3 Reasons NOT to use AI to Write Your Personal Statement
There is a lot of excitement and controversy around the new AI-based writing tool, ChatGPT. While it has the potential to help students write personal essays such as college essays or personal statements for dental school applications or medical school applications, it is important to remember that it is NOT a substitute for a student’s own writing and critical thinking skills.
The science behind AI has been around since 1951, and we’ve most recently seen it in action by search engines, GPS navigation devices, self-driving cars and more. Today more and more schools and universities are adopting it and enhancing teaching and learning with it as well.
Modern-day AI displays behaviors such as planning, learning, reasoning and problem-solving and combines these behaviors to process a vast amount of data far faster and with more error than the human brain can do.
It is a machine-learning model trained to take a large dataset of text to generate human-like responses to prompts. It has the ability to write general coherent and grammatically correct sentences which is why students like the idea of using it to write things like college essays.
Another potential benefit of using ChatGPT for essay writing is that it has the ability to generate ideas, outlines, topic sentences and titles. It can help generate prompts for essays or a list of potential topic sentences, intro paragraphs, etc.
However, using ChatGPT is NOT a substitute for a student’s own writing skills. While it can create grammatically correct sentences, it will never replace a student’s own creativity, voice and understanding of a topic. ChatGPT is based on data it has been trained on, which may not always align with your personal beliefs, perspectives or experiences.
Here are 3 reasons you should not use ChatGPT to write your personal statement or admissions essay…
- It’s unethical. Schools have the expectation that essays are written by the applicant. This means that nobody else should write your essays. Although ChatGPT is not a human, it is not you. You should be the one who writes your personal statement. Although it is wise to seek feedback and proofreading for your essay, it is dishonest to have someone (or something) write it for you.
- It won’t be a true representation of you. Your application essays and personal statements should be personal. AI might be able to write about personal aspects of your life as you prompt it, but it’s not personal to you. It won’t be able to convey your genuine emotion, voice and enthusiasm as you talk about your journey and commitment to your future.
- It probably won’t save you time. If you want to write a solid personal statement or essay, ChatGPT will need prompts from you that are clear, detailed and cover everything you want to talk about. You will probably have to work on your prompts several times to get the result you are looking for. Remember, what it generates is only as good as the prompt. All the time you spend working on the prompt could be better used to write a much better essay yourself.
In the end, it is not worth it to use AI to help write your personal statement. The things that make you special as an applicant can not be recognized or generated by a machine. Instead, you should focus on writing a compelling essay that demonstrates why you are an ideal candidate for medical school, dental school, or graduate school. Your personal statement is a unique opportunity to tell admissions committees about your skills and talents that are not evident in the rest of your application. Submitting an AI-generated personal statement would waste this valuable opportunity.
Are you working on your personal statement, or do you need help getting started? Check out our blog post here for more tips.
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