Latest news with #PennStateBeaver
Boston Globe
09-04-2025
- Boston Globe
Students are using AI to write scholarship essays. Does it work?
'They felt a little bit sterile,' said Geiger, the cofounder and CEO of a company called Scholarships360, an online platform used by more than 300,000 students last year to find and apply for scholarships. Related : Advertisement Curious, Scholarships360 staffers deployed AI-detection software called GPTZero. It checked almost 1,000 essays submitted for one scholarship and determined that about 42 percent of them had likely been composed with the help of generative AI. With college acceptances beginning to roll in for high school seniors, and juniors starting to brainstorm the essays they'll submit with their applications in the fall, Geiger is concerned. When students use AI to help write their essays, he said, they are wasting a valuable opportunity. 'The essay is one of the few opportunities in the admissions process for a student to communicate directly with a scholarship committee or with an admissions reader,' Geiger said. 'That provides a really powerful opportunity to share who you are as a person, and I don't think that an AI tool is able to do that.' Advertisement Madelyn Ronk, a 20-year-old student at Penn State Beaver, said she never considered using ChatGPT to write the personal statement required for her transfer application from community college last year. A self-described Goody Two-shoes, she didn't want to get in trouble. But there was another reason: She didn't want to turn in the same essay as anyone else. 'I want to be unique. I feel like when people use AI constantly, it just gives the same answer to every single person,' said Ronk, who wrote her essay about volunteering for charitable organizations in her hometown. 'I would like my answer to be me. So I don't use AI.' Geiger said students' fears about submitting a generic essay are valid — they're less likely to get scholarships that way. But that doesn't mean they have to avoid generative AI altogether. Some companies offer services to help students use AI to improve their work, rather than to cheat — such as getting help writing an outline, using proper grammar or making points effectively. Generative AI can proofread an essay, and can even tell a student whether their teacher is likely to flag it as AI-assisted. Related : Packback, for example, is an online platform whose AI software can chat with students and give feedback as they are writing. The bot might flag grammatical errors or the use of passive voice or whether students are digressing from their point. Craig Booth, the company's chief technology officer, said the software is designed to introduce students to ethical uses of AI. A Advertisement Not all scholarship providers or colleges have policies on exactly how AI can or cannot be used in prospective student essays. For example, Tools like GPTZero aren't reliable 100 percent of the time. The Markup, a news outlet focused on technology, reported on a study that found Because detection software isn't always accurate, Geiger said, Scholarships360 doesn't base scholarship decisions on whether essays were flagged as being generated by AI. But, he said, many of the students whose essays were flagged weren't awarded a given scholarship because 'if your writing is being mistaken for AI,' whether you used the technology or not, for a scholarship or admissions essay, 'it's probably going to be missing the mark.' Jonah O'Hara, who serves as chair of the admissions practices committee at the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, said that using AI isn't 'inherently evil,' but colleges and scholarship providers need to be transparent about their expectations and students need to disclose when they're using it and for what. Advertisement O'Hara, who is director of college counseling at Rocky Hill Country Day School in Rhode Island, said that he has always discouraged students from using a thesaurus in writing college application essays, or using any words that aren't normal for them. 'If you don't use 'hegemony' and 'parsimonious' in text messages with your friends, then why would you use it in an essay to college? That's not you,' O'Hara said. 'If you love the way polysyllabic words roll off your tongue, then, of course, if it's your voice, then use it.' Generative AI is, functionally, the latest evolution of the thesaurus, and O'Hara wonders whether it has 'put a shelf life on the college essay.' There was a time when some professors offered self-scheduled, unproctored take-home exams, O'Hara recalled. Students had to sign an honor statement promising that everything they submitted was their own work. But the onus was on the professors to write cheat-proof exams. O'Hara said if the college essay is going to survive, he thinks this is the direction administrators will have to go. 'If we get to a point where colleges cannot confidently determine [its] authenticity,' he said, 'then they may abandon it entirely.' This story about was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the .
