Can I use ChatGPT for my application to study abroad?
The short answer is no.
Although technically possible, you shouldn’t use ChatGPT for your study abroad application. This chatbot has made headlines for its capacity to produce intricate written responses to straightforward questions. However, employing it could jeopardize your academic future.
Here are four reasons why using ChatGPT for international students’ applications or academic purposes is a terrible idea.
It’s Plagiarism (and ChatGPT Makes Stuff Up)
Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT program to write your essay is regarded as plagiarism, just like if you had asked a buddy to write your admissions essay or statement of purpose. Students who “represent AI-assisted work as their own,” according to the software vendor Turnitin, are engaging in contract cheating.
The Chat GPT program can produce a decent essay rapidly, but the New York Times reports that it is prone to providing incorrect responses because it assembles words “based on a statistical model trained on billions of examples of text gathered from all across the internet.”
As a result, the programme makes educated guesses about which words belong where, occasionally getting them wrong or coming up with brand-new ones. It’s acceptable to have that kind of uniqueness while coming up with a comedy routine, but it will damage your applications essay.
We requested ChatGPT, for instance, to “Write a short admissions essay for a student from Delhi who desires to pursue their undergraduate degree in bioscience at the University of Toronto.”
Don’t Risk Your Admission
Your study abroad experience could be cut short by plagiarism. Your foreign student application will probably be rejected if it is determined that your essay, statement of purpose, or other components of your application were plagiarised. Your name could potentially be blocked from any upcoming applications by the school.
If your work is found to be plagiarised when you are already enrolled in a programme, you risk failing the assignment or being expelled. And on campuses nowadays, professors rely on more than just their instincts.
Many schools and universities currently use plagiarism-detection programmes like Turnitin and Unicheck, both of which will release programmes that can identify writing generated using ChatGPT by the end of 2023. The developers of ChatGPT, OpenAI, have also talked about including a digital watermark in the app’s text output. Additionally, free text review apps like GPTZero, developed by Princeton undergraduate Edward Tian, will emerge and enter the toolkits of teachers.
The likelihood of being caught is high and increasing. Are your goals of studying abroad worth giving up to save a few hours?
Think of the Future
While the application process for study abroad will alter over time, the widespread use of ChatGPT may necessitate quick adjustments. Colleges and institutions will probably adopt harder-to-plagiarize application components in the future. For many students, this adjustment may make the process more difficult.
For instance, if you find it difficult to write an admissions essay, try live video chat discussing about a random topic. Although it may seem absurd, schools might use this strategy to accurately assess each student’s talents.
Changes of this nature may also affect how equally distributed studying abroad is. In this case, students would require access to particular video programmes and a steady, high-speed internet connection in order to participate in an interview. This would imply that pupils who live in rural areas, places where internet access is limited, or families with lower socioeconomic status have a decreased chance of succeeding.
Nobody Knows You Better than… You
We understand that assembling an application package requires time and that writing essays might be frightening. Even if you don’t feel confident in your writing abilities, employing a chatbot is far preferable to writing the essay in your own voice, even if it’s not great.
Admissions essays and, to a lesser extent, declarations of purpose are ultimately personal. And you will always be the foremost authority on yourself when you talk about yourself. Share your interests, whether you enjoy studying about robots or paintings from the Renaissance. In order to properly discuss classes you’d like to take, professors whose work inspires you, or a co-op that can give you fantastic hands-on skills, do your research on the school you want to attend.
Although the past few years of your life may not have been very interesting to you, there is one thing that all international students have in common: you all have lofty aspirations. You have objectives, places you want to go, and things you want to accomplish. Discuss this and how joining your desired university or college would position you for success. If you can explain how you’ll support them in shining along the route, bonus points!