AI for application essays

Question

Hey Folks,

How is everyone using AI for their MBA essays? Has this made you more likely to use the free tools available compared with going with an MBA consultant (who might cost $2k+)?

Are people using AI to check their essays or improve them, or get to a first draft? I would love to learn about how others are thinking about this.

Has anyone tried any of the specific MBA AI application tools out there?

pintukr · Answer

Will the usage of AI for writing applications be in order ? Besides, there may be hallucinations inserted by AI.

Archit3110 · Answer

avoid AI in essays , this can come under lens of adcom and impact your application.. be true and honest with applications..

bb · Answer

I think everyone uses AI for brainstorming, ideas, and to critique their essays but the general advice is that this has to be your work, so use it as a consultant or an advisor and not as writer, as tempting as it may be sometimes.

MBADecoder · Answer

As I am an admissions consultant, you may consider my view as biased, but I am speaking from my experience of seeing countless essays by applicants which were written using AI. My own applicants share those essays with me as well, and I can easily make out a sentence if it is written by AI. Let me give you a few situations:

No matter which LLM you use, other applicants would also be using it too and your essays will have similar sentence structures, similar words and language. Adcoms read thousands of essays and will be able to establish the commonalities.
All LLMs write short, broken sentences which are annoying (even on LinkedIn and FB posts) and are easy to spot.
Basic grammar rules are not followed, there is no subject-verb relationship (example: The presentation needed to demonstrate how .....). (excuse me! you are making the presentation, you need to demonstrate something, not the presentation).
B-school essays should show a high level of leadership, communication, empathetic skills and maturity. They need to have depth in story telling. They should answer what you did, why and how you did it, and how you think and act in tricky situations. An AI essay can not do this thinking for you. Even if you feed a well written essay into a LLM for word reduction/ refinement, chances are it will delete all the important bits that make your story unique and instead throw up generic statements in stale sentence formats.

A good and sincere consultant who knows their job well, will never let you make these mistakes. They will push you to think deeply and write meaningful essays where every word counts. So while you may decide not to use a consultant at all, be careful about making LLMs your consultant. You can be bound for failure.

Namita Garg,
Founder, MBA Decoder
Email: [email protected]
Reach out to us for a Profile Evaluation
Helping applicants achieve their MBA dreams since 2011

bb · Answer

Interesting thoughts. I don't think the commonalities is the biggest issue. I feel that many people have the opposite issue of not fitting in one of the molds that AdCom are looking for and sending in wild ideas that crash and burn, so there is both pros and cons here. Also, AdCom have seen all the ideas and there is nothing likely under the sun for them. You won't impress them or make yourself overly unique, the biggest risk is that you will make yourself impersonal and not authentic with AI.

It is not hard to spot AI either, esp if a person can't talk eloquently in the interview and that creates the gap between personality and the essay and the AdCom will make proper conclusions. I also feel LLM will make someone put in very little effort and thus fail to actually get anything worthy or find content that works for them and thus also sabotage the interview as LLM's make reduce the barrier to entry quite a bit. On the other hand, if someone has an awesome profile and they do put a bit of effort, they can get a very decent product - AI allows anyone to punch above their level and become a power-user (absolutely not expert level) but going from 0 to power user in 5 mins is an amazing ROI vs. 10,000 hours to expert level. This almost makes the experts unique and to an extent almost soon to be extinct

AdmitExpert · Answer

You should not use AI, as AdComs can sense an AI-written essay/SOP, even if AI detection tools cannot accurately detect the AI percentage, as AdComs go through so many SOPs that they develop a knack for gauging whether a draft is written by AI or not. It's best to write it yourself and go through some reviews by your peers or an experienced consultant rather than using AI.

Furthermore, AI tools are not useful in helping you draft stories and narratives for application essays. This is mostly built on your personal and professional experiences, along with a thorough understanding of the school's requirements, gained from speaking with alumni and consultants who have gone through the process themselves.

AdComs will look closely at the leadership, impact, and complete story you present through your application.
You can connect with us for a free 1:1 profile evaluation by experienced alumni and consultants  for a better understanding of the process

AI for application essays

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