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Using ChatGPT to Write Your College Essay Won't Help You Get Into Your School of Choice
DragonImages This story about generative AI was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Will Geiger estimates that he read about 10,000 college application essays over the course of a years-long career in college admissions and scholarships before ChatGPT came on the scene in 2022. Shortly afterwards, Geiger began to notice that essays felt less and less like they had been written by 17- or 18-year-olds. He saw more hyperorganized five-paragraph essays; more essays that were formatted as a letter to someone; and certain examples and words being used over and over again by different students. Geiger began to see less humanity shining through and more instances of words — like 'cornerstone' and 'bedrock' — that are not commonly used by typical teenagers. 'They felt a little bit sterile,' said Geiger, the cofounder and CEO of a company called Scholarships360, an online platform used by more than 300,000 students last year to find and apply for scholarships. AI and College Admissions Essays: Don't Rely on ChatGPT to Write Your College Essay *This op-ed makes the case that students are smarter, more original, and more interesting than a computer.* Curious, Scholarships360 staffers deployed AI-detection software called GPTZero. It checked almost 1,000 essays submitted for one scholarship and determined that about 42 percent of them had likely been composed with the help of generative AI. With college acceptances beginning to roll in for high school seniors, and juniors starting to brainstorm the essays they'll submit with their applications in the fall, Geiger is concerned. When students use AI to help write their essays, he said, they are wasting a valuable opportunity. 'The essay is one of the few opportunities in the admissions process for a student to communicate directly with a scholarship committee or with an admissions reader,' Geiger said. 'That provides a really powerful opportunity to share who you are as a person, and I don't think that an AI tool is able to do that.' Madelyn Ronk, a 20-year-old student at Penn State Beaver, said she never considered using ChatGPT to write the personal statement required for her transfer application from community college last year. A self-described Goody Two-shoes, she didn't want to get in trouble. But there was another reason: She didn't want to turn in the same essay as anyone else. 'I want to be unique. I feel like when people use AI constantly, it just gives the same answer to every single person,' said Ronk, who wrote her essay about volunteering for charitable organizations in her hometown. 'I would like my answer to be me. So I don't use AI.' Geiger said students' fears about submitting a generic essay are valid — they're less likely to get scholarships that way. But that doesn't mean they have to avoid generative AI altogether. Some companies offer services to help students use AI to improve their work, rather than to cheat — such as getting help writing an outline, using proper grammar or making points effectively. Generative AI can proofread an essay, and can even tell a student whether their teacher is likely to flag it as AI-assisted. PackBack, for example, is an online platform whose software can chat with students and give feedback as they are writing. The bot might flag grammatical errors or the use of passive voice or whether students are digressing from their point. Craig Booth, the company's chief technology officer, said the software is designed to introduce students to ethical uses of AI. A 2024 survey of college applicants found that about 50 percent had used AI for brainstorming essays, 47 percent had used it to create an outline, and about 20 percent had used it to generate first drafts. Not all scholarship providers or colleges have policies on exactly how AI can or cannot be used in prospective student essays. For example, Common App forbids the use of generative AI but doesn't check individual essays unless someone files a report of suspected fraud. Jackson Sternberg, a spokesperson for Common App, declined to share how many reports of fraud they get each year or how they handle their investigations. Related: Tools like GPTZero aren't reliable 100 percent of the time. The Markup, a news outlet focused on technology, reported on a study that found writing by non-native-English speakers is far more likely to get flagged as being AI-generated than writing by native English speakers. And several other studies have found that the accuracy rates of such tools vary widely. Because detection software isn't always accurate, Geiger said, Scholarships360 doesn't base scholarship decisions on whether essays were flagged as being generated by AI. But, he said, many of the students whose essays were flagged weren't awarded a given scholarship because 'if your writing is being mistaken for AI,' whether you used the technology or not, for a scholarship or admissions essay, 'it's probably going to be missing the mark.' Jonah O'Hara, who serves as chair of the admissions practices committee at the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, said that using AI isn't 'inherently evil,' but colleges and scholarship providers need to be transparent about their expectations and students need to disclose when they're using it and for what. Colleges that are using AI in the admissions review process also need to be transparent about that with prospective students, he said. O'Hara, who is director of college counseling at Rocky Hill Country Day School in Rhode Island, said that he has always discouraged students from using a thesaurus in writing college application essays, or using any words that aren't normal for them. 'If you don't use 'hegemony' and 'parsimonious' in text messages with your friends, then why would you use it in an essay to college? That's not you,' O'Hara said. 'If you love the way polysyllabic words roll off your tongue, then, of course, if it's your voice, then use it.' Related: Generative AI is, functionally, the latest evolution of the thesaurus, and O'Hara wonders whether it has 'put a shelf life on the college essay.' There was a time when some professors offered self-scheduled, unproctored take-home exams, O'Hara recalled. Students had to sign an honor statement promising that everything they submitted was their own work. But the onus was on the professors to write cheat-proof exams. O'Hara said if the college essay is going to survive, he thinks this is the direction administrators will have to go. 'If we get to a point where colleges cannot confidently determine [its] authenticity,' he said, 'then they may abandon it entirely.' Contact staff writer Olivia Sanchez at 212-678-8402 or osanchez@ Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue Check out more Teen Vogue education coverage: Affirmative Action Benefits White Women Most How Our Obsession With Trauma Took Over College Essays So Many People With Student Debt Never Graduated College The Modern American University Is a Right-Wing Institution
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Penn State evaluating the future of 12 branch campuses, including 5 in Western Pennsylvania
Penn State University is evaluating the future of 12 of its smallest branch campuses. President Neeli Bendapudi issued a public statement saying the closures would come after the 2026-27 school year. Among the schools on the chopping block are five local branches: Beaver, Fayette, Greater Allegheny, Shenango and New Kensington. Beaver is the largest branch being considered, with just under 500 students enrolled. 'We were surprised Penn State Beaver was going to be on the list,' Beaver County Commissioner Daniel Camp told Channel 11. 'It's definitely an asset to the community.' The Beaver branch has been operating since the 1960s. Camp says it's not just college students that benefit, but the community in general. 'Not only will it affect our community with the businesses, but they also take an active role in our youth [...] they do summer camps,' Camp said. 'I think it'd be a little devastating to be shut down,' freshman Penn State Beaver student Hayden Bender said. 'Hopefully, it doesn't get shut down. I'm planning to do all four years here so that would cut into my time.' Faculty members are also reacting. 'It was really a surprise to us. We hadn't had any advance warning,' Dr. Becky Morrow said. She's a veterinarian and teaches biology and forensic science at the New Kensington branch. 'There's a great faculty-to-student ratio. You get to see students in multiple classes. We do real research with our students,' Morrow said. She's concerned about how shutting down could impact some students who may not have other options. 'We're really trying to be there for them and support them. We'll worry about ourselves and our livelihoods, but we're here for the students,' she said. 'We're more than just numbers. We're serving the students. We're serving the commonwealth.' 'We understand that they have to take a deep dive into every branch campus and we're hopeful Penn State Beaver is not going to be one of the names listed at the end of the day,' Camp said. According to Penn State's president, the final decision should be made by Spring commencement. The rest of the president's statement can be found by clicking here. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
