How AI is changing the college application experience

Applying to college can be extremely stressful for students and their parents alike. To help make the process a little easier, some of them are turning to artificial intelligence for help. And even though generative AI is still a relatively new technology, it has already changed the college applications process in surprising ways.

So, before you complete your next application, learn how the admissions process is evolving to incorporate AI.

College essays are becoming less important

The first domino to fall was the time-honored college essay. These essays are meant to give students a chance to show off their personality, writing voice, and writing competence. However, some teenagers are turning to AI to help speed up the essay-writing process, and colleges know it.

Unfortunately, there's no sure-fire way to identify AI writing. As a result, many colleges are placing less emphasis on these essays altogether.

How many students are using AI to write college essays? It's impossible to know for sure. Scholarships360, a website that helps students find scholarships, ran 1,000 student essays through an AI detection tool, which flagged 42 percent of them. And although AI detection tools are known to be unreliable, surveys show that more than half of Gen Z uses AI on a weekly basis, including for help with college applications.

Scholarship360 CEO Will Geiger told The Hechinger Report that he began noticing student essays using similar language to one another, and how each essay felt sterile and spiked with words that teenagers didn’t typically use. The formatting and length were also dead giveaways, per Geiger. 

Duke University has famously stopped giving numerical ratings to students’ application essays or even taking them into consideration at all, with AI being one of the major reasons. “Essays are very much part of our understanding of the applicant; we’re just no longer assuming that the essay is an accurate reflection of the student's actual writing ability,” said Christoph Guttentag, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Duke University, to the Duke Chronicle.

Students aren't the only ones using AI

According to a study by Foundry10, nearly 30 percent of students and teachers now use AI consistently for college applications. As mentioned previously, students are primarily using it to help write admission and scholarship essays, while teachers are using AI to help write recommendation letters, which are often included in college applications. 

This has been a double-edged sword. AI has certainly made it easier for teachers and students to produce these essays and letters, but if their writing sounds like it was generated by AI — even if it wasn’t — that could hurt a student’s application.

In addition, Foundry10’s study shows that letters and essays written with AI are generally regarded as less authentic and competent than those written manually.

Colleges often use AI during admissions, too

Despite a general distrust of AI-generated college essays, many colleges still trust the technology to read and summarize those same student essays. Virginia Tech became one of the first major U.S. public colleges to publicly employ such a system by using AI to review student essays for admissions, a system that rolled out for the 2025-26 school year. Colleges like UNC-Chapel Hill are also using AI to analyze applicants' essays.

On the other end of the spectrum, several colleges also use AI to check for AI writing. Brigham Young University uses software to check for AI-generated content and plagiarism, for instance. Caltech also uses AI to analyze research projects from applicants, and even to assist with early interviews. 

Per GradPilot, roughly 50 percent of admissions offices in the U.S. now use at least some form of AI, whether it’s to read essays, check for plagiarism, summarize recommendation letters, or process transcripts. The true number is unknown, as it’s estimated that many colleges use AI without saying so to avoid media scrutiny.

Students applying for college should expect that the college will use AI to some extent. 

Some colleges have outright banned the use of AI

Whether or not using AI will get your application flagged depends heavily on which college you apply to. The University of Georgia is perfectly OK with students using AI, albeit responsibly, and even has a pilot program in 2026 that gives some students licenses to use ChatGPT. So, using generative AI to apply to Georgia is probably perfectly alright, as long as most of the work is still done by the student. 

Other colleges have taken a much harder-nosed approach, outright banning the use of AI and promising punishment to students who use it. Brown University is one such example where students are forbidden from using AI for anything other than “basic proofreading.” Other colleges with similar restrictions include Georgetown, Yale, and Duke. 

Thus, part of any student’s application process in 2026 and beyond should be to double-check the AI policy for any college they apply to. Using AI the wrong way, or while applying to the wrong college, may cause an automatic rejection. 

New AI tools for college admissions

Students and parents now have a ton of new tools available to help them prep for and apply to college. This includes the tools young people might be using every day, like ChatGPT and Grammarly, plus purpose-built tools to track admissions. Tools like Kollegio, ESAI, and KapAdvisor can help young people streamline the application process or even find schools to apply to.

There are also a ton of AI study tools for high schoolers who need help with homework, SAT/ACT prep, and any other assignments.

Finally, some students are using AI as a general-purpose admissions counselor, the New York Times recently reported. While ChatGPT can help students find colleges to apply to or simply act as a sounding board, students should also know that AI chatbots still hallucinate and make mistakes.

AI will continue to change the admissions process

AI will keep changing the college admissions process in the same way digitization did nearly 30 years ago. Back in the old days, applicants had to do everything with physical paper until the internet revolutionized the process, allowing students to apply faster and to more colleges with less effort. 

AI’s ability to automate a lot of the processes has that same potential, and in some cases, has already helped students and admissions officers. The rules are still being written in real-time as colleges navigate the AI landscape and students find new ways to use AI.

For the time being, the best practice is not to rely on AI for personal essays, and to check colleges' AI policies before applying.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.