No. Using AI to write your essays can sink your application in a number of ways. First, it’s not going to work. Second, it could get you instantly rejected by any admissions officer who figures out that you used AI. And third, it defeats the entire purpose of the personal essay in college admissions.

It’s not going to work: Besides all the problems with AI “hallucinations” that can make dumb mistakes that make you look dumb, the stinted, impersonal style of the writing is a dead giveaway you used AI. The admissions officers who receive your essays read hundreds each year and have been doing the job for several years. They know how an essay from a real 17-year-old high school student reads. And that’s not the way an essay reads when its written by AI, a professional ghostwriter or your mom. Even the one paragraph that your mom or dad insists on making you include will stand out and blemish your essay.

“Yeah, we can tell when it’s Chat-GPT,” one one dean of admissions recently told a group of college counselors.

Instant rejection: There are not only a whole bunch of AI applications that can write your essay, but also a whole bunch of AI applications that scan your essay to decide whether it was written with AI. Those apps are already being used by teachers and they are just as available to college admissions officers. When one of those apps indicates that AI wrote your essay, it goes right into the trash.

Or worse. There already are cases where a college acceptance was rescinded after an admissions officer discovered the student had used AI to write the essay.

Defeats the purpose — and worse: The whole point of the personal essay is that it’s personal. The essay works like an in-person interview to reveal your personality and character. The big question any admissions officers wants answered is, “Who is this student, really?” The only way to highlight your character and priorities is through your own authentic voice telling your own authentic story in your personal essay.

Even if you manage to slip an AI-written essay past the admissions staff, that essay is going to be a complete flop because it doesn’t say anything about you as a person. The reviewers on the admissions team will just think you’re a dull person and a lousy writer — and immediately toss your application on the “reject” pile.