Should You Use an AI College Essay Reviewer? When & How It Helps

For students applying to college, one of the most important steps is writing the college admissions essay. For graduate and PhD students, knowing how to write or format the statement of purpose is crucial.

Both college and graduate school applicants know that using an online essay proofreader or free AI proofreading tool is a quick and easy way to speed up your college application process. However, many students remain confused with questions such as:

• Are AI essay proofreader tools reliable? Are free versions effective?
• How does an online essay editor compare to a human proofreader or editor?
• How can I use human and AI essay proofreaders together most effectively?

This article will explore how to use an online essay proofreader to improve the college or graduate school application process.

What is an AI Essay Editor?

An AI language editor is an online revision tool that uses large language models (LLMs) built on billions of words of text data to automatically revise text in an instant. Some of these AI editors–like the Wordvice free AI Proofreader and free AI Paraphrase Tool–are especially attuned to editing admissions essays for college or graduate school, as they apply sophisticated prompt language to these LLMs to choose the content most suitable for these essays.

Why Students Need a College Essay Editor

Even though application materials such as the letter of recommendation are important, the admissions essay in 2021 has become (and will continue to be) the most important factor determining admissions into top colleges and universities. The University of California system has even removed the ACT/SAT as a requirement.

Admissions essays or personal statements are how admissions committees judge you as a student, professional, and ultimately, a person. That means you must avoid common admissions essay mistakes like simply listing your achievements (like a resume or CV) or revealing too much personal information.

Why Students Use Expert Proofreading Services

Students commonly turn to professional essay editing services with admission experts who edit and proofread essays simultaneously for a fee.

This has many benefits, including the following:

Maintains personal narrative and voice

An expert essay editor does two things well: understands the writer’s context, intent and impact. A human editor can understand the reasons why the student is applying to a particular university or program.

Based on real experience, an experienced editor can weigh certain aspects of the essay more or less. Or eliminate them entirely. A human esssay editor can also more easily filter out certain word choices to maintain consistency.

Human proofreaders have a track record of success

Most of the popular admissions essay services are staffed by actual professors, graduate students, and former admissions professionals who have not only been through the application process themselves at both the undergraduate and graduate levels but may have actually participated in the decision-making process.

In short, a human essay editor is intimately experienced with the important outcome for the student: successful admission.

Saves Time

It’s pretty common to find express delivery for admissions essay editing (as low as 9 hours). Given a sufficient budget, you are able to order and forget about the essay until you receive it back. One of the reasons students pay for a human essay proofreader is because the act of payment guarantees on-time delivery.

On the other hand, an AI-powered online essay editor does not make editorial decisions, which means classic techniques like reaching out to a mentor, parent, or friend for a second set of eyes and suggestions will be necessary. Unfortunately, anything done for free or as a favor has no guarantee of being done on time.

Why Students Should Use AI Essay Editors

There are many free ai text editors on the market, including Wordvice AI. These popular, powerful, and easy-to-use tools are here to stay, a young students are relying upon them to check plagiarism, grammar, and more.

In fact, students’ essay writing skills are improving overall due to these tools, with many benefits.

Real-time feedback

AI proofreaders have the benefit of checking grammar, punctuation, spelling, and word choice as well as making suggestions in real-time. There has one major effect: it actually can affect or steer the writing.

This real-time feedback can lead the writer to alter sentence structure, word choice, and even the entire scope of the essay. A young high school student applying to college who is weak in certain writing techniques may be helped or hurt by this. On one hand, an applicant won’t get into too much trouble wading into complex areas or plagiarizing a section.

On the other hand, college applicants run the risk of sounding the same as everyone else. This risk of losing one’s personal narrative and voice is not trivial. Admissions officers specifically look for a personal touch and sense of uniqueness in applicants.

Free to use

As a piece of software, many AI proofreaders are free to use and when used in combination with other tools, they can provide almost perfect albeit basic proofreading. Software is free to distribute and isn’t limited by a human essay proofreader doing work in real-time. Fortunately, there many 100% free essay proofreaders available.

However, many AI proofreading tools are limited by the fact that premium versions are locked behind a paywall. This is true for popular checkers like Grammarly and Hemingway.

So which method of essay proofreading is the best?

Combine AI Essay Editors and Human Proofreaders

The best way to improve your college application essays is to create a workflow that uses an AI essay editor during the actual writing process, followed by a human essay editor for extensive content, style, and tone revisions.

