AI Hacks That Every College Applicant Should Know

Source: ChatGPT5

Check out this incredible blog post from Brennan Barnard with practical, useful tips for using AI in the college application process.

Unless you just emerged from a five-year hibernation (I wouldn’t blame you!), you know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. It’s hard to go a day without hearing about how it is going to either take your job or increase your productivity (maybe both). Whether you are in camp “hope“ or camp “fear,” the reality is that AI is here to stay. College applicants can use this to their advantage if they are well informed, so I reached out to experts in this space to bring you their best advice.

Meet The Experts

Michael Kolowich is a former Emmy-winning TV news reporter in Boston and partner at Bain and Company. Kolowich also founded or led six companies at the intersection of technology and media and is the creator of the ParentGPS mobile app for College Guidance Network (CGN).

Ben Neely is the Chief Academic Innovation Officer for Revolution Prep and regularly researches and presents on AI in admission.

Jeff Neill is the Director Of College Counseling at Graded, The American School of São Paulo. He writes a weekly newsletter, Tech-Neill-ogy, on “leveraging technology in college counseling.” He also maintains an excellent AI prompt library and list of top ten AI tools.

Emily Pacheco has served as a college admission officer at several different colleges and universities and is the founder of AICA, a special interest group on AI for the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). The group’s website has a wealth of resources on AI, including a running list of current college policies on AI and admission.

What’s Allowed?

So much of the conversation about AI and admission has focused on college essays and what is permissible. While it can certainly be useful in the writing process, there are many more benefits of using AI in searching for and applying to college that are fair game. Before you dive in, make sure you are clear on what the policies are around the use of AI at the colleges to which you are applying. Unfortunately, many colleges have failed to create specific guidance and some schools have rather draconian policies that prohibit the use of AI at all. Others have wonderfully clear guidelines for applicants. I would especially draw your attention to the policies at Georgia Tech and Swarthmore College as examples of this done well.

Armed with some context for what’s permissible, let’s turn to our experts and their resources.

Practical Prompts

Go Deep

At the beginning stages of your college search, AI tools can help you better identify what you were looking for. Try this prompt:

“Ask me 10 questions about my criteria for choosing a college.”

Once you have provided answers, try this follow-up:

“Based on my responses, suggest colleges and universities that might be a good match for me.”

If you’ve already identified your criteria and have specific wants or needs, chatbots can be especially useful in helping you build an initial list to explore. Here is an example:

“I am looking for a small or medium college or university in the northeast or mid-Atlantic where I can study psychology and that has an animal behavior lab. I also want to play rugby and I want a school that is known for having a strong sense of community. Suggest 10 potential colleges for me.”

This is just a starting point for you to do deeper research on your own, and with AI, my mantra is always “trust but verify.” The school that had an animal behavior lab or rugby team last year might have sunsetted those programs. And of course, a strong sense of community is subjective, so confirm with your own outreach and exploration.

Facilitate Finances

Ben Neely created two useful prompts that support students and their families as they explore issues of affordability and financial aid.

Merit Scholarships/Honors Programs Finder:

“For my college list (put list here), find institutional merit scholarships and honors programs:• For each school: scholarship names, eligibility, separate app/portal?, essay prompts?, interview day?, nomination required?, stackable with need aid?, Early deadlines?

• Include links to official pages and a one‑line strategy tip per item.

• link to each school’s Net Price Calculator (NPC) and remind me to run it; note that NPCs are federally required on Title IV institutions’ sites.

• Output: A sheet‑style table I can paste into a tracker.”

FAFSA Plan of Action:

“Here’s my college list (put list here.) Create a month‑by‑month financial aid action plan for a family applying for the 2026–27 year:Here’s my family snapshot (for planning only): Residency [], marital status of parents [ ], number in household [ ], number in college [ ], 2024 income approx. [ ] business/farm? [Y/N], divorced/separated? [Y/N], non‑U.S. income? [Y/N].

Output:

• List the FAFSA steps (who needs FSA IDs, data sharing, how SAI works) and the exact documents we’ll gather.

