What You Need to Know About AI in College Admissions

lesscollegestress
22 hours ago
4 min read

From a trusted colleague: how to use AI as a smart research and editing tool—without crossing ethical lines or risking your college application.

Aug 16, 2025

This time of year, we’re reading students’ admissions essays. Over the years, reading essays, many admissions counselors have learned to detect when an essay may have been written by a parent or other adult. The voice is different, and the vocabulary is telling. Now, coaches are learning to detect what AI writing is like: often flatter in tone, and with sentence lengths, vocabulary, and punctuation choices that are very unusual in teenage writing.

We also see it in the notes students take when they do college research. Sometimes the facts are outright incorrect, and sometimes the responses are written with such a detailed academic tone that it feels unlike what a student would say.

So this is a good time for parents and students to read a guide on when and how to use AI in the college admissions process.

Ask the Right Question

To start with, if you’re asking, “Should AI be used at all?”, you’re starting with the wrong question.

In 2025, AI is already woven into nearly every corner of life, from grammar checkers in Google Docs to the autocomplete on your phone. Students, schools, and colleges are all using them in myriad ways. I discovered this morning that even my chiropractor uses AI to take notes!!

The better question is this:

How should students and families use AI ethically, effectively, and in ways that strengthen — not weaken — a college application?

The goal isn’t to avoid AI entirely, but to make sure it supports, rather than replaces, your own ideas, voice, and integrity. Here’s a framework you can follow.

Guiding Principles

Using AI for research is a great idea, but remember, AI tools hallucinate (make up facts or use out-of-date sources). AI tools like Perplexity and OpenAI can help with college research and help you get information on programs, scholarships, and majors, but fact-check the answers. LifeLaunchr’s college profiles combine data we get from multiple sources (such as the Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System and the Common Data Set) with AI-generated answers to dozens of common questions about each college.
Your application, especially your essays, should reflect your authentic voice, ideas, and experiences. Many universities require you to certify that all work is your own. Some explicitly ban or limit AI-generated content. See below for details.
Plagiarism checks are standard, and plagiarism is never okay. Cite sources and use quotation marks when appropriate.
Most colleges don’t use AI to evaluate applications, but a few do (most notably, Virginia Tech: see the table below). Many more use AI for administrative tasks in the admissions process. It’s not clear yet what the impact of the use of AI by colleges will be, but it will affect admissions in many ways.

What’s Generally Allowed

You can use AI tools for:

Research: See above
Essays: You can generally use AI for:
- Brainstorming: evaluating ideas, thinking through topics, or structure. Some universities forbid the use of these tools for outlining, so please check specific policies.
- Assessment — e.g., after writing an essay, asking, “What does this story communicate about me?” or “What is missing from this draft?”
- Grammar and spelling checks.
- Note: Some colleges, like Brown, explicitly forbid some or all of this, so before using any of these tools, check your college list and make sure you’re in compliance.
Activity Lists:
- Help with conciseness: You can get tips for shortening an activity description or cutting unnecessary words without losing meaning. Please edit to make sure the final words are yours.
- Again, please make sure the colleges on your list do not explicitly forbid this.

Caveats:

Stay in control of the content, tone, and facts.
If a college asks, be ready to explain exactly how you used AI.
Keep notes on your AI use, even if no one ever asks. And save each draft of your essay, so you can demonstrate its progression over time.

What’s Generally Not Allowed

You should not use AI to:

Write or rewrite your essays, short answers, or personal statements in full.
Invent stories, anecdotes, or details that aren’t true.
Make up information.
Plagiarize — even by accident.
Submit text directly from AI without rewriting it in your own words.

Why Not?

Almost all good writing involves many drafts, and there’s real value in the iterative and sometimes slower way of working through the writing and revision process. It will help you sometimes make unexpected discoveries and uncover your unique story. Too much reliance on AI can bypass this essential step of the writing process and produce drafts that are less personal and that are missing your voice. Besides, it could violate a college’s honor code. And AI writing can strip away the authenticity that application readers value.