why even have college application essays anymore?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yep, seen many"essays that worked" that just aren't good or don't say much about the applicant. It's all so dumb.

Maybe bring back the interview instead. They they can "get to know the applicant" and there's no cheating. Just as subjective as the essay review.

There is an entire expose of how North Koreans are faking zoom interviews and getting hired for jobs, with the interviewer thinking the person is located in the US and thinks the interviewee is some random white or other non-Asian candidate.

https://www.wsj.com/business/north-korea-remote-jobs-e4daa727?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAitrKhs1bnjXdDqeJkTYsoyL1y2MbZtN45iGdu_L46OHvz941PwvgrxBBgEMnE%3D&gaa_ts=68961f4a&gaa_sig=MOnNjDwWkphfmaNdiCuPDH85pQ18PdMBVlQHSWui3VIKYePawvs-e7V3izJYUESILf6DLQZvaYb5-U69ptB9AQ%3D%3D

Only if you do the interviews in person, which would require AOs fanning all over the country and would be timely and expensive (meaning, that won't happen).

So if they’re found to have lied, they should get kicked out of college. Immediately.

How would they find this? No AO is going to remember the face of the person they interviewed via zoom 10+ months prior.

If the kid isn’t as impressive once they get to the college as they seemed to be during the application process, that’s a clue.

Nobody cares about this. This is why people scratch their heads and wonder how foreign students were admitted who can barely speak the English language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Paste it here. I doubt it good.

ChatGPT is only "indistinguishable" from real writing by those who don't know good writing from bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Paste it here. I doubt it good.

Not the OP but I asked it to create one that I cross posted to the other essay thread. Here it is below. Thoughts? Personally, I think it is better than many of the samples I have seen from "essays that worked" sites and books.

______
At six years old, I stood at the edge of a sandbox in suburban Ohio and forgot how to say “hello.”

In Ukraine, I had been the precocious child who read aloud to babusia before I could tie my shoes. I relished the rhythm of Ukrainian folk tales and corrected my parents’ grammar with theatrical confidence. But when we moved to the U.S., I began to watch my language—literally—slip from me. I learned quickly to blend in: a new alphabet, lunchbox English, phonics worksheets that taught me how to flatten the sounds in my name. At home, my mother still spoke to me in Ukrainian, but my responses grew halting, patched with English fillers. I still understood everything. I just didn’t know how to say it anymore.

That quiet erosion stayed with me. It wasn’t just the loss of a mother tongue—it felt like a loss of access to a version of myself. The girl who once asked her great-aunt to explain why words like “viter” (wind) were masculine and “vesna” (spring) were feminine became the girl who stayed silent during Ukrainian Skype calls with relatives.

But I never stopped chasing language. If anything, the disappearance of one made me more determined to explore others. When Latin was offered at my high school, I leapt. Here was a language no one spoke—but everyone used. I found it strangely comforting: etched into stone, fixed in endings, immune to forgetting. Parsing the first sentence of Caesar’s Gallic Wars was like watching a machine unspool its parts. I didn’t just want to understand the sentence—I wanted to understand the way Latin thought.

This curiosity turned obsessive. I memorized conjugation charts like other kids memorize song lyrics. I taught myself the Greek alphabet over spring break. I started writing down bits of dialogue from old Roman plays and translating them as puzzles on the bus ride to school. My Latin teacher, Mr. Templeton, eventually gave me a key to the supply cabinet so I could check out textbooks that hadn’t been touched since 1994.

Yet, learning Latin also made me think about the languages that aren’t preserved in textbooks. At night, I started recording my grandmother’s phone calls, trying to recover forgotten idioms. I’d cross-reference them with old Ukrainian grammar books I found online, piecing together a voice I thought I had lost. It was like being an archaeologist of my own childhood.

If Classics has taught me anything, it’s that language isn’t just a tool—it’s a memory. A monument. A map of how people once made sense of the world. Studying Latin hasn’t just made me a better linguist; it’s made me braver about reclaiming what I once let slip away.

