AI撰写的入学申请文书普遍存在但受到惩罚

中文摘要 AI 辅助

人工智能正在迅速改变高等教育，包括申请流程，但对其使用及后果的了解相对较少。为帮助填补这一空白，我们分析了2020年至2025年间提交给美国一个大型公共政策硕士项目的近7500份申请。我们发现，在2025年招生周期中，大多数申请者提交了至少一篇主要由AI生成的文书——尽管明确禁止使用AI。利用2022年11月ChatGPT的突然引入，我们发现AI助手的可用性提高了所提交文书的写作质量。然而，这些改进伴随着明显的AI惩罚：提交AI撰写文书的申请者被录取的频率低于可比较的非使用者。为帮助解释这一惩罚，我们与招生官员进行了一项实验，发现他们通常能识别AI写作，并给他们认为由AI生成的文书打分低于他们认为由人类生成的文书。这些发现表明，AI正在改变申请者的写作方式以及这种写作的评估方式，引发了关于为前AI时代设计的招生实践和政策是否仍然适用的问题。

英文摘要

AI is rapidly transforming higher education, including the application process, yet relatively little is known about its use and consequences. To help close this gap, we analyze nearly 7{,}500 applications submitted between 2020 and 2025 to a large public policy master's program in the United States. We find that in the 2025 admissions cycle, the majority of applicants submitted at least one essay that was primarily AI-generated---despite an explicit prohibition against using AI. Leveraging the abrupt introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, we find that the availability of AI assistants improved the writing quality of submitted essays. These improvements, however, came with an apparent AI penalty: Applicants submitting AI-written essays were admitted less often than comparable non-users. To help explain this penalty, we conduct an experiment with admissions officers, finding that they can often recognize AI writing and rate essays they believe to be AI-generated lower than essays they believe to be human generated. These findings indicate that AI is changing both how applicants write and how that writing is evaluated, raising questions about whether admissions practices and policies designed for a pre-AI era remain appropriate.

发表机构

• Harvard University（哈佛大学）
• New York University（纽约大学）

机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。