Right now, millions of high school students around the world are hunched over keyboards, writing what they’ve been told might define their futures. And on the other side of this annual ritual, thousands of universities are preparing to read those essays – some carefully, some casually, and some with the quiet help of AI.
It’s college application season. It’s also AI panic season.
We’re asking students to distill their stories – often their entire sense of self – into 500 words. And this year, more than any before, that ritual is unfolding under the shadow of something bigger: the growing presence of generative AI in education.
Students are using AI to help brainstorm, draft, and polish their essays. Counselors and educators are warning against it, debating what constitutes “help” and what crosses the line into “cheating.” Colleges, too, are experimenting – quietly or openly – with AI-assisted review. Virginia Tech, for example, announced it will begin using AI to evaluate writing quality and tone, inserting artificial intelligence into both sides of the very process that many still insist must remain human.
Virginia Tech announces integration of AI-supported essay evaluation model https://news.vt.edu/articles/2025/07/admissions-changes-2025.html
Amidst this noise, a predictable debate has resurfaced: Is using AI to write an essay dishonest? Is it unfair? Is it the end of authenticity as we know it?
But that’s the wrong question. The better question – the more urgent one – is this: why do we still cling to a requirement we no longer believe in? And what does this tell us about the larger, messier relationship between education and AI?
If you ask me, the college essay isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom.
The headlines frame it as a crisis – but maybe it’s something else.
Maybe the college essay isn’t dying because of AI.
Maybe it was dead on arrival – a relic of an education system still pretending that learning, effort, and expression happen without tools.
What we’re facing isn’t an integrity crisis. It’s an identity crisis. One that’s exposing the cracks in how we define effort, ownership, and learning in a world where tools are getting smarter, faster, and more accessible to everyone.
The Ghost in the Statement
Let’s start with the college essay itself.
Even before ChatGPT entered the chat, the personal statement was hardly a solitary act. Students – especially those with access – have long received help from counselors, parents, teachers, friends, mentors, and in many cases, paid consultants. There were essay workshops, revision bootcamps, and one-on-one coaches charging thousands of dollars to help a student shape their “authentic voice.” Inboxes filled each September with newsletters and webinars titled “How to Write the Perfect Essay.” The industry never questioned this kind of help. In fact, we normalized it as necessary support.
So what changed? Only the interface.
Now, a student without a dedicated college counselor, or a parent fluent in admissions lingo, or the means to pay for a boutique coach, can turn to AI for structure, clarity, and suggestions. For many, this is not a shortcut. It’s the only shot at leveling the playing field. And yet, we call this a crisis.
What AI has done is not disrupt the essay – it has exposed it. It has revealed how much of the application process was always performative, polished, and co-authored. It has challenged the myth that this was ever fully the student’s work. And in doing so, it has made the entire ritual more uncomfortable.
More uncomfortable still is the realization that, in many cases, colleges aren’t even reading these essays with the care we pretend they deserve. Some highly rejective, er….I mean selective institutions still engage in close, thoughtful reading. But most, especially those facing high volumes and limited staff, are increasingly turning to tools that summarize or score. Sentiment analysis, tone checkers, ranking algorithms – these are now part of the review process, even as we continue to tell students that their story matters.
We ask students to relive their traumas, to showcase their resilience, to present a version of themselves that is raw yet refined – only for many of those essays to be skimmed, scanned, or passed through filters that look for keywords or cadence. That’s not just disheartening. It’s dishonest.
Beyond the Essay
And it’s not just happening with essays. The same conversation is playing out in classrooms and lecture halls and learning management systems everywhere. Teachers are wondering if assignments are being completed “honestly.” Professors are rewriting take-home exams. Plagiarism detectors are being rebranded as AI detectors. Schools are drafting new “integrity” policies that sound more like courtroom instructions than educational guidance.
But all of this misses the deeper point.
The panic around AI is not really about cheating. It’s about control.
For generations, our education system has relied on the idea that learning happens in isolation. That demonstrating knowledge means producing something entirely from within, without tools, without assistance, without shortcuts. But that model was always flawed. And now, in an age where tools are ubiquitous and powerful, it’s becoming obsolete.
When students use AI, they are not avoiding the work. They are redefining it. They are interacting with a tool that requires new forms of literacy – prompting, refining, questioning, evaluating. They are discovering how to collaborate with machines, not just compete with them. And in many cases, they are learning faster, iterating better, and thinking more critically than they would through rote memorization or repetitive tasks.
The real crisis, then, isn’t that students are cheating. It’s that we don’t know what to reward anymore.
We’re still measuring writing ability as a proxy for character. We’re still equating grammar with grit. We’re still valuing polish over potential. And we’re doing all of this while the ground beneath us is shifting.
Rethinking the Personal Statement
If the goal is authenticity, we need to stop pretending the essay is the answer. If the goal is equity, we need to stop vilifying the tools that level the playing field. And if the goal is to understand students – not just evaluate them – we need better ways to listen.
So what could that look like?
Here are five ideas to rethink the personal statement – and everything it symbolizes:
1. Make It Optional
If the essay is no longer central to your review process, don’t make students go through the motions. Optional doesn’t mean meaningless – it means transparent. Let the essay be a choice, not a checkbox.
2. Introduce Voice Notes or Video Responses
Invite students to speak their truth – literally. A 90-second video or audio clip can reveal tone, conviction, and personality in ways that over-edited prose often obscures. When you hear them, you see them.
3. Ask for Reflections on the Process, Not Just the Product
If a student used AI, ask them to reflect on how. What did it teach them? What decisions did they still make on their own? That meta-awareness is often more telling than the writing itself.
4. Use Timed, Unedited Writing Samples
Add a real-time prompt: 20 minutes, no tools, no second draft. Not as a trap, but as a window into their raw thinking. And if you want, combine it with their polished submission for a more honest picture of voice and growth.
5. Invest in Contextual Evaluation Tools
Stop measuring output in a vacuum. Understand students in the context of their environment – their school, resources, responsibilities, and opportunities. AI can help surface context, but only if we program for empathy, not efficiency.
None of this requires lowering standards. It requires changing them.
Because if AI is forcing us to rethink the essay, maybe it’s time we rethink the entire architecture of assessment. Maybe it’s time we stop retrofitting the old system to fit new tools – and start imagining what a truly AI-native admissions process could look like.
What if our learning environments were designed for collaboration between humans and machines – not in secret, but by design?
What if our admissions processes reflected not just who students have been, but how they think, adapt, and grow with the tools of the future?
What if we stopped asking whether students are “cheating,” and started asking whether we’re still challenging them in meaningful ways?
The personal statement isn’t the only thing dying.
What’s fading is our belief that performance is proof of potential.
That polish is evidence of character.
That effort must always be visible to be real.
And maybe – just maybe – that loss is exactly what education needs.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
