Admission essays and AI: what admissions offices say, and what reads as you

1What admissions offices have said

The clearest published guidance in the UK comes from UCAS, which runs undergraduate applications. Its guide says:

• Generating all or a large part of a personal statement with an AI tool and presenting it as your own words could be considered cheating by universities and colleges, and could affect your chances of an offer.
• Applicants now declare that their personal statement has not been copied or provided from another source, including artificial intelligence software.
• Its verification team runs checks for fraudulent applications and patterns of similarity, and universities may be notified of statements that resemble others.
• AI can be useful if used correctly: to brainstorm ideas, to suggest structure, and to check readability.

UCAS also advises checking whether individual universities have their own guidance. In the US and elsewhere, colleges and application platforms set their own rules, so read the instructions for each application.

2What reads as you

UCAS's guide makes the point with examples: an AI-written opening about being "fascinated by the intricate workings of the legal system" says nothing personal, while a sentence naming the specific book that sparked an interest, or what the applicant saw on a work placement, could only come from that person.

That is the test for every sentence. Could another applicant have written it? If so, replace it with something only you could say: a particular moment, a specific book or project, what you did and what you learned.

3A last check before you submit

Read your statement aloud and ask these questions of every paragraph:

• Does it name something specific: a book, a project, a job, a moment?
• Does it say what you did and what you learned, not just what you felt?
• Could you talk about it for five minutes in an interview?
• Would a teacher who knows you recognise your voice?
• Is anything in it untrue, exaggerated or borrowed?

UCAS notes that anything you mention may need to be discussed or evidenced. A statement you wrote yourself, about things you actually did, passes that test without effort. One assembled from suggestions does not.

Also check the practical rules: the character limit, the format your application uses this year, and any extra questions individual universities ask.

4Brainstorming and editing within the rules

Uses that stay on the right side of UCAS's guidance:

• Asking for a list of skills relevant to your course, then choosing the ones you can show with your own examples.
• Asking for possible structures, then writing every section yourself.
• Asking where a draft you wrote is hard to read, then fixing it in your own words.

UCAS adds two cautions: check everything a tool suggests, especially facts, and never copy its text into your final statement. Also think about privacy: UCAS notes that some tools may use what you enter to train their models.

For feedback that keeps the draft yours, see AI feedback on drafts; for general drafting rules, drafting with ChatGPT; for structure, essay structure; and for university coursework rules, how to read your university's AI policy.

More on this in AI and writing.

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