Students today are worried about whether AI use is allowed in college admissions essays, whether schools use AI detectors , and if an application can be rejected over suspected AI content. As AI increasingly weaves its way into our lives, we are entering a new phase of college admissions. More and more, AI has become second nature for students in their schoolwork while concerned teachers and professors try to play catchup. These are major concerns, and bring up issues related to academic integrity, the nature of learning and even fundamental questions like “ what is the goal of an education? ”. These concerns are now front and center in the college admission process , and as a college consultant I hear about them almost daily from concerned students and parents. Freaked out students reach out to me all the time with questions like these: “I am not using AI to write but when I plug my essay into an AI checked it says very high levels of AI so I’m nervous :-(“ “I wrote my essay about the hardships about my surgery and an ai detector said it was 96% ai, now I’m worried idk what to do.” There are extremely important questions at the heart of this: Can a student use AI in their college essay or other parts of their application? What is appropriate versus inappropriate use of AI? Do colleges use AI detectors? If so, are they reliable? And central to it all, can a college reject me if they think, correctly or incorrectly, that I used AI inappropriately on my college application?
