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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I used a paid version of AI (the highest payment tier) and gave it this prompt:

Can you tell me what the Asian grandma personal essay is that lots of candidates have been getting paid AI help with? Using words like spitting oil and sizzling rice? Is there a sample essay you can provide to give me a sense for what everyone is saying is a pervasive themed essay this cycle?

If not, then draft a personal essay about cooking with your Chinese grandmother. sizzling rice. Spitting oil. vivid imagery. What I learned. Go.

__________

The oil hits the wok with a violent hiss, spitting droplets that dance across the stovetop like tiny meteors. My grandmother doesn't flinch. At seventy-eight, Lao Lao has been baptized by hot oil more times than she can count, each scar on her weathered hands a testament to decades of feeding our family.
"Too timid," she scolds in Mandarin, watching me hover the spatula above the rice. "Food doesn't respect fear."
I push the day-old rice into the wok. It crackles and pops, each grain turning from pale to golden as it meets the heat. The kitchen fills with the smell of sesame oil, soy sauce, and my own inadequacy. In school, I calculate derivatives and write essays about Shakespearean tragedy. But here, in Lao Lao's narrow Queens kitchen, I am still a student struggling with the most fundamental lesson.
She learned to cook during the famine years, when a handful of rice was more precious than gold. "We couldn't waste even one grain," she tells me, her gnarled fingers teaching mine how to fold the egg into the rice with precision. Every movement is economy. Every ingredient, purpose.
I watch her dice scallions with a cleaver that's older than my mother, each cut so uniform they could have been measured with calipers. There are no recipe cards here, no measuring cups. Just instinct honed over decades, passed from her grandmother to her mother to her, and now—if I can learn to stop being afraid of the heat—to me.
The rice sizzles, releasing steam that fogs my glasses. I used to think this was just fried rice, something I could order for $8 from the place down the street. But as Lao Lao guides my wrist through the tossing motion, I realize I'm learning something that can't be delivered in a takeout container.
"In cooking," she says, "you must commit. Add the ingredient or don't. Hesitation makes everything soggy."
It occurs to me that she's not just talking about fried rice.
At school, I'm the student who triple-checks every answer, who reads each essay prompt five times before starting. I've built a life around certainty, around right answers and clear rubrics. But standing here, with oil spitting at my forearms and the smell of toasting garlic filling my lungs, I'm learning that some of life's most important knowledge comes from instinct, tradition, and the courage to lean into the heat.
Lao Lao tastes the rice with the wooden spoon, nods once, then ladles a portion into my bowl. It's not perfect—some pieces are slightly scorched, others not quite crispy enough. But it's mine.
"Next time, better," she says, already washing the wok. "But this time, good enough to eat."
I take a bite. The rice is hot, savory, alive with flavor. And for the first time in her kitchen, I'm not afraid of burning.[/quote]

I am admitting this student/AI.  What software did you use?[/quote]

I'd rather now say (it's pretty expensive per month - I use it for work). But I am now having fun ripping into AI personal statements (I don't have a kid going through the process right now, so I have that luxury, I suppose).

Here's one I just asked for: asking for a different take on a cliche essay topic (if Asian cooking grandma is #1, what's #2) - sports injury (soccer, kid was goalie at a small private high school). I made no changes to the output.

___________

The pop in my shoulder was quieter than I expected. No dramatic crack, no screa[b]m—ju[/b]st a soft, wet sound that somehow I heard over the roar of the crowd. I was airborne, diving for the ball, when my arm caught the post at the wrong angle. The penalty shot sailed past me into the net, but I barely noticed. I was too busy watching my senior season disappear.
At Riverside Academy, we don't have a football team. Soccer is Friday nights. Soccer is homecoming. The entire sch[b]ool—all 340 of us—c[/b]rowds the bleachers, and for those ninety minutes, we're not just a small private school in suburban Connecticut; we're a community united by something bigger than calculus tests and college applications.
And I was supposed to be the anchor of that community. Captain. Starting goalkeeper for three years. The guy with Division III scouts watching from the sidelines.
"Six to eight weeks," the orthopedist said. "No contact sports this season."
I did the math in my head. Our season was ten weeks long. By the time I could play again, we'd be lucky if we were still in contention for playoffs. Most likely, my high school soccer career was over.
The first week, I showed up to practice in my sling and sat in the bleachers. Coach Mendoza said I didn't have to come, that I should focus on healing. But where else would I go? Soccer had been my identity since freshman year. Without it, I wasn't sure who I was supposed to be.
From the bleachers, I saw things differently. I watched Jake, our backup keeper, freeze during one-on-ones, his footwork all wrong. I saw our defense drift too far forward, leaving gaps I used to yell at them to cover. And I realized something: I could still see the game. I just couldn't play it.
"Jake's dropping his hands too early on high shots," I told Coach after practice.
Coach looked at me for a long moment, then handed me a clipboard. "You've got practice on Thursday. Teach him."
So I became something I never expected: a coach. Every [b]practice, I worked with Jake on positioning, on reading the striker's hips, on the split-second decision of when to come off the line. I[/b] filmed our games on my phone and made cut-ups of defensive breakdowns, which we'd watch during lunch in Ms. Morrison's empty classroom.
"Why are you helping me?" Jake asked once. "I took your spot."
"You didn't take anything," I said. "We're on the same team."
The truth was more complicated. Watching Jake improve, seeing our defense tighten up because I'd taught them to communicate better, gave me something I didn't expect: purpose without performance. I'd always measured my value in [b]saves, in shutouts, in scouts' nods from the sidelines[/b]. But from the bench, in street clothes, I was learning that contribution doesn't always show up in the box score.
We made it to the state semifinals—the furthest Riverside had gone in twelve years. Jake played the game of his life, making seven saves in our 2-1 loss to the eventual champions. When the final whistle blew, my shoulder ached from jumping and cheering, and my voice was hoarse from screaming instructions from the sideline.
In the locker room afterward, Coach gathered us together. "This season was special," he said. "Not because of how far we got, but because you learned what it means to be a team. You learned that everyone has something to contribute, even when it doesn't look like what you thought it would."
He was looking at me when he said it.
The thing is, I did get recruited. Not by the D-III schools that used to scout me, but by something better: by the eleven guys who voted me captain even though I never played a game senior year. By Jake, who wrote in my yearbook that I made him the goalkeeper he never thought he could be. By the understanding that my value to the team wasn't in my athletic ability[b] alone—it[/b] was in [b]my knowledge, my leadership, and my willingness to serve the team in whatever capacity they needed.[/b]
On homecoming night, they gave me a jersey with "COACH" on the back and let me walk out with the seniors for the coin toss. The crowd cheered, not because I'd made some incredible save, but because I'd shown up, day after day, to give everything I had to something bigger than myself.
That's the save I'm most pro[b]ud of—the[/b] one where I saved my own understanding of what it means to matter.[/quote]

Same comments as before

Em-dashes

Set of 3 things clumped together [/quote]

This make no sense to me.  Most writing that is not AI use groups of 3's.  I don't see a problem with this.  Neither do I see an issue in em dashes.

That said, I nearly fell asleep reading this sports essay.  I'm still admitting Grandma.[/quote]

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