1) Write your college or university essay with an AI essay editor

The first and most straightforward step is to write your essay while using an AI online grammar proofreader such as Wordvice AI.

There are many resources and tips about the college admissions process, including tips on how to address various Common Application Essay prompts.

Keep in mind that AI proofreaders excel at finding grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, but it’s up to the applicant to make sure they are under the essay word limit as well as avoiding common application essay mistakes.

To get started, be sure to check out how to use the Wordvice AI Proofreader.

2) Dos and Don'ts for how to write using an online essay editor

How to use an AI text editor

• Write as you normally do. This helps you stay conscious of your writing style and informs you of bad writing habits.
• Consider suggestions. Many AI proofreaders make grammatical or syntax suggestions on the side. Don’t blindly accept them.
• Passive vs Active voice. AI proofreading tools generally don’t like passive voice. However, it’s always a debate on whether one should use passive or active voice in a college essay; it may depend on the intention or timeline of your essay.
• Cite properly and don’t plagiarize. AI tools treat all text and writing equally, whether it’s an anecdote, fact, or opinion. Use an AI plagiarism checker to check for plagiarism or, if specified, use a citation generator to generate citations, especially if you are referencing an academic work or experience.

How NOT to use an AI text editor

• Copy-paste in a finished essay. Writing this way by using the AI proofreader only at the end is similar to using MS Word spell grammar checker. It only gives you a checklist of things to accept or reject. Often, these changes can alter the voice or tone of your writing.
• Accept all suggestions. AI essay proofreaders prompt you with red lines or notifications that something is “wrong” or could be “improved”. Ultimately, it’s up to your judgment to assess if that suggestion adds value or is inline with your writing intention and style.
• Believe every error or improvement is suggested. While AI essay proofreaders do excel at mistakes, they often leave a lot on the board when it comes to improving your essay. This is because bots have no ability to understand context. With contextual understanding comes the ability to recall experiences and extrapolate. As of now, AI cannot do this.

3) Use an admission essay editing service

College admissions essays are not only intended to be read by humans, they are meant to communicate a sense of humanism and a slice of the human condition. In other words, these essays are not just lists of facts, a ledge of information, or encyclopedic articles for which an AI proofreader would be effective. They are a small slice into one’s background, goals, and personhood.

This is why admissions professionals usually recommend getting a human essay proofreader after the initial revision process - friends, family, mentor, and now AI.

Friends and family know you, your personality, and how to best communicate that. Mentors such as teachers, tutors, or experts know how to best put your academic and professional goals into writing. And we’ve covered how AI proofreaders can help your writing process and correct grammatical errors.

How to use a human essay proofreader

• Start early. Allow for time. The one downside to essay editing services are their cost. That can be mitigated by avoiding express delivery options. Further, allowing for longer editing times allows editors to take their time and not be pressured.
• Write individualized essays. Every university or program views themselves as special. This means you need an individualized well-written admission essay for every place you apply.
• Write notes and submit to editor. One small trick you can use is to include notations, annotations, or personal comments in the margins of your essay to give your editor more context and insight into why you wrote something the way you did. Wordvice essay editing services provide a personalized messaging system between editors and clients for this purpose.

How NOT to use a human essay proofreader

• Give your editor an unedited/unrevised essay. Great final products need to have great materials. So don’t expect a human essay proofreader to produce amazing results if you give them an unedited essay you wrote in 1 hour. Editors cannot write for you.
• Write a template essay. While it is important to follow the college essay format for your given institution, structure alone does not make a great essay. Admissions counselors are experts at picking out - and trashing - cliche essays. Using your personal authentic voice is the entire point.
• Pick the cheapest or fastest editing service. There are many factors to consider when choosing a quality essay editing service. Consider the cost of editing, document turnaround/delivery time, reviews and testimonials, and the experience of the editors.

Why Students Should Use Wordvice AI as Their College Essay Editor

As mentioned above, combining AI proofreading and expert language editing is the best way to ensure that your application essay is maximized for impact on admissions officers. Wordvice AI allows users to instantly edit their college or graduate essays with their free AI revision tools and then receive expert human editing at lower editing prices than most services can offer.

For more detailed examples on how AI editing tools can enhance your content workflow and improve your application essay, academic paper, or business document, check out other Wordvice AI Blog articles on writing an essay introduction, paraphrasing research articles, writing a research paper, and composing business emails with Wordvice AI.