How Gradpilot uses Pangram to help students find their voice

College admissions essays are a difficult milestone that many high school students sink hundreds of hours into. It can be tempting to use AI to bypass the whole editing process and get something "good enough." However, by doing so, students risk sounding inauthentic and may fail to stand out from the many others who use AI to write their personal statements.

Gradpilot is building tools to help students iterate on their college admissions essays in a way that preserves the student's authentic voice. And today, we're excited to announce how they are using Pangram in the process to identify overreliance on AI in the writing process.

When a student uses Gradpilot, their essay is scored on three axes:

1. AI Detection by Pangram
2. Foundation Review (Language, Structure and Flow)
3. Focus Review (essay prompt specific evaluation)

AI detection remains an important component of scoring because a high AI score is likely an indication that the student relied too much on AI instead of their own words when producing the essay.

However, Gradpilot doesn't say "don't use AI." Instead they use AI to provide concrete feedback and suggestions for improvement without providing copy-paste edits or suggestions that could overpower the student's personal style.

Nirmal Thacker, founder of Gradpilot, says "We partner with Pangram Labs to balance AI detection with AI counseling and guide students towards self-discovery and introspection. Instead of using AI outputs within essays, we help students go deeper into their own motivations, and find their own words."

One of Gradpilot's primary motivations is to introduce AI to students in an ethical way. By integrating Pangram not as a way to evade detection, but to spot inauthentic writing and encourage the student to use their own voice, Gradpilot can provide a tighter feedback loop and ensure that students have their best shot at getting into the college they want.

This is a novel use of both AI and AI detection, and we are very excited at the prospect of a tool that uses AI to help improve students' writing processes rather than replacing it with automation.