How ChatGPT Helped Me Get a Scholarship: It's Not What You Think

Science and Technology

The first time I heard about ChatGPT, it helped me get a full ride to college, and not in the way that you think. 

In March of 2023, I was a senior in high school. Earlier that year, I had received an email from the University of Delaware stating that I had been invited to what is known as the “Distinguished Scholars” program. This was essentially a competition in which 140 out of the many students who had applied and been accepted to the University of Delaware were chosen to compete for more scholarships. 

I attended this competition of sorts, and had no idea what to expect. When I arrived at the University to compete for this scholarship, I was placed in a smaller group with about 10 other students out of the 140 who were chosen to attend. In this group, we attended a seminar, in which we were to share and have a conversation with each other about a certain topic. 

The topic that my group was to read and talk about was ChatGPT. 

As a do no wrong little goody two-shoes in high school, I was probably the only school student in 2023 who had never heard of this ever so popular generative AI system. After reading the article on its potential capabilities, I had decided that it sounded like the most threatening piece of technology the world has ever created.

When I was younger, I had dreams of becoming a writer. In March at this Distinguished Scholars event, I was given an article that basically told me that this dream occupation would become outdated; and it would become outdated soon. The idea that AI now had the ability to spit out essays and stories, like a calculator, appeared to me as a direct threat to individual thinking. Would there come a time in the near future when people were not sharing their own thoughts? Could everything written on the internet be written by a nonhuman entity that could flat out lie to us based on its algorithm? Would the current generation of children never learn how to properly write because they had a piece of free technology that could do it for them? 

I immediately thought about what my speaking points would be for this group seminar. I spoke in plain English, explaining that while I had never heard of ChatGPT, I thought that it would bring about the downfall of intellectual curiosity. For example, I had watched the children of this generation need an iPad to keep them occupied at all times of the day. These children are, in my opinion (though of course there are exceptions), more immature than they should be because they do not get to experience the real world. Instead, they are constantly staring at a screen, needing to be entertained and stimulated 24/7 in an extremely passive manner. 

The fact that they may never be able to learn how to express their own ideas because a chatbox could do it much faster would preemptively set their brains back even further. I expressed this in the seminar simply: I used to play with dolls when I was little. Creating stories and characters for hours was my favorite source of entertainment and I was happy doing just that. I am sure many people my age had similar experiences growing up. The availability of a generative AI with its capabilities to formulate ideas for us as humans would take away our chance to develop individual curiosity, from the time that we are children to the time that we are older. 

I then lied, but I didn't even know that I was at the time. I said that I would never use ChatGPT because I thought that it would be insulting to my own abilities to write and grow my own skills as a thinker. 

Even though I believed that I would never use ChatGPT, like most, I ultimately did. 

I hesitated for about a year because I wanted to hold onto what I still believe to be true. I also thought that it was morally incorrect, as I received a full ride scholarship in part because I argued against generative AI as a whole. 

So why did I? 

No, I did not cheat!

I will never use ChatGPT to write an essay for me. I have, however, used it to help me with math and biochemistry. I’ve used it to help me generate starting points for lab procedures and give me equations to use that would help me work through equations. I would and will never use ChatGPT verbatim, meaning that I typically use it to help stimulate my brain to come up with my own ideas. I know that the procedures it gives me are usually completely incorrect, however, it does help me recall potential steps that I could use to help me later on. 

The main reason I used it the first time was out of desperation. Everyone around me uses it almost daily. It's not like if everyone around me were jumping off a cliff, I would too, but their work appears better than mine because they are using extra help. It is almost as if this was a form of evolution, in which social darwinism holds true: survival of the fittest. Those who use the tools accessible are more likely to have success than the ones who work completely on their own. 

At the same time however, those who don’t use ChatGPT on a regular basis to think for themselves are more likely to develop stronger minds. Personally, I believe that the way for it to be perfectly implemented in our society, would be to have it used as a brainstorming tool. Having something to bounce ideas off of may be helpful to develop thoughts on new topics. 

Regardless of my thoughts and opinions on ChatGPT, and generative AI as a whole, I am grateful for its existence because it has helped me achieve my goals of finding my dream college experience: one without debt!