Students applying to college know they can’t — or at least shouldn’t — use artificial intelligence chatbots write their essay and personal statement. So it might come as a surprise that some schools are now using artificial intelligence to read them.
Admissions directors say artificial intelligence tools are now being incorporated into the process of screening and analyzing student applications. This can be a delicate topic and not all universities are willing to talk about it, but higher education is one of many industries AI are rapidly taking on tasks once left to humans.
In some cases, schools are quietly incorporating artificial intelligence into their assessment processes, experts say. Others are touting the technology’s potential to speed up application review, reduce processing times and even perform certain tasks better than humans.
“Humans get tired, but some days are better than others,” said Juan Espinoza, Virginia Tech’s vice provost for enrollment management. “AI doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t get grumpy. It doesn’t have a bad day. The AI is consistent.”
This fall, Virginia Tech will launch an artificial intelligence essay reader. The college expects to be able to notify students of admissions decisions a month earlier than usual, in late January, because the tool can help sort through tens of thousands of applications.
Universities emphasize that they do not rely on AI to make admissions decisions, but instead use it primarily to review transcripts and eliminate data entry tasks. But AI also plays a role in assessing students. Some highly selective schools are employing artificial intelligence tools to review increasingly curated application packages that some students develop with the help of high-priced admissions consultants.
Caltech will launch an artificial intelligence tool this fall to find the “authenticity” of students who submit research projects with their applications, said Ashley Pallie, Caltech’s dean of admissions. Students upload their research to an artificial intelligence chatbot, which interviews them via video, and is then reviewed by Caltech faculty.
“It’s a measure of authenticity. Can you sanely claim this research? Is there a level of fun in your project? That enthusiasm is important to us,” Parley said.
Ruby Bhattacharya, chair of the Admissions Practices Committee of the American Association for College Admission Counseling, said the popularity of AI use is difficult to measure because it is such a new trend. NACAC updated its ethics guidelines this fall to add a section on artificial intelligence. It urged universities to ensure it is used in a manner “consistent with our shared values of transparency, integrity, fairness and respect for the dignity of students”.
Some schools face backlash over use of artificial intelligence
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is facing a barrage of negative feedback from applicants, parents and students following the launch of its student newspaper. daily tar heelreported in January that schools were using artificial intelligence to assess the grammar and writing style of applicants’ essays.
The university declined to comment for this article, referring to its admissions website, which it updated following the criticism. “The University of North Carolina uses an artificial intelligence program to provide data points on students’ common application essays and school transcripts,” the website says. Each application “is fully evaluated by human application evaluators who undergo extensive training.”
At Virginia Tech, Espinosa said he has been contacted by several universities that are interested in the new technology but fear a backlash. “The feedback from a lot of my colleagues has been, ‘You roll this out, we’ll follow you, and we’ll see how everyone responds,'” he said.
He stressed that the artificial intelligence reader his school spent three years developing was only used to confirm essay scores from human readers.
Until this fall, each of the four short-answer essays submitted by Virginia Tech applicants was read and scored by two people. Under the new system, one of them is an artificial intelligence model that has been trained on past applicant essays and scoring rubrics, Espinosa said.
If the AI and human readers disagree by more than two points on a 12-point scale, a second person steps in.
Like many universities, Virginia Tech has seen a significant increase in applications since its inception SAT optional. Last year, the school received a record 57,622 applications for its freshman class of 7,000. Even with 200 essay readers, the school struggled to keep up and found itself notifying students later and later.
The AI tool can scan approximately 250,000 articles in an hour, whereas a human reader would take an average of two minutes per article. Based on last year’s application pool, “we saved at least 8,000 hours,” Espinoza said.
Colleges see benefits of AI tools for applicants
This information is sensitive for universities, many of which now have students testifying that they did not Unethical use of artificial intelligence in papers and other parts of the application. But schools say AI tools can help admissions offices eliminate errors in tasks like uploading transcripts and streamline the process for students.
Georgia Tech this fall launched an artificial intelligence tool to review transfer students’ college transcripts, replacing the need for staff to manually enter each course into a database. This will allow schools to notify applicants more quickly how many Transfer Credit Richard Clark, the school’s executive director of enrollment management, said they will be notified, reducing uncertainty and wait times.
“This adds another layer of delay, stress and inevitable errors. Artificial intelligence will eliminate that, and I’m very excited about that,” Clark said. The school hopes to expand the service to all high school transcripts soon. Georgia Tech is also testing other uses for the AI tool, including one that identifies low-income students who are eligible for federal Pell Grants but may not realize it.
Richard Beatty, senior vice provost for enrollment management at Stony Brook University in New York, said the school is also using AI to review applicants’ transcripts and test the AI tools’ ability to perform various tasks, such as summarizing student essays and letters of recommendation, to highlight what admissions officers should consider.
“Maybe a student is battling an illness during their sophomore year. Or maybe a parent has passed away, or they are caring for a sibling at home. All of those things are important and it allows counselors to look at transcripts in a different way,” Beatty said.
Emily Pacheco, founder of the NACAC Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence and Admissions, said colleges are interested in AI-powered summaries of transcripts, extracurricular activities and letters of recommendation that tell a student’s story in a more digestible way for human readers.
“Humans and AI working together — that’s key right now. Every step along the way can be vastly improved: transcript reading, essay review, telling us things about a student that we might have missed,” said Pacheco, former assistant director of admissions at Loyola University Chicago. “Ten years from now, all bets will be off. I guess AI will be recruiting students.”
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