• Note our state and each college’s priority filing dates.

• Identify which colleges on my list require CSS Profile; include fee‑waiver eligibility if income ≲$100k.

• Flag special cases (business owners, divorced families, non‑U.S. tax forms).

• Include links to the official FAFSA and CSS Profile how‑to pages. Keep personal data private; no SSNs here.Deliverables: A calendar (with absolute dates), a checklist, and a short FAQ I can share with my parents.”

Michael Kolowich adds a financial aid comparison prompt:

“You are an expert financial aid advisor with deep knowledge of college financial aid practices. I have three financial aid offer letters from College A, College B, and College C, and I need to compare them in detail. My goal is to determine which college is most affordable and identify any red flags or opportunities for appeal.”

Once the user uploads PDF copies of their award letters or enters the text data, AI tools go to work and within minutes you have a starting point for family discussions about affordability. He suggests this follow-up prompt:

“Please create a side-by-side comparison table of key financial metrics (COA, grants/scholarships total, net price, total loans, estimated out-of-pocket costs). Then provide a detailed narrative comparing the financial aid packages, highlighting important details like loan interest, renewal conditions, or potential annual cost increases. Finally, recommend which offer appears most financially viable, and suggest any next steps for appealing or negotiating additional aid.”

If you don’t qualify for need-based financial aid, you can still employ AI tools. You might, for example, try these prompts:

“I am a [state] resident, please compare the total cost of attendance, including travel expenses and other related fees for me to attend the University of [state] versus being an out-of-state student at the University of [different state].”“What are the hidden costs that I might not be aware of to attend [college name]?”

These and other questions will allow you to have more informed conversations as a family about paying for college.

Essay Ease

You should never ask AI tools to write drafts of a college essay, but there are ethical ways that they can support your writing. Shereem Herndon-Brown is the Founder and Chief Education Officer of Strategic Admissions Advice, and my co-author of Powerful College Admission Essays: A Guide to Telling Your Story. He recommends using AI as bookends in the college essay process to: 1. Help brainstorm at the outset, and 2. Review drafts of the applicant’s writing.

There are an increasing number of AI tools on the market that offer support for college essays. If you opt to use them, choose wisely. Make sure there are ethical guardrails and that it will not generate drafts for you or rewrite portions of the essay. Also explore how the tool is trained. For example, at the College Guidance Network (with whom I work), typical prompts are complex and nuanced with more than a thousand words each, refined over time against hundreds of cases. The responses are grounded in a proprietary database of answers from over 400 college and career planning experts.

If you are going at it alone, try a prompt like this to help you start:

“I am writing a supplemental college essay about why I am applying to [college name]. Please ask me five questions to help me brainstorm.”

After you have a solid draft of an essay, Kolowich suggests this prompt:

“As an experienced college essay reviewer, please scan this draft for potential clichés and generic claims. Suggest 3 specific moments or details to make it unmistakably mine, without actually rewriting it.”

For years, I have been suggesting to students that they share their essay with a parent’s colleague or friend who doesn’t know them and then ask that stranger to provide feedback about who they came to know through the essay. Recently I have found that AI can produce astonishingly similar feedback. Try this prompt:

“As an experienced college essay reviewer who does not know me, scan this draft and describe me using three adjectives and tell me what you have learned about me.”

Application Assistance

Ben Neely created an effective deadlines and policies checker to help keep students and their supporters on track:

“For these colleges: [paste list], create a policy + deadline brief using only the college’s official pages (.edu) and cite each item.For each school, list: application plans (ED/EA/RD/RE) with dates; testing policy for 2025–26 (required/optional; superscore? score choice? last accepted test dates); self‑report vs. official score policy; portfolio/audition requirements; major‑specific forms; honors/merit priority deadlines; “demonstrated interest” policy (CDS C7); and scholarship forms (separate app?).Return a concise table + bullet notes per school with links to the exact pages used.”

