Generative AI tools are now part of everyday research and writing, and we know applicants are curious where they fit into the admissions process. As a liberal arts college, we care about intellectual curiosity, reflective judgment, and how you reason through ideas. These qualities only come through when your application is genuinely yours.

Why Your Voice Matters

Getting to know you — your integrity, your creativity, your way of seeing the world — is at the heart of how we read applications. AI-generated text can’t stand in for that. We want your application responses to come from you, not from a machine.

Guidance on Your Use of AI

It’s okay to use AI for researching schools, but be careful.

Using AI to ask questions about colleges is fine. “What liberal arts colleges have been open to all since their founding?” or “Which colleges meet 100 percent of financial need?” are reasonable places to start. Just double-check anything it tells you against the college’s own website, since AI tools can get facts wrong or make things up entirely.

It’s also acceptable to use AI for brainstorming ideas, but it’s not acceptable for outlining.

It’s okay to bounce essay ideas off an AI tool or ask something like “Is writing about my dog too cliché?” What’s not okay is asking it to give you the exact idea for your essay or build you an outline or structure for your application responses. In addition, your responses in other parts of the application (for example, the activities or additional information sections) should not be outlined or generated by AI. Your original ideas and how you organize your thoughts and make your argument need to come from you.

AI must not write, rewrite, or translate your application responses.

Don’t use AI to draft, generate, or rewrite any part of your application responses. That means no feeding AI an outline and asking AI to create a draft, no pasting AI-generated text into your application, and no asking AI to rework your writing into a more polished or different style. If it isn’t something you actually wrote, don’t submit it. The same goes for translation. Write in English yourself, and do not use AI, another tool, or another person to translate your application responses from another language.

It is okay to ask for a second opinion.

Having a teacher, parent, or friend read or offer feedback on your application responses, including your essay, is completely normal and appropriate. Using AI or software to spell-check and identify typos in a finished draft is acceptable. What’s not okay is having another person or AI generate your ideas or write your response for you.

Submitting your application means confirming the work is authentically yours.

When you submit your application, you’re telling Bates Admission that the content of your application is genuinely your work: your facts, your ideas, your voice. That’s the standard we hold everyone to, and it’s what lets us actually get to know you. We’re looking forward to reading your application.

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