Will ChatGPT REALLY Kill the Student Essay?
About a week after Open AI released Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer – ChatGPT – The Atlantic published, “Will ChatGPT Kill the Student Essay?” At first, I was skeptical. After working decades as a private tutor and test prep and college essay coach, I knew intuitively that no bot could replicate the personal bond I build with students or the essays they write that emerge from that rapport.
Analytical College Essays will definitely change
But I’m also an adjunct professor of U.S. history at the City University of New York. When I plugged last semester’s final exam question into ChatGPT just to see what it’d deliver, I was amazed. In about 15 seconds, I watched an essay that would likely get a B+ in my introductory level survey appear, word by word, on my computer screen. (That question, btw, is: “Considering at least three different changes that occurred in American society during the period 1920-1995, do you believe that change originated more from the masses (“bottom up”) or from the leaders in government (“top down”)?” I instruct my students to provide specific examples, something ChatGPT did with ease and accuracy for this basic question, though colleagues on private Facebook groups have reported finding errors when they fed the bot more advanced queries.) Clearly, I had some work to do.
Photo by @benkolde on Unsplash
I spent several days “ChatGPT-proofing” my spring semester courses, which are 100% online. My students now need to incorporate analysis of visual elements like charts, photographs, and political cartoons into short-answer questions on quizzes. Instead of a written final exam, students in my Writing Intensive section must produce a presentation, a physical project, and a short research-based essay to accompany them.
Students in the non-Writing Intensive section don’t have to write that final essay, since I’m still worried that Chat-GPT might be able to generate that for them. (That is, assuming they can access it. So many people have been attempting to access the site since January that it’s been down every time I’ve tried.)
Mine are not perfect solutions – and there are others out there – but they’re the best for my students, whom I teach online. (Of course, teachers in actual classrooms can return to good old blue books!) I’m guessing that I’ll iterate, just as I’ve always done with lessons and assessments, as the technology evolves and my students along with it.
College Application Essay Writing May Change
Despite my unvarnished acknowledgement of how AI will alter the way some students (especially those in lower-level classes) may write analytical essays when left to their own devices, I’m still not convinced that it will fundamentally transform the college application essay-writing process.
Of course, many students will plug a Common App (or other application portal’s or individual college’s) essay prompt into a chatbot. They will copy and paste the mediocre, vague response it spits out and pass it off as their own. They may even get accepted to some colleges where the essay doesn’t count for much in the admissions process and / or where the competition isn’t very fierce.
However, I’m confident that the same general, clichéd responses that ChatGPT can produce (even after prompting it towards more creative solutions through the chat) will earn the student a polite but unequivocal rejection from the nation’s most sought-after institutions of higher education.
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Only Humans Can Write Really Creative College Application Essays
How can I be so sure? Well, I only need to read the introductions to my students’ own college application essays, and then look at where they’ve been accepted to know that no computer could have produced these responses.
This, from a student recently returned from her first semester at Northeastern University (acceptance rate of 6.7% for her class of 2026):
“They say good things come in threes. From rock, paper, scissors to bacon, egg’n cheese, this prime number provides structure in a world of chaos. The first time I experienced the candid simplicity of “three” was when I listened to Frédéric Chopin’s 3/4 rhythm of Nocturnes For Piano. I was instantly hypnotized by the melodious rises and falls that carry the waltz throughout the plot of the piece. Although the complex rhythms of my life have been anything but harmonic, this simple melody has followed me throughout my journey and has led me to find depth in the seemingly mundane.
One...
Chopin’s melody echoed through the computer labs' smartboard speakers; its constant rhythm mediating the introduction between me and my first line of code in my beginner computer science class.
System.println(“Hello there Jennifer!”);
Output: Hello there Jennifer!
I was caught off guard. This new, abstract medium forced me to act as a composer…”
Or this college essay student, who received his congressperson’s nomination to attend the United States Naval Academy:
Major Stepan Ivanovych Tarabalka (and the rest of his unit) are heroes. The 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade, which Tarabalka was assigned to, is one of Ukraine’s elite squadrons of fighter pilots that was brought into action against the Russian invasion earlier this year. Tarabalka was shot down in combat, during a dogfight, in which he was heavily outnumbered. The Ukrainian Government posthumously awarded him Ukraine's top award for bravery, the Order of the Golden Star, with the title Hero of Ukraine. The bravery of Tarabalka, and the other pilots that served with him, gave rise to the legend of the fabled “Ghost of Kyiv.” While the Ghost isn’t a real person (as confirmed by the Ukrainian government back in April), it embodies the fighting spirit of all of the Ukrainian pilots, and lives on.
Or this college essay student, whose experience as a first-generation American and daughter of a medical translator has given rise to her dream to build sophisticated translation software to help immigrants navigate life in the U.S.
Olá. Hello world. Two seemingly expendable phrases of introduction have become integral governing forces in my life, two keys that unlocked my heritage and my passions from the chasm of my existence. From the moment I first opened my eyes and from the moment I clicked open my first code.org project, I have been greeted with these mellifluous syllables and gleaming characters, two distinct linguistic bridges that connected me with two new worlds.
These introductory paragraphs were successful, I believe, because they responded in unexpected ways to the questions. The first uses the student’s love of a piece of music as a metaphor and a corollary to explore her deepening interest in computer science. The second reflects on the current conflict in the Ukraine as a springboard for the future midshipman’s dedication to his own country via naval service. The last weaves together the author’s Portuguese heritage and passion for programming to creatively explain her future career goals – something even the most intelligent AI would have difficulty doing.
Was the journey to crafting these essays easy for the students with the human brains? Heck, no! But as the Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote, “The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it.” That’s where a good college essay coach comes in, not only questioning the writer to help uncover more specific examples or more powerful turns of phrase, but also to encourage them not to give up when the difficulty seems too great.
Can ChatGPT do that?
About the Author
Dominique Padurano, M.S., Ed., Ph.D. – aka “Dr. P.” – loves helping students of all ages fulfill their academic and personal goals. President and Founder of Crimson Coaching, Dr. P. herself personally tutors students in History, English, Spanish, French, Math, and study, time management, and organizational skills; prepares them for tests like the SAT and ACT; and coaches them through the college application process. Essays that students have written under Dr. P.’s guidance have earned them admission to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and other top universities, as well as scholarships totaling more than $2 million. Also an adjunct professor of U.S. history at the City University of New York and a published author, Dr. P.’s currently writing a memoir of her time as an undergraduate at Harvard. Read more about Dr. P.’s work at www.crimsoncoaching.com and on Google, straight from the hearts and minds of Crimson Coaching’s parents and students.