Using AI tools for writing scholarship essays – and every other academic content, for that matter – comes with both upsides and downsides. The upsides make using the tools worth using, to begin with, and the downsides are the reason that they are not the “ideal” solution.
Knowing about just the upsides or just the downsides isn’t really healthy. The people who know just about the good parts can end up trusting the tools too much and end up creating bad content using them. On the other hand, people who just know the negative points can refrain from using the tools at all.
It’s only the people who know both that can use these tools as they should. In this post, we’re going to help you learn about that.
The Pros of Using AI Tools to Write Scholarship Essays
Here are the pros and benefits of using AI tools for writing scholarship essays:
1. They can save a lot of time
The first benefit of using AI tools is that they can help save a lot of time. There are a lot of different steps involved in writing a scholarship essay. You have to do the research, write the essay itself, optimize it, and so on.
If you do all of this yourself, it can take up quite a bit of time. But if you use online tools instead, you can cut the time significantly.
Here are some ways how:
- For research, you can use AI-based research tools. For example, there are some tools present on the Internet that let you simply enter a query, and then they fetch back a whole of online material right in one place. Using tools like this can be time-saving.
- For writing itself, you can get help from online content generators. You can generate prompts that can help you in writing the scholarship essay, and you can get ideas on how to get started. This can, in itself, help save a lot of time as well.
- For improving your written content, you can likewise get help from multiple online tools. You can gauge the readability of your essay using a readability checker, and then you can use a paraphrasing tool to fix any non-readable clunky parts that you may find.
- The proofreading and editing parts are also important steps in the whole essay-writing process. Online tools can also play a helpful role in those. For example, you can use a grammar checker to look for grammar mistakes in the essay and resolve them easily.
And so on.
In a nutshell, a lot of tasks that would normally require time and effort can be significantly quickened and made easier with the help of online tools.
2. They can help save costs
Many times, students and applicants can have their scholarship essays written using a professional writing service. They can do this either due to not having enough time to write it on their own or due to not having enough skill or ability.
This can mean that the student may have to spend a lot of money on their essay just to make sure that it comes back okay.
However, students can do this same thing i.e., creating quality scholarship essays using an assortment of online tools. This can help them save money and spend it elsewhere where it is more needed.
3. They can help create flawless content for the essay
Not only do these tools save time and money, but they also allow students and applicants to create flawless content for the essay itself. Content created or processed by AI does not contain basic errors like grammar issues or spelling mistakes.
Errors like these can mean trouble in a scholarship essay. In the normal “no-tools” approach, finding and fixing errors like this is a separate process. And even after all of that, a lot of issues can still go through.
This is something that you don’t have to worry about if you are using online tools for the content creation process.
The Cons of Using AI Tools for Writing Scholarship Essays
Just as there are a lot of pros to using online tools for writing scholarship essays, so too are there some undeniable cons. We will look at the latter now.
1. They rob the essay of the personalized human touch
This, of course, applies to situations where the essay is written dominantly with the help of AI, i.e., through some content generators or AI assistants.
When these tools are used for the essay, the content sounds mechanical and generic. It lacks the human touch, and it can look like a boring template to the reading party.
Of course, when you’re applying for a scholarship, this is not the best signal that you want to send. It can spoil your chances of getting the admission you need.
2. They can make dumb mistakes at times
While AI tools are helpful and everything, they are still tools. There can be a lot of times when generative tools can create the wrong content or when optimization tools can give the wrong suggestions or corrections for the provided content.
When you’re using these tools in a flow, problems like this aren’t that easy to catch and resolve.
How to Take a Balanced Approach to Using AI Tools for Scholarship Essays?
Now that we have discussed the pros and cons above let’s take a look at some tips that you can follow to make sure that your approach to using them is nice and balanced. In other words, following these tips can help you enjoy the pros of using AI online tools while avoiding the cons.
- While you should take help in the “peripheral” processes, you should always do the actual writing yourself. In other words, you can get help from these tools for research purposes and for getting some prompts on how to write the essay, etc. But when you want to create the draft itself, make sure to use your own words and ideas. You can always improve them later on, but initially making your own effort basically neutralizes the “non-human touch” issue that we have discussed above.
- When using the tools themselves, i.e., for whichever purpose you want, be sure to pick some high-quality ones. If you decide to use just about any random tool on the Internet, they can just backfire on you. For instance, if you decide to use a grammar checker while not establishing the reliability and accuracy of said grammar checker, it could skip over a lot of issues, and you’d end up with an error-ridden essay thinking that it’s perfect.
- Always check and analyze the results provided by the tools. One of the cons that we’ve discussed above is that the tools can make errors every now and then in the tasks they are supposed to perform. If you want to neutralize and stay on top of such slip-ups and errors, you have to keep an eye out for them.
Conclusion
Completely banking on AI tools to write scholarship essays and completely refraining from using them are both two extremes that you shouldn’t resort to.
In the post above, we have talked about both the pros and cons of using AI tools as well as some tips that you can follow to take a balanced approach for them.