3 Common College Application Essay Mistakes That ChatGPT Actually Makes Worse

ChatGPT is capable of delivering a grammatically correct response to college admissions essay prompts. Here’s what ChatGPT says, for instance, when replying to a prompt about facing a challenge, setback, or failure, then learning from the experience:

“One common experience many people face is the setback or failure to achieve a goal they had set for themselves. This can be a difficult and disheartening experience, but it is also an opportunity for growth and learning. When faced with a setback, it is important to reflect on what went wrong and what can be done differently in the future.”

The problem with ChatGPT’s response is that, while technically sound, it’s also generic and uninspiring. Unfortunately, that isn’t stopping high school students from leaning on artificial intelligence (AI) tools during the college admissions process—especially for the Common App, a platform used by more than 1,000 colleges and universities that asks prospective students to “tell [their] unique story” in essay form. 

It’s important to be intentional, and realistic, when talking to students about AI. It’s not helpful to tell students to never use AI in support of their writing efforts; we know they’ll use it anyway and will continue to do so in college. What is helpful is to affirm to college applicants that they don’t have to be perfect. Nor is it realistic to expect high school students to manifest a unique writing voice overnight—and AI certainly cannot give students that voice.  

I’ve assisted many students in writing personal essays for colleges and universities. Although these college hopefuls have vastly different backgrounds and academic records, I see some of the same mistakes in their writing. Without careful guardrails, AI tools can actually exacerbate these common mistakes. College essay prompts are called “personal insight questions” for a reason, and ChatGPT lacks the prerequisite “person-ness.” So, from person to person, here are common, AI-driven errors I see in college essays, as well as alternative recommendations I give to college hopefuls. 

3 Common Writing Mistakes—and How to Fix Them

1. Overuse of time markers. College application essays often have a limited word count, so valuable space shouldn’t go to transitions and clauses about markers in time. My colleague’s daughter, Sarah, is a stellar student whose experiences in a dual-language immersion program shaped how she connects with people and gave her a more empathetic vision of the world. But when prompted to describe a “background, identity, interest, or talent” meaningful to her, she started multiple paragraphs with phrases like “Beginning in kindergarten...” and “Then, I went to middle school...”

Recommendation: Show students how to use the “zoom in, zoom out technique.”

Writing teachers always say, “Show, don’t tell.” Another way of thinking about it is to imagine a high-definition satellite camera zooming in on a particular moment, making sure to capture all the details. Sarah wanted to express how she, as a 5-year-old coming from an English-only household, felt lost on her first day of school. Instead of her writing, “I didn’t know what to do on my first day of school,” I asked her to tell me the story of that memory, with telephoto details. 

As a reader, I’m more invested in the storyteller when I can visualize a blond-haired, blue-eyed child sitting on a “rug of brightly colored squares,” using all her senses to capture the teacher’s instruction. I want her to describe a moment of realization: that mochilla translates to “backpack” and how understanding as much meant something far more to this child than simple word recognition. For Sarah, it was the opening of a door, letting in the light, feeling less lost. 

It’s important to remind college applicants that yes, large language models can churn out broad statements about how dual-immersion programs develop cultural awareness, or how navigating two languages improves one’s adaptability. But AI responses alone won’t convey personal, moving experiences to readers.

2. Recitation of accomplishments. The designated “activities” section of the college application asks students to list all the extracurriculars they participated in during high school, and the essay section is an opportunity to demonstrate why those extracurriculars truly mattered to the writer.

It’s important to note to high school students that collaborating with AI might help in coming up with a more impressive way to describe an academic honor, a leadership role, or their GPA—but ultimately, a recitation of accomplishments in a college essay is a waste of words. College application essays typically include prompts that involve overcoming a challenge, or failure, as opposed to chronicling one’s successes. 

Recommendation: Tell students to emphasize their humanness. 

“I climbed to the top of the fence, sat on top and started to scream, and then I couldn’t stop screaming.” This sentence from Lisa, a high school student, stuck with me. Lisa’s college essay was about a mental health crisis and how that vulnerable experience helped her develop better self-awareness, as well as the capacity to reach out to others when she needed help. High school students do not need to include traumatizing life details or anything else that would be uncomfortable to share. They should, however, be reminded to speak about life challenges in a way that is authentic and relatable. They should also be reminded that OpenAI cannot mirror a student’s own healing journey in the way that the student can.

3. Reliance on clichés and generalities. While reviewing college application essays, I’ve read many iterations of the following sentence: “I learned a lot from that experience.” Students sometimes fall into the habit of summing up experiences as “meaningful” or how they “learned an important lesson” about life, or love, or family. These sentiments may very well be sincere, but they’re too general and fail to fully articulate the lessons a student actually learned.

Recommendation: Tell students to talk it out. Many students turn to AI to kick-start the writing process. They want to see what ChatGPT creates and perhaps use that as a model for their essay. From that model, though, come clichés and generalities.

When I encounter an array of generalities in student writing, I’ll often take away their computers and ask them to talk to me. I find that students use clichés far less frequently in natural conversations. Consider asking students to press record on their phones, then tell their story to a friend or a teacher. This would serve as an audio rough draft. When students record their own story in their own voice while speaking to an authentic audience, it empowers them to see themselves as their writing role models. They’re suddenly the creators of their own language models—and might just lean a little bit less on ChatGPT while they finish up their college essays.