College applications have traditionally placed teenagers in a difficult situation. Caught in a raging scrum of hormones, questions of identity, doubts, and confusion about the future, they’re asked to expatiate on issues of the greatest import when all they’d really like to do is run screaming into the woods and forget the whole civilization thing. Tarzan didn’t need school and he’s okay, right? (Edgar Rice Burroughs reference. AI or human?)
Today’s teens are being asked to do something stranger, something that borders on the surreal, something students before them never had to confront: Prove you’re not AI.
Recent college application essay prompts include “Share something only you could write” and “Tell us why a bot couldn’t have created this.” AI has turned an anxiety-producing task into a bizarre authenticity contest.
It’s the latest fallout from the explosion of AI writing tools, and it’s turning the already miserable college-essay process into a bizarre authenticity contest.
The New Essay Prompt: “Be Human, But Prove It”
Since there’s no way of escaping AI, colleges have decided to live with it. They can’t stop students from using the technology but they can require students to demonstrate their “humanity” more convincingly. Admissions officers interviewed by outlets like Inside Higher Ed say they’re now using prompts that lean on personal storytelling and the kind of reflections that AI doesn’t handle well…yet.
Sounds good. Does it work? Ah, there’s the rub. (Hamlet reference. AI or human?) College counselors report that students are terrified of sounding “too polished,” “too structured,” or “too grown-up,” fearing false positives from AI-detection software.
Complicating matters is the fact that educators know those tools aren’t exactly reliable. Stanford researchers reveal that most AI detectors systematically mislabel essays by multilingual and non-privileged students.
AI detectors also consistently flag short sentences, emotional honesty, or clean grammar as “machine-generated.” Ernest Hemingway would find him in a real pickle. (Hemingway reference. AI or human?) Students have to guess which parts of their own writing make them sound like themselves and which make them sound like ChatGPT.
AI Policies Aren’t the Problem, The Surveillance Is
You can’t blame schools for cracking down on non-human material. Pew Research Center reports that 1-in-5 teens has used AI to help with schoolwork.
Many institutions responded with paranoia and punishment when an open discussion of AI ethics would have been infinitely more useful. As Inside Higher Ed tells it, some high-school teachers now require in-class handwriting to “prove authenticity,” turning part of the writing process into an interrogation.
Talk about mixed messages. Students are told to “be creative,” while the adults are scanning their work for signs of glib, soulless machinery.
Even that’s problematic. Some admissions officers can’t even agree on how to evaluate suspected AI use. Some ignore it. Others treat it like plagiarism.
Gen Z’s Responding The Only Way Gen Z Knows How
TikTok is bulging with take-downs of AI-proof prompts like “show your humanity.” One viral video shows a student writing, “Here is the moment I realized I do, in fact, have a soul.” Another: “I am not a robot because I’ve cried in the school bathroom at least twelve times this semester.”
Real tears lurk under the sarcasm. College admissions already fostered anxiety, competition, and churned-up emotions. Adding an AI-morality test doesn’t make students better writers. It makes them more suspicious. More guarded. Less able to easily express themselves truthfully and accurately…to prove they’re – you know – human.
What Admissions Offices Truly Want
They won’t admit it, but what Colleges want is simple: a window into someone’s real inner world, not a slick piece of nice-sounding but meaningless phraseology that smacks of the generic and the robotic.
Human writing has individual rhythms, specific details, and perspectives that can only come from the person who possesses them. It’s quirky. It jumps, it leaps, it surprises – qualities that admissions essays should always have. Thanks to AI, colleges have yet another reason to insist on those qualities showing up.
How To Write An Essay That Doesn’t Read Like A Bot
- Use details that would never appear in a dataset
- Describe something you misremembered, machines don’t misremember
- Write a sentence your English teacher wouldn’t approve of
- Let something be imperfect
- Add an emotion you never planned to reveal
If you can tell, so can an admissions officer. Maybe the future of the college essay isn’t about proving you’re human — it’s about remembering you’ve been a unique individual the entire time.
Can You Tell Which Sentences Are Human vs AI?
A crucial skill for students, teachers, and admissions teams is simple, recognizing real voice.
Check it out, which of the following sentences are written by a human and which are AI generated?
- “I didn’t realized I wanted to study biology until I accidentally killed the class fern and felt bad for an entire week.”
- “My passion for leadership has guided me to pursue opportunities that reflect my dedication to community impact.”
- “The bus driver always turned up the radio when it rained, like the sound made her less alone.”
- “Throughout my academic journey, I have consistently demonstrated resilience and a commitment to excellence.”
Answers: Human, 1 & 3. AI like, 2 & 4.
