New Product Feature: ScholarshipOwl Introduces AI Essay Assistant!

As 2024 came to a close, ScholarshipOwl conducted a survey to determine the prevalence of AI use among high school and college students, with a particular focus on AI assistance with writing essays for scholarship applications and college admissions. As anticipated, the results revealed that most students have used AI tools and platforms to help them with class assignments, note-taking, etc. But what may be surprising is that the majority of respondents indicated that they have used AI tools to help them write essays for scholarships and college applications.

If you’ve been considering using AI to help you write your application essays, checkout our FAQ below to find out everything you need to know!

I’m finding it really challenging to write my essays for scholarship applications and college admissions. I’m thinking about trying out AI to help. What do I need to know?

In our survey of over 8500 students, we found that 65% of students have already been using AI tools to help them with these very important essays. If you’ve never tried using an AI tool, you might be surprised to discover just how well AI can respond to an essay prompt – so if so many other students are using these tools, and you are not, you might find that your personally-written essays don’t fare as well against AI-assisted essays as you might think. And use of AI tools is likely to increase, not decrease. 

The best way to gauge this for yourself is to play around a bit with AI tools to see how they work. One way to get started is to draft your essay entirely on your own, and then use the same prompt in an AI tool to see the essay generated and compare it to your own. Chances are, you’ll still like your own essay a lot, but you might find elements of the AI-assisted essay that you like as well. Your next step would be to take those elements that you like and incorporate them into your essay and see if you feel your essay is now stronger than the original version – but you can also have an AI tool do that work for you!

The most important thing to know when using an AI tool to assist you with your essay writing is that it is imperative that you don’t rely solely on AI. In our survey, 96% of students who have used AI to help them write essays for scholarships and college admissions DO EDIT THOSE ESSAYS before submitting them. And that’s really the key. Because college admissions and scholarships are competitive, so you need to make sure that your essays really reflect who you are, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve achieved, and what you’re passionate about. 

So many scholarships require essays, which I really dread. I know that ScholarshipOwl recently launched an AI Essay Assistant. How does it work?

At ScholarshipOwl, the product decisions we make our evidence-based. And one of the things we knew was that far too many students were choosing not to apply to essay scholarships simply because they were concerned about the amount of time and effort that writing an essay would take. Since students are already using AI tools to help them with their essay writing, we decided to create our own AI Essay Assistant within our platform to help encourage students to apply to essay scholarships, as well as make the process easier. 

To get started:

• Login to your ScholarshipOwl account.
• Browse your scholarship matches and select a scholarship that interests you, and that requires an essay.
• Review the scholarship requirements, and scroll to the Essay Requirement. Select the “Write an Essay” button.

• Our writing tool will open, and on the upper left of the page, you’ll see a button that says “Generate an Essay.”

• Click the button, and your draft essay will appear on the page.
• Review the essay draft, and edit it to customize and make it your own, and then complete and submit your application!

If you’ve avoided applying to essay scholarships in our platform, give our AI Essay Assistant a try! You’ll find that it really streamlines the process. And unlike external AI tools, our AI Essay Assistant already knows the essay prompt, and can incorporate details about you into the essay draft based on your profile data, as well as based on the scholarship applications you’ve previously submitted through our platform.

One thing to remember though – our system requires you to edit your essay before submitting your application to the scholarship. This ensures that you take the time to customize the essay to make it truly your own.

What strategies should I follow to ensure my scholarship application essays still reflect my unique personality and experiences?

Essay scholarships are competitive. So even if you are using AI to help you with your essay writing, you really shouldn’t sub-out your entire essay to AI. These kinds of essays are typically “personal statement essays” – meaning that you’ll need to discuss your own personal background and experiences in your essay, and you’ll need to discuss your achievements, involvement with extracurriculars, volunteer service, leadership experience, and your academic and career goals. Using an AI tool won’t be able to cover all of this without knowing these kinds of details about you, so even if you are using AI to help you with your essay writing, you’ll still need to edit the essay to incorporate these kinds of details.

That said, ScholarshipOwl’s AI Essay Assistant does a better job of this than most other AI tools out there, because our AI Essay Assistant incorporates details about you into the draft essays that are generated. We are able to do this based on what you yourself have input into your profile, as well as based on the scholarship applications that you’ve already submitted through our platform. But even with that, you’ll still definitely want to further modify your essays to ensure that they present you in the way you want, and so you are well-positioned against your competition. 

What risks should I be aware of when using AI to assist me in writing essays for scholarship applications and college admissions?

Because AI is so prevalent now, colleges and scholarship providers already know and expect that some of essays accompanying applications will have been developed with the assistance of an AI tool. Because of that, reviewers are more sensitive when reviewing application essays, and may also be using software that detects AI usage. 

Students need to understand this, and know that heavily relying on AI is not the way to go. AI is a tool, not a solution. With this in mind, you should use AI as a supportive assistant, not as your primary writer. If you choose to use AI to assist you with your application essays, be sure that you truly make your essay your own by editing the content to reflect who you are, what you’ve experienced, and what you care about. 

What else should I know about use of AI tools for college admissions and scholarship applications?

One of the things that I think we all need to put into perspective is that to a certain extent, the existence of AI tools are an “equalizer.”

Students who are from more affluent backgrounds often have a leg-up on college admissions and scholarships because they’ve had greater access to tutors, SAT and ACT prep classes, even a personal college coach to help them with their applications and their admission and scholarship essays. Students from more affluent backgrounds also have greater access to special experiences like summer academies, enrichment programs, foreign travel, and more. These experiences not only help them to grow as individuals; they also become topics and content for their application essays. And finally, students from more affluent backgrounds are more likely to have extensive support from their parents – and those parents are more likely to be highly educated, assisting their children with their college search, college applications, and their application essays. 

Students from middle or lower-income backgrounds don’t have these luxuries. They are often pursuing their college dreams with minimal family support, without the enriching experiences, and without a college coach to help them throughout the college application process and essay writing process. 

But because AI tools exist, now students from all backgrounds have access to some support:

• They can use AI tools to help them find colleges that are a good fit for them, both academically and financially. 
• They can access lower-cost online tools for test prep and homework help. 
• They can use the ScholarshipOwl platform – which is an AI platform – to help them find scholarships they are well-matched for and that they have a better chance of winning, and they can use our AI Essay Assistant to help them with their scholarship essays. 

So while there are some risks and concerns about reliance on AI, it is important that we remember the benefits of AI – it can help explain complex information in a way that is more digestible. It can make our lives easier. It can ensure that whoever you are, and wherever you come from, that you have greater access to information and support. In fact, AI is really a further extension of the benefits we’ve all taken advantage of already through the advent of the web. 

How can I try the ScholarshipOwl AI Essay Assistant?

The ScholarshipOwl AI Essay Assistant is available to students who use ScholarshipOwl Pro to apply to scholarships. If you already have ScholarshipOwl Pro, just login to your ScholarshipOwl account to get started. If you don’t yet have a ScholarshipOwl Pro account, you can start your free 7-day trial at ScholarshipOwl.com!