Can You Use AI On College Applications?

Appropriate Ways To Use AI During The College Application Process

When AI Usage Can Risk Your Application

What College Applicants Should Know About AI Detection

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

For years, the rule for college essays was simple: the words had to be the student’s own. Generative AI has made that standard considerably harder to define. A student who asks ChatGPT to write a personal statement has clearly crossed a line. But what about asking it to identify grammatical errors in a supplemental essay? To pose questions that might spark an essay idea? To compare academic programs at 10 universities?

College Board research shows that 84% of high schoolers had used generative AI for school by mid-2025. And on college campuses, over 85% of college students report using AI in their coursework. I have worked with college applicants for more than a decade, and no technological development has altered the admissions landscape as quickly as generative AI. Increasingly, the question students ask is not whether they can use AI, but where appropriate assistance ends and outsourcing begins.

The answer starts with each college’s individual policy. But there is also a useful principle applicants can carry across the process: AI can support a student’s thinking; it should not replace it.

Can You Use AI On College Applications?

There is no universal AI policy governing college applications.

Some colleges and universities provide explicit language banning the use of AI on any application materials. Other schools suggest that AI may be used as a brainstorming or proofreading tool. When in doubt, applicants should consult each prospective school’s admissions website for its specific policies on AI use. Policies may vary by institution, but the best practices outlined below offer a responsible framework for using AI throughout the application process.

Appropriate Ways To Use AI During The College Application Process

There are ethical ways to use AI in the application process, but AI should never be used to write the essay itself.

There is a big difference between asking ChatGPT to find universities in your region that offer a particular major and asking it to write a 250-word supplemental essay about why you want to study that major. Likewise, asking AI to identify a grammatical error is fundamentally different from asking it to make a paragraph “more compelling.”

The closer AI gets to supplying the ideas, judgment, reflection or language an admissions officer is supposed to be evaluating, the more problematic its use becomes.

There are useful ways to incorporate AI into the admissions process when a college’s policies permit them. The key is keeping the student firmly in control of the substance of the application.

1. To Build An Early List of Prospective Schools

In the earliest stages of the school research process, AI can cut down on what would require dozens of hours of manual searching. With simple prompts, AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT can index hundreds of college and university websites to help applicants construct lists with important factors like test scores required/accepted, undergraduate population, geographic location, majors offered, room and board costs and other vital criteria. This information can help you quickly develop a rough school list for further research.

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