The AI Essay Problem Is Not What Parents Think It Is

Every parent I talk to this summer asks some version of the same question. Is my kid using AI on the essays, if so will they get caught, and what should we do about it.

The honest answer is more interesting than yes or no.

Let’s start with the landscape. A recent survey of admissions officers found that roughly two-thirds of institutions still have no official policy on generative AI in application essays, even as those same offices are quietly adopting AI to help read applications faster. So, the rules are genuinely unsettled, and they conflict school to school. Brown says AI use is not permitted in application content beyond basic spelling and grammar. The University of California allows AI to help with structure and readability, then runs personal-insight responses through plagiarism detection. Same question, two different answers, depending on where your kid is applying.

That means “can my kid use AI” is not one single question (though I have some strong opinions on that answer). It is a different question at every school, and the slippery tightrope between assistance and authorship is one I’m going to spend hours of my life walking this year and into the future.

Here’s the thing… admissions readers are not mostly catching AI with software. They are catching it with their eyes, because they read forty to fifty essays a day and AI-generated writing has a signature. I can pick it out in seconds, and sometimes, if a student denies what feels plainly obvious, it only takes a minute or two to break through their defenses. As most of us know, AI writing is grammatically flawless, thematically generic, and it reaches for the same handful of words... resilience, curiosity, growth, passion, impact... without ever building in the SPECIFIC detail that makes these essays authentic and deeply personal. It reads like a very polished essay that a seventeen-year-old (especially one who has never taken an honors or AP level English class) could, or would, have conceivably written.

When kids come to me with obviously AI written (or inspired) drafts, I get it, and I don’t yell or go running to parents (certainly not the first time). Where I start is by telling them that my issue isn’t that AI made your essay too good… it just made it smooth, and smooth is the opposite of MEMORABLE.

Specificity is the antidote to concerns about AI detection… and, as it happens, it’s also the magic sauce that makes an essay come alive.

An essay that only YOU could have written, because it was born from your real choices and actual life, is not going to trip a reader’s AI radar, because it is too particular to be generated. It’s the details, the small imperfections, the one weird true thing that doesn’t flow perfectly but feels so YOU... that is what reads as human, and it is also just what makes a good essay good.

So, my rule with students is simple. Use AI the way you would use a smart friend (or parent or teacher) who is creative and good at thinking things through. Talk to it, let it help you find the thread, let it flag where you are being vague. I use some AI tools myself (which is to say, I have them built into my platform to help students with initial outlining and brainstorming). Then, I have you shut off the AI hose and write the thing yourself, in your own words, with your own details. When you submit your applications, you will e-sign a statement that the work is your own, and as a team, we’re going to all make sure that it is true.

The students who will do well in this cycle are the ones whose applications sound like people. That has always been the goal. AI just raised the stakes on getting it right.