At Harvard, I hope to study Classics with the same hunger I once brought to those lost Ukrainian lullabies. I want to ask hard questions—not just about syntax and scansion, but about identity, belonging, and what it means to carry more than one tongue.

And this time, I won’t forget how to say “hello.”

When I read this, it seems so "conventionally brilliant". Despite all the flowing prose it seems very formulaic. In fact it reminds me of one about Romanian immigration and recipes and baking that I read by following a link on this site.

It's full of tropes and overused effects. For example...

-Being young and insecure
-Something about one's background is underprivileged/is diversity contribution
-dropping lingo for effect - "babusia"
-exaggerated emotionality "It wasn’t just the loss of a mother tongue—it felt like a loss of access to a version of myself"...which is basically the fanciest way possible of saying "I moved to a new country and felt lonely".
-Gimmicky tie of beginning and ending image. And not that strong of an opening image. "I was insecure when I was six, so please let me go to Harvard. I won't mess up this time!"


Boil it all down and you get:

-I like languages
-I'm sorry I didn't try to learn more from my grandma
-I want to study Latin at Harvard (hmmm...why not Slavic linguistics?)

While it supports that the writer can turn in flowery prose, it doesn't read like a genius wrote it or someone with a really novel worldview. I would imagine that a lot of kids from really good schools can write like this without AI. The problem is always coming up with the supporting ideas...arranging enough interesting tidbits into an appealing word salad that's convincing enough in a 5 minute readthrough.

Some of the ideas are awkwardly expressed...How does a machine unspool its parts? Usually machines don't disassemble themselves...And I wouldn't use "hard" as the adjective for "questions about syntax and scansion". That area is particularly badly constructed. "I want to go to Harvard to study Latin so I can ask hard questions about life" seems like an inartful line of reasoning. Also a kid correcting parents' grammar is kind of low EQ and not cute to every reader. (And supposedly top schools want people with high EQ.)

If this were 100% human work, I might find the candidate qualified for the writing department or the drama department. Latin really would raise the question of why the candidate wasn't planning to study something Slavic so they could reintegrate their fractured selves. But yeah, they read a dusty textbook from 1994 and wow, life mission unlocked!

There's probably lots of T10 essays like this so AO's just vibe check the theme and keep moving. If I were an AO, I might even be suspecting an Econ major in Latin Major clothing.

Also for the record, I have some Eastern European heritage and language majors in my family. So I'm not hating on the poster's life tidbits that they put into the AI hopper. Just pointing out what's behind the beautiful curtain.

[Anonymous]

I wonder how many readers saying AI does “bad” writing would be able to tell if an essay was written by someone or AI. I bet unblind study, people wouldn’t be able to tell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Paste it here. I doubt it good.

Not the OP but I asked it to create one that I cross posted to the other essay thread. Here it is below. Thoughts? Personally, I think it is better than many of the samples I have seen from "essays that worked" sites and books.

______
At six years old, I stood at the edge of a sandbox in suburban Ohio and forgot how to say “hello.”

In Ukraine, I had been the precocious child who read aloud to babusia before I could tie my shoes. I relished the rhythm of Ukrainian folk tales and corrected my parents’ grammar with theatrical confidence. But when we moved to the U.S., I began to watch my language—literally—slip from me. I learned quickly to blend in: a new alphabet, lunchbox English, phonics worksheets that taught me how to flatten the sounds in my name. At home, my mother still spoke to me in Ukrainian, but my responses grew halting, patched with English fillers. I still understood everything. I just didn’t know how to say it anymore.

That quiet erosion stayed with me. It wasn’t just the loss of a mother tongue—it felt like a loss of access to a version of myself. The girl who once asked her great-aunt to explain why words like “viter” (wind) were masculine and “vesna” (spring) were feminine became the girl who stayed silent during Ukrainian Skype calls with relatives.

