My family is praying for peace in the Holy Land, and I think this is a good insight.
I want to pick up two ideas from previous posts. One is that admission officers’ labor is a cost to colleges. Smart organizations reduce costs where they can.
The second point is about AI in college admission. Last winter, I had daycare viruses several weeks running and wrote a (literally) fevered post musing about how “robots are cheaper than admissions officers.” It was a prophetic Substack fever dream, or maybe one that diagnosed an emerging reality.
AIs are reviewing applications…
Intelligent.com, an advice site for college students and applicants (what a URL, right?), ran a survey last month.
Intelligent asked admission officers at colleges and private high school about whether and how they use AI in admission. The answer is that about half of them already do and more than a quarter plan to in the next two years. AI is already here.
…and making decisions
The survey results are a little muddled here, because Intelligent mixed the results for high school and college admission offices, but imperfect numbers are better than no numbers.
These results were surprising to me. 44 percent of respondents say AIs “always” make the final admission decision, and 43 percent said they “sometimes” do. Wild! Those 44 percent have materially automated the application reading process, maybe almost entirely. I bet these automated decisions are largely to reject applicants, with some further human review for the acceptances.
How are admission offices using AI?
Again, not perfect insight here, because Intelligent again mixed the results for high school and college admission offices.
It looks like the tasks most often delegated to an AI are reading transcripts and letters of recommendation, with fair bit of essay review too. The accompanying article makes it sound like the “conduct interviews” and “communicate with applicants” tasks are really just chatbots asking and answering basic questions.
What does that mean for your kid?
You need to understand the secret hoops so your kid can jump through them.
This has always been true, but now it will be even more mechanically true as AIs conduct more of the admission process. An admission officer will tell an AI what to look for, and off it will go.
Here’s an example. If you’ve worked with me one-on-one or taken my online class on academics, you know that the first round of admission is the auto-cull. It removes from the pool kids whose grades and test scores fall short of a given school’s thresholds, their essays usually unread.
Now, instead of a temp culling those applications, it will be an (implacable, emotionless) AI. So, your kid should not waste time applying to colleges where his or her grades and test scores fall below that threshold. There is an opportunity cost to each application.
How to know if your kid clears that threshold at a given college? Take my online class on making the list or book a one-on-one session.
Another example: I expect that many colleges will tell their transcript-reading AI to look for the string “AP Calculus” as it zips through them.
I can guess what it will mean for essays. Today, I advise my clients to blend what I call “NPR appeal” with the essay traits that signal intelligence. If more admission officers cede essay reading responsibility to AIs, NPR appeal may be less important.
There are more consequences for extracurriculars, academics, essays, and letters of recommendation. To optimize your kid’s college applications for AI review, you can book a one-on-one session here. I look forward to working with your family!