How Students Can Use AI the Right Way
AI tools are everywhere now, and most students will use them at some point during the college application process. Colleges understand this. What they care about is that the essay still reflects the student’s own thinking, voice, and lived experiences.
AI can help you stay organized and make your writing clearer. It cannot supply the personal stories that make an essay meaningful. Those come from your life.
Where AI Tools Are Helpful
Students often find AI useful for the early and middle stages of writing. For example, AI can help you:
- understand what a prompt is asking
- list a few possible directions for a topic
- organize your ideas into a simple outline
- identify places where your writing feels unclear
- smooth out transitions between paragraphs
- catch grammar or mechanical issues
These are practical tasks that support your writing without replacing your ideas.
Where AI Tools Fall Short
College essays grow from real experiences. AI cannot create those for you. It cannot describe a moment that shaped you, a responsibility you took on, or a challenge you worked through. It also cannot reflect your personality, your sense of humor, or the way you naturally speak.
Keeping Your Voice in the Essay
Your essay should sound like you. Use words you would actually say. Keep your sentences natural and steady. If an AI tool suggests language that feels too formal or too polished, rewrite it in your own style. Clear and simple writing is always stronger than complicated phrasing.
A good test is to read your essay out loud. If it doesn’t sound like something you would say to a teacher or a friend, adjust it.
Meghan O’Rourke, the executive editor of The Yale Review and a professor of creative writing at Yale University, wrote an excellent article in the New York Times in July 2025 about using A.I. for essays.
She notes that ChatGPT is bound by a handful of telltale syntactic tics, mostly that the text feels artificial. Chatbots use too many infinitives after em-dashes — to brainstorm, to summarize, to translate, to scaffold.
Its paragraphs tend to be brisk and insistent. One giveaway is the clipped triad — “Faster. More conversational. Less detectable.” Another is its reliance on place-holder phrases, like “There’s a sense of …” — it doesn’t know what human perception is, so it gestures vaguely toward it.
At other times, the language sounds good but doesn’t make sense. What it produces is mimetic of thought, but not quite thought itself.
Read my Substack piece about AI's trend to use antithetical sentence constructs: "Not A, not B, but C." Humans don't write in this manner.
How to Use AI Responsibly
Here is a simple approach that works well for most students:
- Start with a few notes about your experience.
- Write a short first draft on your own.
- Use AI to help you organize or clarify your ideas.
- Edit the AI suggestions so they match your voice.
- Make sure every example and reflection comes from your life.
This keeps the essay personal and authentic while still taking advantage of modern tools.
Examples of Good Uses
Students often use AI effectively for:
- brainstorming possible angles for a topic
- summarizing a long paragraph to tighten it
- checking whether a sentence is confusing
- improving flow between ideas
- catching small grammar mistakes
These tasks help you polish your writing without changing the heart of your story.
Examples of Uses to Avoid
Students should stay away from using AI to:
- write the entire essay
- invent personal stories
- create emotional moments that never happened
- produce reflections that don’t match their thinking
- write in a style that doesn’t sound like them
These uses weaken the essay and may raise concerns during review.
How Colleges View AI
Colleges know AI exists. Their main expectation is simple: the essay should reflect the student’s own experiences and voice. They want to understand who you are, what shaped you, and how you think. Essays that rely too heavily on AI often feel flat and lack the specific details that come from real life.
Admissions officers read thousands of essays each year. They can tell
when a student is writing from lived experience and when the writing
feels generic or disconnected from real life.
Yale admission officers published a podcast
on the do's and don't s: "A.I.-generated content simply isn't very good
at the mode of communication that works in college essays."
Georgia Tech's advice
is typical of the AI review approach adopted by top schools: "In the
same way you would not copy directly from any other source you may
incorporate into the writing process, you should not copy and paste
directly out of any AI platform or submit work that you did not
originally create. Instead, approach and consider any interaction with
an AI tool as a learning experience that may help you generate ideas,
provide alternative phrasing options, and organize your thoughts.
Ultimately, we want to read and hear your unique and valuable writing
style."
When students use AI responsibly, it becomes a helpful tool rather than a roadblock to your college admission plans.
Final Thoughts
AI can support your writing, but it cannot replace your story. The strongest essays come from real moments, steady reflection, and honest writing. Use AI to help you refine your work, and let your lived experiences guide the rest.
A Note About Rao Advisors Premium Services
Our promise is to empower you with high-quality, ethical, and free advice via this website. But parents and students often ask us if they can engage with us for individual counseling sessions.
Individual counseling is part of the Premium Offering of Rao Advisors. Please contact us for more information.
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