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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The things I’ve learned:

- full pay matters now. Show privilege in your EC, parent professions and hints in essays. Won’t hurt this year per counselor, if done tastefully.

- [b]with AI, admissions readers are wary of perfectly polished essays. Make sure there’s a few grammatical errors and it does not read too smoothly. Do not use Gramm[/b]arly.

- a lot of essays have shifted from diversity/community, to future plans/ambitions (see Michigan). It is increasingly more important at top universities for kids to know what they want to study and have drive an ambition in a clear area. Make sure the career plan section states something aspirational that can provide a framework for the entire common app so they can understand your candidacy and trajectory.

- Addtl Info: with the newly revised version there are new strategic ways to use this section. Have read on Reddit that some counselors are suggesting to customize that section for different colleges like UVA, which do not have a supplemental essay?

What have you read/heard? [/quote]

in today's Dartmouth Admissions Beat, Dean Coffin basically said this.

We had our Common App Bootcamp and we met with the seniors, and we talked about how the colleges want to hear their authentic selves. They want to hear that verb, the teenage language, the spin that only teenagers can put into a college essay. Tufts just came out with a great piece.
You can use AI maybe as a thinking partner or a brainstorming tool, but not as the author of your essays. I think that's the critical part. I think for my years of reading essays, and I'm sure Lee would as well, when you read a kid's essay, you can tell within the context of their grades, their school, their testing, is this essay actually aligned with what I see in the file?
It's almost like you're a detective, you're understanding, you're putting together this kid's narrative. If the essay doesn't align, that mom wrote the essay, they had an essay consultant, it doesn't align, it just doesn't feel right. I think with AI, the way it writes, it just writes in a way that just doesn't sound like a teenager.
But we want them to have that that zip that a teenager has. And I think[…]”

“[b]I love that sentence, Matt, the zip that a teenager has, and AI doesn't have it.
It makes a huge difference. It could be a funny phrase, it could just be a bad punctuation moment, but there's an element of like, there's this, these moments these kids have,[/b] and sometimes you have to pull it out of them, because they don't feel like their story is unique or special, but it is. And when you get to that point with the kid, it's so wonderful.
Yeah, I come to it from the perspective of a writer, and it's all about voice. I've sat with Lee and colleagues as they've read so many essays, and they have an unbelievable ear for voice. And I think they can tell when that voice is not authentic or when that voice is filtered.
And I would say from my years of reading admissions files at Harvard, I have one essay that I saved from a girl from Saginaw High School who typewrote the essay about growing up in Saginaw. Her dad worked at the GM plant and read her poetry, and he never went to college. It was a very blue collar, non-college[…]”

From Admissions Beat: Headline Headaches? Don't Let Them Derail Your Search, Sep 16, 2025[/quote]

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