As artificial intelligence (AI) makes its way into classrooms, admissions officers across the United States adjust to applications in which students, reviewers, and institutions interact with AI. With rapid development and insufficient time to adapt, both applicants and universities approach the topic with extreme caution, often with uncertainty about what is appropriate.

Across institutions, the central message to all applicants remains consistent: AI is a tool, not a substitute for original voice. Alex Kirk Patrick, the associate director of admissions and communications at the New School in New York, said, “[it is] totally fine to use AI for research, brainstorming, kind of ideas generation,” but warned that “the problem is when the voice of you as a writer disappears, and it becomes the voice of the AI.”

Patrick specified that with AI, what disappears is not only individual tone, but “the personal benefit that you get as a writer, writing a personal statement” and the chance to “discover something for yourself.”

Against institutional advice, many students proceed to generate their personal statements and supplements in the hope that their writing will benefit from the software. However, universities recognize AI use in a heartbeat. Josh Jaquins, associate director of first-year admissions at Drexel University, said that AI “removes a little bit and adds things that may not be true to who you are,” and emphasized, “as admissions counselors, especially at Drexel, we’re reading thousands of applications per year. We can tell when a student is utilizing AI based on how they’re writing their descriptors in their activity section.”

At Columbia College Chicago, readers often compare essays against other writing samples in the application. “It’s easier to catch a lot of the different uses of AI in writing. If students are taking regular courses and their vocabulary is far superior than their regular courses, then that’s when we start to question things,” said assistant director of admissions Ixtel Viramontes. “[It] push[es] [the essay] over excellence.”

Jaquins described that while AI aids students with the admissions process, regulation is crucial. “Using it to assess what you’re doing is excellent. Using it to do all of your work is the bad part. So one of the things that we always share with students is that it’s okay to use AI to gather ideas and talk about yourself to AI. But really that’s where it should stop. That’s where we want you to start to share about your true self.”

Connor White, the associate director of international admissions at Allegheny College, said that when they identify AI in writing, it is definitely a “red flag.” He said, “That’ll just automatically reduce the student’s chance of getting accepted.”

Program coordinator Amy Homel at Ohio State University expanded that while the admissions process is entirely a “human process” with each application “reviewed by two to seven people,” training for readers now includes AI awareness, with readers able to “flag essays” they suspect.

Despite the disuse of AI checkers in the admissions process, technology plays a growing role for readers. Jaquins said the office often utilizes programs that can identify transcript details like test scores and course counts. He said, “When you’re receiving 40,000 applications a year, every second is helpful.”

In alignment with the viewpoint, Viramontes said AI helps condense differing, international transcript formats so that “it’s clear and easy…to understand.”

Brandon Quay, assistant director of international recruitment at Penn State, described that the university trains an Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-based AI model to classify and group transcript data. He said, “Penn State’s being used like the guinea pig or the test school,” and said that it’s a “working progress that will hopefully…make applications more seamless for students.”

Quay said that with further evolution of AI, programs could “become so good” that they might start “tricking [people], and we won’t know anymore,” which may lead to progressively objective standards of admissions.

“I actually see…that holistic review will start to go away slowly. I think more and more schools are going to switch to just a fact-based admissions evaluation, which will be grades and standardized tests,” said Quay.

For now, most institutions view AI primarily as a minor tool. Jaquins said that “admissions teams are there to help,” and said that they are “the ones that can help coach [students] through the admissions process.”

Viramontes said, “AI is a tool, not the end-all be-all. We want to get to know you, not something that you put into a computer.”