The first contact
When Erika learned about Admit AI, she immediately had an idea.
“Okay, with Admit AI, my students receive a preliminary essay review BEFORE asking me for a review. That’s how I no longer need to provide 101-level advice.”
A vision realized—at the cost of family dinners
As the only college counselor in a college preparatory high school, she envisioned being a great resource to all of her students who typically aim for top state public institutions and out-of-state highly selective schools.
Although her public high school doesn’t have a few hundred students per grade, her aspiration easily became overloaded with an influx of essay reviews, from Common App Personal Statement to supplemental essays.
She found herself, almost on a daily basis, working around the clock, constantly missing dinners with her family.
Balancing excellence in counseling without sacrificing herself
She kept her word: “So, I will no longer need to stay up late reviewing preliminary essay drafts. I will no longer need to skip my dinners!”
Yes, that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve, too!
We believe high school counselors have a nearly impossible number of students to manage. No matter how amazing their talents are, the sheer volume of students prevents them from personalizing their counseling by nature. We wanted to break this inconvenience.
Testing the waters
Erika was actually an early adopter type of person. Even before we had contact with her in early 2024, she had already tried LLM-based (Large Language Model, like ChatGPT) solutions.
As many counselors do, she invited a small group of students to try out the tool. The result was negative. It wasn’t tailored for college admissions purposes, and the feedback didn’t resonate with the students.
Naturally, she opted in for a free trial. Erika immediately invited several students close to her, and it didn’t take her long to decide to go with us.
The rollout
After managing to secure funding for the upgrade, she invited us to a rising senior assembly. There, we provided an hour-long strategic essay writing workshop, along with a walkthrough on how to use Admit AI.
While we are an AI company, students felt a sort of familiarity with us, as we faced them and answered any questions and concerns about using AI in college admissions.
We’ve heard from some students, “I got AI feedback on my Personal Statement. I knew Ms. Erika would have said the same thing!”
Going viral: Admit AI sparks a movement among students
Admit AI caught the attention of students who wanted immediate and actionable advice 24/7. They often upload their essays between classes using their laptops. Their friends asked what it is, remembering that its inventors came to the campus a few weeks ago and did an onboarding session.
They remembered that they already had an Admit AI account, activating or resetting the password to start using it.
This way, it didn’t take long for the majority of students to start using the app.
A stunning leap in essay quality
One day, we spoke with Erika to check how students are using Admit AI.
“I am so surprised at how advanced the drafts have become compared to last year. This is a completely different world where I no longer need to provide basic comments to any of my students.”
Erika continues, “I also changed my protocol. I made it a routine to ask my students if they uploaded their first drafts to Admit AI. If not, I asked them to do so and come back.”
This worked very well. Her students completely switched to a new way of polishing essays.
The Admit AI effect
The number of essay reviews surged very quickly as EA/ED and UT application deadlines were approaching. Students used it on a daily basis and received AI feedback on every new version of their essays to take advantage of its unlimited capacity.
Eventually, hitting an average number of 32 essay reviews and spending 17 hours during the application high season.
Get back peaceful dinners
Erika believes she has cut down her overwork to nearly zero. Now she doesn’t stay up late at night reviewing essays.
By being more available for strategic advice and addressing lingering questions from students, she believes her students will have a much higher chance of gaining admission to their dream schools.