Why ChatGPT Writes the Same Essay

Hey guys, it’s Eric at Solution Prep and today I’m telling you why ChatGPT keeps writing the same college application essays. It is allowed and ethical to use ChatGPT and other AI programs as tools to help you brainstorm ideas for essays or to edit your essay, maybe give you suggestions on what other parts you could be developing. But it is not ethical to just copy and paste a college’s essay prompt into ChatGPT and let it write your whole application essay for you. And not only is it not ethical, it does you a huge disservice because it’s going to write the same essay for you that it does for everyone else with that same clever idea.

In fact, some colleges are now starting to use AI to read college application essays, at least for that first pass. And when they see your essay is the same as everyone else’s, you’re not going to stand out. And if they think AI wrote it, they’re going to put you straight into the trash. So to explain this, we’re going to do a little bit of an experiment today. Let’s check it out.

So, I go to ChatGPT and I tell it what I want it to write about. I’m 17 and feel more mature now that I have a driver’s license. I ask it to write a 600-word college application essay about that to answer this question. And then I paste in one of the seven Common App prompts about a moment of realization that sparked a new period of growth or understanding of yourself or others. And getting a driver’s license is a pretty common topic. So, I’m going to copy it and I’m going to paste it right here into a Google Doc. And I’m going to label it Essay 1.

But at the bottom, I’m making space for essay 2 because now I’m going to do it again. I’m going to write it a little bit differently. Getting my driver’s license has made me feel more like an adult. Another way of phrasing the same idea, but again, I’m asking it to write a 600-word essay. The max is 650, so 600 is kind of a safe college application essay about that to answer this prompt. And again, I’m pasting in the same Common App prompt.

So, we have the same topic, we have the same prompt, and now it’s writing another essay. I’ll copy that. I’ll paste it back into my Google Doc for essay 2. But then a fun thing that you can have ChatGPT do, and you’d better bet that AI detecting AI bots are doing is comparing these two essays. So, I’m going to ask it to tell me what percent the same these essays are. And then I can just paste both essays into ChatGPT. And the first thing it does is it tells me what makes them similar. Both this, both that, both something else. Then it shows me the differences. You know, this focus is more here, that focus is more there. But at the end, the conclusion tells me this is 75-80% the same.

So, do be careful that if you think you can just give it a general topic and then feed in the same prompt everyone else is, your topic’s not as original as you think and you’re going to wind up writing the same Common App essay. All ChatGPT does is predict the next word and the next word and the next word based on all the data that it’s been fed for the history of human writing. So, if you give it the same question, it’s going to give you the same answer.

So yes, you can use AI as a tool, but don’t over rely on it to write your essay for you.

And if you need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 732-556-8220. We are here to help.