nothing like a lot of the stuff she’ll be asked to write, but being able to edit your own work is an important skill to have.

What your child wrote is hopefully better than what OP got from the bot.

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

Don't pretend like your snowflake is some kind of literary genius. These essays ARE good. The more extensive your parameters (inputs), the more creative it will get. Just like google search. About time too. For far too long we have had to deal with the tyranny of the liberal arts that add close to no value. Now that a computer can write and paint classics, we just have to wait for robots that emote and act out those classics.. Good times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

They are decent essays given that a computer wrote them. And they will only get better.

What they won’t ever get is true originality of ideas. Computers will only be able to remix what humans have already created. Of course, that is also true if some human students, but it is true of all computers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone quiet. Are parents busy getting their children to generate new essays?

This thread makes me sad. My kid spent weeks on her essay(s), refining and editing. And now authentic essays will mean nothing.
NP

Your kid will be a better writer for the effort, which will be useful wherever she ends up. Granted, it’s nothing like a lot of the stuff she’ll be asked to write, but being able to edit your own work is an important skill to have.

What your child wrote is hopefully better than what OP got from the bot.

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

Have you read actual essays written by real teens? These essays are better than average even for kids headed to decent schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

They are decent essays given that a computer wrote them. And they will only get better.

What they won’t ever get is true originality of ideas. Computers will only be able to remix what humans have already created. Of course, that is also true if some human students, but it is true of all computers.

You are assuming each kid is filled with originality and writes award winning essays. That's not the case. Most of the essays are rehash of some existing idea. The AI does the same but with much better clarity and sentence structure. One could also provide an 'original idea' to the AI and have it write the essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

They are decent essays given that a computer wrote them. And they will only get better.

What they won’t ever get is true originality of ideas. Computers will only be able to remix what humans have already created. Of course, that is also true if some human students, but it is true of all computers.

But they seem like an awfully good start. Like the Chinese food one didn’t include any details about Chinese cooking or food but you take this and work in some details and anecdotes and it’s a pretty well written essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone quiet. Are parents busy getting their children to generate new essays?

This thread makes me sad. My kid spent weeks on her essay(s), refining and editing. And now authentic essays will mean nothing.
NP

Your kid will be a better writer for the effort, which will be useful wherever she ends up. Granted, it’s nothing like a lot of the stuff she’ll be asked to write, but being able to edit your own work is an important skill to have.

What your child wrote is hopefully better than what OP got from the bot.

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

Have you read actual essays written by real teens? These essays are better than average even for kids headed to decent schools.

I wish my graduate students could write this well.

[Anonymous]

My high school senior just completed the Early Admission process. She applied to 15 colleges either rolling admissions or EA. Besides the Common App essay, she had to write many additional supplemental essays, essays for honors college, and little fun "extra" paragraphs peppered in here and there. Then essays for scholarships. She managed, and she reused some essays by tweaking them a bit. By the end, some of her essays were good. Many were just OK - she just didn't have a lot of time to write them. Not all of the essays were better than what AI churned out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone quiet. Are parents busy getting their children to generate new essays?

This thread makes me sad. My kid spent weeks on her essay(s), refining and editing. And now authentic essays will mean nothing.
NP

Your kid will be a better writer for the effort, which will be useful wherever she ends up. Granted, it’s nothing like a lot of the stuff she’ll be asked to write, but being able to edit your own work is an important skill to have.

What your child wrote is hopefully better than what OP got from the bot.

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

Don't pretend like your snowflake is some kind of literary genius. These essays ARE good. The more extensive your parameters (inputs), the more creative it will get. Just like google search. About time too. For far too long we have had to deal with the tyranny of the liberal arts that add close to no value. Now that a computer can write and paint classics, we just have to wait for robots that emote and act out those classics.. Good times.

OMG. This is truly pathetic.
DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is very scary. It is predicted that in just 7 more years, AI will surpass human intelligence. can you imagine what the world with dwindling resources, wealth disparity look like when AI will replace all blue collar and white collar jobs.

Already, democracy is a mockery and compleately sold to highest bidders because of Fake news and rich and powerful controlling dumb applications like twitter. With global warming, most of the world becoming uninhabitable for humans, this will lead to complete collapse of human society. I am not hopeful at all.

As for college applications, the issue will be affordability of college and usability of education. We do not need human workers, we do not need most humans also. College essays are not the worst thing.

The most immediate challenge will be the unemployed younguns living on the dole with nothing to do. Imagine the crime and targeted hatred spawned by social media! We say a sample of that during Covid when everyone got pocketmoney and had nothing to do.

I saw a video of ChatGPT writing out a contract document. It was so specific that a lawyer on Twitter was panicking and calling for government intervention to prevent something like this from taking over everyone's jobs . Too funny.

I'm skeptical. One of my coworkers showed me this using a prompt for a scope of work I have to write, and it sounded good, but included a ton of actually incorrect factual information. The output is only as good as what's on the internet, which is full of trash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread has gone quiet. Are parents busy getting their children to generate new essays?

This thread makes me sad. My kid spent weeks on her essay(s), refining and editing. And now authentic essays will mean nothing.
NP

Your kid will be a better writer for the effort, which will be useful wherever she ends up. Granted, it’s nothing like a lot of the stuff she’ll be asked to write, but being able to edit your own work is an important skill to have.

What your child wrote is hopefully better than what OP got from the bot.

What's really scary is that a lot of parents here are so poorly educated that they think those essays are decent essays.

And these are the boneheads using consultants, test prep and hooks to jam their children into the CMU computer science meat grinder...

Don't pretend like your snowflake is some kind of literary genius. These essays ARE good. The more extensive your parameters (inputs), the more creative it will get. Just like google search. About time too. For far too long we have had to deal with the tyranny of the liberal arts that add close to no value. Now that a computer can write and paint classics, we just have to wait for robots that emote and act out those classics.. Good times.

Liberal arts is not solely nor mainly about writing. Get an education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is very scary. It is predicted that in just 7 more years, AI will surpass human intelligence. can you imagine what the world with dwindling resources, wealth disparity look like when AI will replace all blue collar and white collar jobs.

Already, democracy is a mockery and compleately sold to highest bidders because of Fake news and rich and powerful controlling dumb applications like twitter. With global warming, most of the world becoming uninhabitable for humans, this will lead to complete collapse of human society. I am not hopeful at all.

As for college applications, the issue will be affordability of college and usability of education. We do not need human workers, we do not need most humans also. College essays are not the worst thing.

+1

[Anonymous]

Essay has been one of the most bullshit item for college admission.

Rich people hire consultants for that.

For Test, ast least you are forced to actaully take it on your own with everyone else.

Now it's more equal playing filed for essay.

[Anonymous]

ChatGPT doesn't seem to understand that you don't need to build a new trail every time you go cycling. There's very little problem solving on my typical ride. It's more of personal challenge to improve oneself unless you actively building bike trails every ride.