My personal essay and supplementals are being flagged as AI when I wrote it myself. This started when I asked people for feedback and some would say it’s really good, others would say it’s kind of robotic. So I ran it through those generators like copyleaks, gptzero, and Winston ai, and the results flagged like most of my essays and I would get like 50% is likely to be generated by Ai from gptzero, and Winston ai and copyleaks would say it’s like completely generated.
However my personal statement is a really unique topic, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do it, but I just wrote it really broad. I included like specific details of my own experiences like some of my ECs i listed how it impacted me and etc, but nothing like sensory or “descriptive and in the moment” like the ones you see on those “Essays that got me into… Essays that worked…Essay that got me into harvard”. As for my “Why us” essay I talked about my personal experience working in a lab and my own interests, just broadly written, but nobody else could have like wrote about it because they don’t have the same ECs that I do.
A college counselor we hired to look over my essays and give feedback told me that my personal essay was really strong, my supplementals were also good at responding to the prompt, and that college admission officers really review your application holistically, so it’s not just all about essays. I also asked around for other people and some would say it’s really good, others would say it’s kind of robotic.
I can’t get this off my head, because when I do go back and read my essays they do In fact sound really generic and boring, and monotone and robotic. But that’s just my “personal” tone, and the writer’s tone that I have developed over time. So I’m scared colleges will run it through and think I used AI and also email my other colleges if I get blacklisted from them.
Do college admissions use AI in their essays? Because I read many articles about how they use AI in the admissions process for separating scores and gpa. Some articles even said they did in fact use detectors for essays. But what about all the false positives?? To test some of the accuracy of those models, I would like place my AP lang research projects, essays, and my AP Lit essays I’ve done that were also completely my entire work that I even handwrote in class (my teachers made us handwrite drafts), and they came back as also AI generated. So I don’t know who to trust, when they say my essays are great or bad. But now I also have to worry about my writing potentially coming off as AI generated just because I write in a similar style.
Professors know that AI detectors are unreliable. Trust me, they have looked into this a lot due to students using them for their course assignments. I would be surprised if any admissions offices are screening essays with AI detection software. If they are, the professors would be dismayed to learn that.
You wrote in a way that is true to yourself, about unique topics, and you got positive feedback on your essays. I know it’s hard to take this advice, but don’t worry about it!
Admissions officers don’t have time to read an essay more than once. It will either click with them or it won’t. As a general rule, it would have to either be extremely good or extremely bad to have much impact at all. Ninety percent probably fall somewhere in the “meh” category.
Agree with @circuitrider. Essays may have to be outstanding or truly terrible to have a significant effect. Your just needs to be “good enough” to avoid doing harm.
I think it is too bad so many students read essays “that got me in to X.” Don’t worry about AI or plagiarism accusations if you wrote it yourself.
Did you change your user name? Did you use an essay reader here on CC?
Maybe don’t worry about AI accusations if you indeed wrote it yourself, but do worry about “the kid writes like a robot” reactions from readers. If you sound like AI that in itself is an issue–the essay is where your personality is on full display, so appearing to be an algorithm doesn’t seem ideal.
No, I didn’t change my name - and I didn’t use an essay reader here either. Idk if I should use an essay reader here because I’ve been cautioned against sharing essays with random people online, because I may be prone to people who may steal my ideas or the entire essay.
The essay readers here are all senior members of this site and have been “vetted” by the admins. As far as I know, we are all parents. We communicate with students via private message, not on the site.
But yes, in general, you shouldn’t post your essay online anywhere.