Updated: Tuesday, November 10, 2026
By Anthony, IvyWise College Admissions Counselor
From business to healthcare to manufacturing, hardly an industry remains untouched by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Whether you’re an AI enthusiast or you’re sounding the alarm, there’s no doubt AI is rapidly changing the world. The field of higher education, usually slower to change than most industries, is no exception.
If you’re a counselor who follows higher education news, you’ve likely heard how AI is changing the admissions landscape. If you’re a student learning about your upcoming college application process, you’ve probably already encountered AI through chatbots on college websites, or maybe you’ve already used it in your college search. According to a 2026 EAB survey of 11,000 students, half reported using AI for college research, and 60% said that AI made their college search easier. Either way, AI is changing how students and colleges approach application season.
Here, we’ll explore how AI influences the way colleges reach new students, determine authenticity in college essays, and even review applications. While AI’s role continues to evolve along with the technology and attitudes toward it, keep in mind that, at least for now, the college admissions process remains human driven.
When it comes to outreach, AI chatbots have emerged as tools to help prospective applicants navigate labyrinthine admission websites. While less likely to make headlines, chatbots seem to be one of the most widespread uses of AI — and, in my view, one of the most benign. Any tool that cuts through barriers to information access and levels the application playing field is welcome.
On the operations backend, mostly invisible to anyone outside an admission office, application management systems like Slate and Element45 have also adopted AI. Slate, which supports over 2,000 colleges in managing applications and outreach, offers AI features that do everything from speeding up responses to student inquiries to sorting through the thousands of applications and data received annually.
While there’s no telling exactly how many Slate partner schools use these features, the tools themselves demonstrate an appetite for efficiency. That’s no surprise: Colleges have a lot of data to sort through and a fixed, relatively short window to make sense of it. Here, AI has more than proven it can speed up tasks like organizing a spreadsheet or answering questions about average class sizes.
Next, let’s look at AI’s more complex role in application review. In 2023, Intelligent, an education-focused online magazine, published a survey of over 300 higher education professionals. They found that 50% of respondents had begun using AI, and another 30% expected to start the following year. This means a staggering 80% of those surveyed are likely using AI now. At the time, over 70% of those using AI applied it to reviewing transcripts and letters of recommendation, and 60% used it in essay review.
I do want to caution that while respondents reported using AI on these parts of the application, it’s not clear exactly how it was employed or how it affected the role of the human reader. Still, the prevalence is shocking. And because this survey remains one of the few benchmarks of AI use in application review, it’s difficult to know whether its projection has held true or just how embedded AI has become.
One way to better understand AI’s role in application review is to take a closer look at the tools being developed. Alongside its chatbot and data query optimizers, Slate offers an AI reading tool that, among other features, can summarize essays and letters of recommendation for readers. Schools that use these tools certainly qualify as using AI in their review, but the tools’ features keep AI squarely in a supporting role — assisting human readers, not replacing them.
That said, just because Slate’s AI tools are solely assistive doesn’t mean others aren’t being developed to replace human readers. Some tools already gauge essay strength independently by assessing grammar, mechanics, sophistication, and even content — traditionally the job of admission readers.
Last year, in one of the most transparent and unprecedented developments, Virginia Tech announced an overhaul of its reading process to include AI in essay review. After just three years of development, its trained AI earned enough confidence to replace what had been a second round of human review. Still, this radical change comes with safeguards. According to Juan Espinoza, Vice Provost for Enrollment Management at Virginia Tech, if the AI and human reviewer’s ratings differed by two points, another human reviewer would be brought in as a tiebreaker. Even with AI publicly cemented in its process, Virginia Tech keeps human evaluation at the center: A committee still makes final selections, and at least one human reader scores every essay.
From the most conservative uses of AI in essay review to Virginia Tech’s approach, humans still determine admissions decisions in holistic review. But as AI becomes more prevalent, conversations about adequate safeguards, AI replicating years of bias, security, data privacy, and the loss of human empathy in evaluation become more necessary.
Access to AI hasn’t just changed how colleges review applications; it has also changed how students approach the college admission process, from researching different schools to writing college essays. That last shift poses a real challenge for colleges, which have traditionally looked to essays to hear students’ authentic voices and assess their writing ability and character.
How widely students use AI to write college essays is difficult to judge, but their use of it in schoolwork offers a valuable proxy. A 2025 CollegeBoard study reported that 84% of high schoolers use AI in their coursework, and a meta survey summary by Campbell Academic Technology Services found similar rates in separate studies conducted in 2024 and 2025.
As AI usage climbs, you might expect colleges to lean on AI detectors. So, are they lining up to screen applicants with GPTZero or Turnitin? By and large, no. While some of these tools boast near-perfect detection rates — if their marketing is to be believed — clear mistakes, such as falsely flagging the Declaration of Independence or essays by non-native English speakers as AI-generated, don’t inspire the confidence colleges need.
Instead, colleges have taken varied approaches. Most schools don’t have an explicit AI policy and instead lean on the built-in fraud policy of the Common App. In particular, admission offices rely on its plagiarism language, which bars students from presenting AI-generated content as their own. Schools including Bowdoin and Caltech have released best practices to guide usage. And some colleges go a step beyond the Common App policy, requiring applicants to affirm that their work is their own and that AI wasn’t used in their application.
As we all brave these unprecedented changes, you might be wondering, “What does this mean for me?” If you’re a high schooler reading this article to prepare for the application process, chances are you or your friends are thinking about using AI.
Whatever you decide, follow the policies of both the Common App and each school you apply to. Most schools allow AI for essay brainstorming and simple grammar and spell checks; the problem starts when AI earns co-authorship. One valuable test comes from Caltech’s AI best practices: “If you are still wondering whether your use of AI in crafting your application is ethical, ask yourself whether it would be ethical to have a trusted adult perform the same task you are asking of ChatGPT.” After all, editing and asking for feedback existed long before AI.
I’d also caution against using AI to write your essays because schools are still looking for your genuine voice. While these tools can write a grammatically correct response, they are no substitute for the lived experience and perspectives you bring. AI isn’t trained to produce the reflective, narrative-driven writing that stands out in college applications. It favors uniformity over sentence variety and falls short of capturing the nuanced perspectives each of us holds.
In fact, a study from Cornell directly comparing AI-written college essays to students’ found that the AI essays were more similar to one another and distinctly different from those written by students. In other words, they were more generic and notably dissimilar to the writing of a 17- or 18-year-old. So, if you want the strongest application possible, don’t be quick to trade your unique voice and writing style for AI’s.
If you’re looking to approach the college admission process with more clarity and guidance, IvyWise can help. Contact us to set up an Initial Consultation with an IvyWise counselor.
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