Are applicants to your graduate program using AI to create their admissions materials? Do you know? How? And what, if anything, should your department do about it?
The topic is suggested to me by Alex Guerrero (Rutgers), who, commenting on a social media post by L.A. Paul, writes: “What are people doing about AI and grad admissions? Writing samples, personal statements. Other fields use interviews; are any philosophy departments considering those as a check on AI assistance?”
Does your department (or college or university) have a policy or set of practices about this? Do you have thoughts about what such policies or practices should be?
Discussion welcome.
See also: “Does Your Department Have an AI Policy? Here’s Edinburgh’s“
Pitt HPS this year will be trialing Zoom discussions of writing samples for shortlisted candidates. There are various reasons, but certainly an important one is making sure we can be confident that candidates are in full control of the ideas in their writing samples.
That sounds like a good idea. Let us know how it goes.
This is a good idea, but being able to chat intelligently about a paper is a lower bar than producing it.
Just for example: give me a week to study, and I think I could chat intelligently about most of your papers.
Yes but presumably you were rightly admitted to grad school
For various other reasons, PhD programs at my institution have always been doing interviews as part of the application process. We are starting up our PhD program in Philosophy this year, and we followed the trend of the other departments and did interviews, in part due to the various other reasons and in part to help get around the AI concern.
Idea to help undergraduate students that want to go to grad school:
Last Spring I started offering an option in my upper-level classes for such students to write a term paper that will serve as the basis for their writing sample. (I switched to only in-class essays a few years ago to deal with AI-generated essays.)
It involves several meetings with me to talk through their ideas and get updates on their progress. They must also show me several drafts, and sign a written agreement acknowledging how AI can be used (ok for research such as help finding sources, not ok for generating ideas, any writing or editing, though basic grammar software is ok).
They must also acknowledge that if they violate this agreement, they would be harming me given that I would be unknowingly misrepresenting their work to my peers in any letters I write on their behalf.
The purpose of this process (aside from, obviously, mentorship) is that I can then include this information in my letter of recommendation. I can say that I have been involved in the process, seen them wrestle with the ideas etc.
I don’t know how much this will help the students that have signed on, and it is a labour-intensive process, but I think it is worth considering for those who have the time and resources to do so.
Just as academic job applicants are asked to submit statements about their teaching, research, diversity, etc., maybe grad-school applicants should be asked for a statement about their AI use.
This wouldn’t necessarily be used to rule anyone out automatically, but it signals how applicants would approach their PhD-level research and whether the department is prepared to supervise such an approach.
I can imagine that some departments may be open to AI-assisted research, so those departments would be a better match for some applicants. But an applicant who relies greatly on AI, even responsibly (if that’s even possible), may be a poor fit for a department that has decided to ban AI (as law schools are now doing, e.g., Berkeley and UChicago) or doesn’t have the AI expertise to supervise.
Also, an AI statement gives the applicant an opportunity to demonstrate their awareness of LLM ethics—this is now crucial to research ethics and academic integrity. It could even persuade the faculty admissions committee that such an approach is thoughtful and responsible.
And it can be a filter in that an applicant who says they don’t use AI, but whose materials were clearly AI-assisted, could be identified and rejected. That is, it’s a basic integrity check.
I’m just talking aloud here and don’t yet have a position: is this idea good or bad? If good, is there anything that could prohibit departments from asking for AI statements?