Our kid is in public school in a non-DMV area (west coast), but we have friends in the local privates. I was recently talking with friends who have seniors in the two top privates in our area (one of them is a feeder for HYPS, the other more for T20) and learned that those two schools are piloting use of an AI system called ADDIE to interview students and aggregate information from report card teacher comments, activities lists, and student writing samples to generate personalized essay topic ideas and guide them throughout the college application process. I found this so interesting, because these are already the two most well-resourced schools in our area. The playing field may be leveled over time by AI, but so far in our area it's probably widening the gap.
https://getaddie.com/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's a mistake. The idiosyncrasies of how you express yourself are the aspects that let your voice come through. AI will take away your voice and your authenticity, which are the exact things you are trying to get across in the essay.

You have to pick and choose. If you copy it whole, sure its a mistake.

If you use it like an essay editor, and decide how/if to incorporate suggestions, its no different than paying Sara H $1000 to edit your essay and give you a "ready to submit" personal essay......

Really it does democratize the entire process. Expect international and FGLI apps to look a lot better this cycle.

LOL

In two countries that I know, students dont write the essays, they dont even see it until they are ready to submit. The consultant would write it entirely sight unseen by the student. The student is not even allowed to edit it.

I would not worry about international applications being better this year.

They talked about this on your college bound kid episode today. If you use chat - even the paid version the endings for a lot of the supplements will end the same. There’s a recognizable ending (three part summary returning to prompt). So then they’ll throw your essay and application out.