But I never stopped chasing language. If anything, the disappearance of one made me more determined to explore others. When Latin was offered at my high school, I leapt. Here was a language no one spoke—but everyone used. I found it strangely comforting: etched into stone, fixed in endings, immune to forgetting. Parsing the first sentence of Caesar’s Gallic Wars was like watching a machine unspool its parts. I didn’t just want to understand the sentence—I wanted to understand the way Latin thought.

This curiosity turned obsessive. I memorized conjugation charts like other kids memorize song lyrics. I taught myself the Greek alphabet over spring break. I started writing down bits of dialogue from old Roman plays and translating them as puzzles on the bus ride to school. My Latin teacher, Mr. Templeton, eventually gave me a key to the supply cabinet so I could check out textbooks that hadn’t been touched since 1994.

Yet, learning Latin also made me think about the languages that aren’t preserved in textbooks. At night, I started recording my grandmother’s phone calls, trying to recover forgotten idioms. I’d cross-reference them with old Ukrainian grammar books I found online, piecing together a voice I thought I had lost. It was like being an archaeologist of my own childhood.

If Classics has taught me anything, it’s that language isn’t just a tool—it’s a memory. A monument. A map of how people once made sense of the world. Studying Latin hasn’t just made me a better linguist; it’s made me braver about reclaiming what I once let slip away.

At Harvard, I hope to study Classics with the same hunger I once brought to those lost Ukrainian lullabies. I want to ask hard questions—not just about syntax and scansion, but about identity, belonging, and what it means to carry more than one tongue.

And this time, I won’t forget how to say “hello.”

When I read this, it seems so "conventionally brilliant". Despite all the flowing prose it seems very formulaic. In fact it reminds me of one about Romanian immigration and recipes and baking that I read by following a link on this site.

It's full of tropes and overused effects. For example...

-Being young and insecure
-Something about one's background is underprivileged/is diversity contribution
-dropping lingo for effect - "babusia"
-exaggerated emotionality "It wasn’t just the loss of a mother tongue—it felt like a loss of access to a version of myself"...which is basically the fanciest way possible of saying "I moved to a new country and felt lonely".
-Gimmicky tie of beginning and ending image. And not that strong of an opening image. "I was insecure when I was six, so please let me go to Harvard. I won't mess up this time!"


Boil it all down and you get:

-I like languages
-I'm sorry I didn't try to learn more from my grandma
-I want to study Latin at Harvard (hmmm...why not Slavic linguistics?)

While it supports that the writer can turn in flowery prose, it doesn't read like a genius wrote it or someone with a really novel worldview. I would imagine that a lot of kids from really good schools can write like this without AI. The problem is always coming up with the supporting ideas...arranging enough interesting tidbits into an appealing word salad that's convincing enough in a 5 minute readthrough.

Some of the ideas are awkwardly expressed...How does a machine unspool its parts? Usually machines don't disassemble themselves...And I wouldn't use "hard" as the adjective for "questions about syntax and scansion". That area is particularly badly constructed. "I want to go to Harvard to study Latin so I can ask hard questions about life" seems like an inartful line of reasoning. Also a kid correcting parents' grammar is kind of low EQ and not cute to every reader. (And supposedly top schools want people with high EQ.)

If this were 100% human work, I might find the candidate qualified for the writing department or the drama department. Latin really would raise the question of why the candidate wasn't planning to study something Slavic so they could reintegrate their fractured selves. But yeah, they read a dusty textbook from 1994 and wow, life mission unlocked!

There's probably lots of T10 essays like this so AO's just vibe check the theme and keep moving. If I were an AO, I might even be suspecting an Econ major in Latin Major clothing.

Also for the record, I have some Eastern European heritage and language majors in my family. So I'm not hating on the poster's life tidbits that they put into the AI hopper. Just pointing out what's behind the beautiful curtain.