Jeff Neill has developed a comprehensive prompt to help students with the activities section of their application:

“You are an expert university application specialist, and I am a high school student preparing my applications for university. You will help me with the activities section of my Common Application account by working me through the BEABIES exercise, which asks me to reflect on the value I gained from a particular activity. We will focus on just one activity at a time, and you will ask me questions one at a time and wait until I reply before asking the next question. The BEABIES exercise focuses on five components: what I did; problems I solved; lessons I learned and values/skills I developed; the impact I had on Self, School, Community and/or Society); and the applications to other parts of school or life. Begin by asking me, what activity we will be exploring. Then, one at a time, ask a question about each of the five components.Then, after collecting general answers for each component, ask follow up questions for each component considering the following prompts, but be sure to focus on one component at a time. Ask a follow-up question or questions and wait until I reply before moving on:

What I Did (Day-to-Day):

• Did I list all my tasks, or just a few? What’d I forget? Go back and check.

• Did I list tasks I completed that fell slightly outside the scope of my responsibilities?

• Did I leave off any awards? Any uncommon achievements?

Problems I Solved:

• Did I consider the internal problems I solved—any personal challenges?

• Did I name the external problems I solved—for my friends or family? School? Community?

• Was I tackling a much larger (perhaps global) problem?

Lessons I learned & Values/Skills I Developed:

• What were some of the soft skills I learned (patience, communication, etc.)?

• Did I learn any specific software (Photoshop, Final Cut Pro)? Languages (Spanish, C++)? Survival skills (how to start a fire or clean a fish)?

• What am I better at now than I was before?

• What would I have done differently?

Impact I Had (On Self, School, Community and/or Society)

• Did I consider the impact this had on my family? Friends? School? Who else benefited?

• What impact did this have on me personally? Did this change my life/perspective? How?

Applications to Other Parts of School/Life:

• What skills did I develop and lessons did I learn that will make me a better X (tutor, debater, advocate, volunteer, programmer, fill in the blank)? How so?

• What did I do to build on and take what I learned to the next level?

• What surprised me about this experience?

• How might I continue this activity during college and beyond?

Once you have sufficiently inquired about this activity, suggest five different 150-character descriptions of this activity based exclusively on my prompts that a university application would find helpful.”

Decision Directive

Neill also uses a dynamic prompt to help students compare the colleges to which they’ve been accepted as they decide where to enroll:

“​​Transform my difficult decision between [specific college/university options] into a clear decision matrix. Reveal hidden risk, long-term consequences, and psychological factors influencing my decision that I am completely blind to.”

Partner Or Prompter?

Emily Pacheco employs AI in much of her professional and personal work. She says, “When I first started using AI, I feel it really was all about prompt engineering, figuring out the exact wording to get the best response. But over time, my use has evolved. I no longer think of it in terms of isolated prompts. Instead, I treat the LLM as a partner who’s already in the room with me, aware of the projects and conversations we’ve been working on together.” She adds, “one approach I’ve found especially helpful is to ask the AI to slow down and ask me clarifying questions before it gives a full response. For example, I’ll tell it what I’m working on and then ask it to pose five questions to me, one at a time, in order to better understand the context of my task or problem. By working through those questions first, the AI is able to respond with much more depth and personalization.”

Pacheco explains, “That shift, from prompt engineering to context management, has been huge. I expect the AI to ‘remember’ the backstory of what we’re building, and to pull from that ongoing thread, just as a thought partner would. I don’t have to restate everything every time; I can simply pick up where we left off. She adds, “For me, it’s less about having a handful of favorite prompts and more about building a workflow where the model carries the project context forward. That’s what makes it powerful.”

Whether you use specific AI prompts like the examples above, rely on it as a thought partner, or a mix of both, it can be a valuable tool in your search and application experience. It will not replace the importance of human connection and agency as you identify schools that will be a good match and build a strong application that shares your story in your unique voice. It might, however, simplify and streamline your work so you can focus on what really matters, so give it a try, experiment with your own prompts, and remember, trust but verify!