Students are using AI in their university applications. This admissions director says that's OK

As It Happens6:31Students are using AI in their university applications. This admissions director says that's OK

Many high school students are sitting down to write their post-secondary admission essays this fall — a task that may be a lot easier thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Students now have wide access to ChatGPT, an AI-powered chat bot that generates text based on prompts.

While this has some school officials alarmed, Rick Clark, executive director of undergraduate admission at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, says turning to technology is a"natural human response." 

"We're not always so comfortable with the unfamiliar and the new, and it can take a little while to embrace that," he told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

In fact, Clark says the technology helps alleviate some of the nervous energy surrounding college admissions essays. 

This summer, as educators grapple with how to handle AI, Clark and his colleagues took on the personas of high school students to test out how ChatGPT could help students write their essays. He told Köksal what he learned. Here is part of their conversation. 

When your colleagues ...  all took on high school personas to do this ChatGPT college application challenge or try to navigate how it all works, what personas did you all take on?

We had somebody in our office who pretended to be a competitive swimmer, but for a club team in the area and also for their high school. This is somebody who did not swim herself but had aspirations of it and was intrigued.

My daughter is a seventh grader, so not necessarily a high school student, but she's very involved with musical theatre, and so that was my persona. 

And then as you might gather, Georgia Tech gets a lot of Type-A students and so we have a lot of Eagle Scouts and kids who are then really involved in the scouting community. So we also used an Eagle Scout prototype. 

And what was the verdict in the end? 

First of all, I found it to be super helpful. ChatGPT, by the way, is pretty friendly.… It basically says, "Sure, I'd love to help, here's a step-by-step guide," and sort of walks you through what to consider.

It sort of shows how it's going to lay out. 

I know other people in the same position as you across the U.S. are maybe not nodding in agreement. They're really worried about this technology. 

I look at this as an absolute opportunity. It's free. It's accessible to students in a way that, oftentimes, many students don't have an adult right there for them. Or other students have the ability to pay someone to give them feedback and give them that dialogue essentially. And that's what, in many ways, these open AIs are providing. 

WATCH | Universities push back against AI: 

Universities warn of penalties as students increasingly turn to AI

1 year ago

Duration 2:30

University students are getting ready to hit the books, take notes and write essays. At least that's how academic leaders hope they'll approach their studies, in the age of artificial intelligence — or AI.

There's also concern that people are going to be cutting and pasting for an essay that should be very personal. 

That's right, and at Georgia Tech, after sort of talking with some professors who are real experts in this area and talking to our provost, [we] ultimately learn[ed] that, first of all, this idea of reverse-AI, as one of our [computer science] professors said, is a pipe dream… you're not going to know with certainty if a student used AI. 

Really what we came to was: We know kids are using this. My own teenagers in my house are using this. How can we be instructive? And that is our statement on AI, just what you said — [if] it's not going to be used to copy and paste … but brainstorming and editing and refining, there's real value there. 

Are you concerned there's too much grey area? 

I am, in that it has been very quiet from my colleagues around the country. Maybe that will change, but this summer when I was at conferences both of larger public universities and sometimes more selective private universities, people were not ready to put out statements. 

Of course that silence or that absence of information is going to create some confusion or perhaps some anxiety, so that's why we wanted to kind of lead on this. I do see some other schools now starting to come on board, and I'm hopeful that here while we're still in the early part of the fall, more will. The best we can do is tell the students that we are recruiting for Georgia Tech and we would like you to think of this even more broadly. Here is a reasonable approach that we think can be helpful. 

When you get that pile [of essays] and there's someone you can tell is a cut and paste … that's a no-go for you?

At the end of the day, a good essay, and what every school will tell you [is], we're looking for your voice. We're looking for details. We're looking for specifics. We're looking for a unique take on your story.

ChatGPT doesn't really give you that. But it gets you moving.