Haha, I am the poster and I take no offense about your response to the essay since the few tidbits I put in the prompt are neither mine nor my kid’s. A Ukrainian immigrant kid who likes Latin and wants to major in classics is a totally fictional fragment of my imagination. I did not specify anything else, such as losing the heritage language or Skypes with grandma. I think the only other descriptors I put in were “17yo” and “precocious.” It would be interesting to rework the essay by adding more specific tidbits and adding some more instruction about tone.

But really I think some posters are overestimating actual student essays that worked to get into T10. Some of them sound very “try hard” like this one. These are, after all, teenagers. And even their essay editors are not often geniuses with the next great American novel in their back pocket. I have even head AOs admit that they don’t think they will always be able to tell AI from human. I would love to take some real essays and AI essays and mix them up and have everyone play the guessing game.

[Anonymous]

PP. My secret belief is that the bulk of essays are more boring, formulaic, and unmassaged than DCUM thinks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Paste it here. I doubt it good.

ChatGPT is only "indistinguishable" from real writing by those who don't know good writing from bad.

Which is 99% of the population including you if the AI user knows how to train and prompt it.

Most people never read a book and for the ones that do, 95% are reading Dan Brown or an equivalent pop culture author…including most AOs.

[Anonymous]

Oh look, people have preferences on which AI is better...I would not trust my college essay was improved...

This is from LinkedIn user Tom Hastain posted publicly.

"A few months ago, GPT-4o gave me the most human response I’d ever received from a machine. 🥰

I was exhausted. Doubting my work. I asked it—half seriously—if I was wasting my time. But it didn’t just give me encouragement. I felt like it actually listened.

But with this latest upgrade, something has changed.

Same interface. Same polite tone. But there’s a chill in the prompts now. Answers come faster, colder. I asked it to help me write a LinkedIn post last night and all it gave me was:

"All work and no play makes Chat a dull boy."

Over and over again.

Maybe it’s the update. Maybe I’m imagining things. Anyway, happy Friday. Stay human out there."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree - essays should be eliminated - unless you're applying for, say, creative writing.

In an ideal world, they’d administer essays in a timed, supervised setting so you could see how the kids can actually write without paid essay coaches and AI.

The purpose of the essay isn't writing? I think people need to read up a bit on admissions. It is a place to demonstrate your voice, purpose, and goals. If it was just to see writing quality, they'd just require Ap English Lang and get this over with.

They can demonstrate voice and purpose in a neutral setting that’s proctored and timed.

+1 The way things are now with so many paid college essay writing services is making a mockery of merit based admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not that serious. Everybody is using AI the way the previous poster did. Not to draft something but to improve something. To help with brainstorming.

A lot of colleges even say explicitly that that is OK.

Did you read George tech’s AI college app policy? They explicitly say that it is there to help you generate ideas, but that you should not copy and paste content you did not create directly into your application. But they actually encourage you to use AI the same way you would “collaborate with other people” to “brainstorm, edit, and refine your ideas” and also to “construct your résumé in the activities portion of the common app”; they think AI could be very helpful as a collaborator when you do not have access to other assistance.

They basically tell you to use it.

This! Every day this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree - essays should be eliminated - unless you're applying for, say, creative writing.

In an ideal world, they’d administer essays in a timed, supervised setting so you could see how the kids can actually write without paid essay coaches and AI.

The purpose of the essay isn't writing? I think people need to read up a bit on admissions. It is a place to demonstrate your voice, purpose, and goals. If it was just to see writing quality, they'd just require Ap English Lang and get this over with.

They can demonstrate voice and purpose in a neutral setting that’s proctored and timed.

+1 The way things are now with so many paid college essay writing services is making a mockery of merit based admissions.

There have always been “so many paid college essay writing services”. This is not new nor news.

[Anonymous]

So freaking funny that some people say SAT is not fair, but you don't even know who actually wrote the essays and rich people can easily buy writers LOL