Amid an academic year defined by the installation of an inexperienced chancellor, the removal of the student-run honor court, the extermination of DEI initiatives and more, the University and its Board of Trustees have proven to be untrustworthy yet again, this time in the application process.
The Daily Tar Heel recently published an article exposing the use of AI in the UNC admissions process. It revealed that there is no legal obligation for admissions officers to read essays for undergraduate application review; instead, they have implemented AI-infused software to summarize essays. The technology, Reader AI, automatically scores essays based on grammar, vocabulary, sentence variability, sentence structure and more. The admissions department does not allow AI use in applications, yet their review process heavily relies on it.
While admissions strictly prohibit the use of artificial intelligence in application essays, the punishments for utilizing AI as a student are even stronger — students are often punished with referrals to Honor Court. The justification for this is indicated by the tendency of AI to fabricate statistics and sources and the disingenuous claim of self-created writing. For admissions officers to even use a tool that frequently misreads and relays inaccuracies to the reader threatens every applicant’s chance of admission. Until AI is further developed and reliable, it should hold no significant place in determining students’ futures.
UNC places heavy importance on the essay section of the application. Applicants write one general Common App essay question in addition to two short answer prompts specific to UNC. The first prompt asks applicants to discuss a personal quality and a story that shows how it helped them to positively impact a community. The second asks about an academic topic applicants are excited to explore in college.
Applicants who adhere to admissions guidelines on the use of AI can spend months brainstorming and writing authentic responses that demonstrate who they are and why they should be accepted to UNC. They attempt to capture their human experiences in hopes to connect with another human on the other side of the application. Applicants are rewarded by having those experiences shoved through a computer and boiled down to a number.
While the effort to make increasingly-larger applicant pools more palatable is normal, admissions officers and University higher-ups must consider more holistic ways of doing that. That could mean hiring new officers, changing the process by which applicants are reviewed or even shortening applications. If they don’t read main application essays, should they be included at all?
Under the same issue, the UNC Board of Trustees offers backalleys to admission. Text messages between prospective students’ parents and their BOT connections show repeated attempts from individuals to use familiarity with trustees to have applicants admitted. While letters of recommendation are accepted, this bypasses the supposedly universal process of admissions, unfairly advantaging those in powerful circles.
Regardless of intention, even mere inquiries into the status of a UNC applicant inevitably bring attention to the potential student –– prompting an unfair second look by an admissions officer. This is inexcusable given admission is supposed to be purely based on merit. Furthermore, the advantageous attention of a BOT member becomes exponentially more impactful for students relegated to the waitlist, given the slim chances of waitlisted admission. For UNC, this is estimated to be under ten percent for out-of-state applicants and under five for in-state applicants.
The crux of the issue lies in the UNC Board of Governors incessant emphasis on removing all DEI efforts in favor of creating a preference-free, merit-based system. These leaked messages give us concrete confirmation that merit is not the absolute object and, with the right ties to higher-ups in the University system, applicants may be admitted even if they are not competitive with others in the applicant pool.
