“That’s a huge turnoff to scholarship committees. If you can’t take the two extra seconds to put in the two extra letters, that’s not a good essay, to me. They don’t have to be a ...

Shortly afterwards, Geiger began to notice that essays felt less and less like they had been written by 17- or 18-year-olds.

Will Geiger estimates that he read about 10,000 college application essays over the course of a years-long career in college admissions and scholarships before ChatGPT came on the scene in 2022.