The most popular C-position in the study abroad circle recently is ChatGPT. As a language model developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT’s excellent performance in text generation has greatly helped international students whose native language is not the local language. When it comes to writing emails, translating and understanding text, and even writing code, ChatGPT seems invincible. Many students have also come up with this idea. Can they use it to write applications for studying abroad?
Before knowing how the admissions officer will reply, let’s first take a look at what exactly is ChatGPT?
What is ChatGPT?
"Essentially speaking, ChatGPT is a generative large-scale language model." Gao Xinbo, a member of the Chinese Artificial Intelligence Society and president of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, explained that GPT is a generative pre-training converter based on the Internet. Text generation deep learning models trained on available data. This kind of artificial intelligence has been around for a long time, but the emergence of ChatGPT means that the development stage of artificial intelligence has advanced from the reasoning and judgment that everyone paid more attention to in the past (such as face recognition, driverless driving) to the generation of language, text, At the stage of drawing or even chatting, “ChatGPT is better able to understand the ambiguity of human language and answer personalized questions than ordinary search engines.”
Can it be used to write application essays?
Although ChatGPT is indeed a very interesting and powerful artificial intelligence, it cannot replace us in writing application documents for studying abroad.
The official website of the University of Michigan Law School states this:
Translation: Please note that for all written submissions we expect them to be the applicant's own work, meaning that the ideas and wording of the article should originate from the applicant, and that all drafts and final submissions should be written by the applicant themselves. . Applicants may not use ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence tools during the drafting process.
In early December last year, the world-renowned scientific magazine Nature also published a related article, expressing concerns that ChatGPT has become a tool for students to write essays and cheat on exams.
Public school systems in New York and Seattle in the United States have ordered a complete ban on ChatGPT on school Wi-Fi networks and devices, and some school districts in France and India have also banned the use of ChatGPT.
哈佛大学原邮件回复：“A student's essay should reflect their own content, writing style, and English proficiency. Also, a student will need to be able to affirm this statement when submitting their application: I certify that all information submitted in the admission process - including this application and any other supporting materials - is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented. We are aware of ChatGPT and other ways students can fraudulently create essays or pass off another's work as their own. Doing so violates Common Application standards and the Harvard College Honor Code. ”
Translation: "Students' essays should reflect their own content, writing style, and English proficiency. Additionally, students need to be able to confirm this statement when submitting their application: I certify all information submitted during the admissions process - including this application and any other support Materials - are all my own work, factually and honestly presented. We are aware of ChatGPT and other ways in which students can fraudulently write essays or pass off the work of others as their own. Doing so violates the Common Application Criteria and Harvard University Code of Honor.”
芝加哥大学原邮件回复：“I would strongly encourage you to avoid using artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, to write or proofread your college essay. The very best college essays come from the students who are being genuine, and true to themselves, not the ones written or edited by AI. I would encourage you to use other resources such as your teachers, counselors, or other online resources if you need help proofreading or correcting grammar. ”
Translation: "I strongly recommend that you avoid using artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT) to write or proofread your college essay. The best college essays come from students who are sincere and committed to themselves, rather than having an AI edit or ghostwrite the essay . If If you need help proofreading or correcting grammar, I encourage you to use other resources, such as your teacher, tutor, or other online resources.”
Therefore, judging from the responses received by various universities so far, most universities strongly disagree with the use of ChaGPT in documents. Although some universities have not clearly expressed their attitude, the suggestions they give are that they hope students can express their thoughts, which tend to disagree with the use of ChatGPT.
Why ChatGPT Can't Replace Human Writing
The reason why it is not recommended to use ChatGPT to write essays is not only officially not recommended by major schools, but also because ChatGPT cannot complete this task well. Let us look at four ways in which ChatGPT has a negative impact on college admissions essays .
#1: ChatGPT lacks insight
When brainstorming essays, we dig into what's special about your classmates' experiences and use unexpected or slightly unusual topics because they can help the admissions committee learn more about you and what makes you unique.
But ChatGPT does not understand these unique features of you, so the essay written by ChatGPT cannot accurately reflect your experience, passion or future goals, which is the soul of an excellent essay.
#2: ChatGPT information is not updated in time
ChatGPT was trained based on OpenAI’s corpus data before September 2021, which means that the knowledge information used by ChatGPT is likely to be outdated now. For time-sensitive tasks such as studying abroad applications, the specific requirements of schools and projects may change each application season, and ChatGPT cannot make targeted adjustments based on the latest situation.
In fact, pre-training models will have such problems. The topic of continuous learning, that is, how to maintain the memory of old knowledge while learning new information, is still one of the hot topics in academic research. Even if there are newer language models in the future, due to knowledge limitations, they will not be fully responsible for students' study abroad document writing.
#3: ChatGPT doesn’t understand emotions
ChatGPT cannot experience or imitate emotions, so its writing is impersonal!
An excellent application essay will explore an experience or topic that you are truly interested in or proud of, and show the students' exploration process of a certain field. These contents should be full of rich personal emotions. This is your chance to show your dream school what you have accomplished and how you will continue to grow and learn. An emotionless essay will look strange and fail to impress admissions officers.
#4: ChatGPT produces mediocre results
If students still want to know how effective the documents generated by ChatGPT are in actual applications, Forbes magazine has already conducted experiments for you.
They tried asking ChatGPT to write two American undergraduate application essays. ChatGPT completed the writing within 10 minutes, and performed well in both language expression and logic.
However, when the essays were handed over to admissions officers from different universities, they all agreed that, assuming the admissions committee had not used artificial intelligence detection software, the two essays might have been considered to have been written by real students, but they were both very mediocre and lacked Personality and emotion do not gain traction on admissions committees.
Therefore, there is no denying the power of ChatGPT, but when it comes to college application essay writing, ChatGPT cannot completely replace human work.