What Does It Mean to Use an LLM for a "Personal Statement"?

"I've now seen multiple anecdotal reports on social media (and also in my email inbox) of faculty on graduate admission committees across different subjects remarking that they think students are making significant use of large language models in drafting their personal statements. This feels dismaying, particularly in disciplines like creative writing and English, where we would expect students to take some interest and pride in their own unique expression."

"Rather than blaming this on defective students, I think we're incentivizing this kind of behavior, the same way we retain incentives for students to complete homework with large language model outputs. From the beginning I've argued that one of the chief benefits of large language models is that their capacity to mimic human outputs gives us an opportunity to consider more closely what we actually want from writing that is supposed to come from humans working as humans."

"With the personal statement, students don't have a firm idea of what they're being asked to do and what the audience might want in the piece of writing. The personal statement is a strange and unfamiliar genre to most of the people tackling them. The desirable end to the transaction-admission-is clear, but the communication that would result i"

Faculty report widespread student use of large language models to draft graduate personal statements across disciplines. Students often confront the personal statement as a strange, unfamiliar genre without clear expectations or understanding of audience. Institutional incentives prioritize successful admission outcomes over authentic human expression, which encourages reliance on model-generated text. In creative fields, this undermines opportunities for students to demonstrate individual voice and craft. The mimicry capability of large language models highlights a chance to reassess what admissions committees value from human-authored writing. Aligning prompts, evaluation criteria, and incentives could encourage genuine student-produced statements.

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