AI and ERAS

[Dr.SPAC3MAN]

Hey all, possible dumb question here. What is the consensus on using AI to help write ERAS personal statement? I plan to revise quite a bit after using AI to help structure. Basically I made an outline, filled in my outline, used AI to help it flow together, then plan to go through it after asking for others opinions and do several revisions. I tried looking for a thread on the topic but did not find one. Obviously I don’t want to do it if it’s a red flag. Any thoughts? Thanks

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[Mr.Smile12]

I think it depends on how you define "help." Obviously you can't submit a generic letter written by a chatbot. I think you can have it make your PS more succinct (check grammar, tone, sentence alternatives). Use the technology responsibly; would you really feel comfortable giving your future to a chatbot?

 

[GoSpursGo]

The AAMC is pretty clear that this is not allowed: Personal Statement

Personal statements created outside the MyERAS application should be done in a plain text word processing application such as Notepad (for Windows users) or SimpleText (for Mac users). The statement should reflect your personal perspective and experiences accurately and must be your own work and not the work of another author or the product of artificial intelligence.

Now... I think a reasonable discussion could be had at what level does a work product cross over from being yours to belonging to the AI. But if you just gave the AI a list of things to incorporate and then it waved a magic wand and weaved everything together, I would say that it is the product of AI. I would suggest writing up a full draft and then using it to improve the structure as @Mr.Smile12 suggested.

A separate question is whether and how anyone would know if you used AI to write your personal statement. Obviously we know a bunch of applicants are doing this sort of thing and I'm not sure if or frankly how they would get caught. But assuming you are strictly asking about what would or would not be ethical, I recommend writing the first draft yourself.

 

[Esmolol]

The AAMC is pretty clear that this is not allowed: Personal Statement

It may be worth to mention yet another obvious asymmetry of the process. Programs are free to use AI services like Thalamus Cortex etc.

Cortex: Applicant Screening Re-imagined – Thalamus

Cortex is application screening reimagined with AI assistance. Upload application PDFs in bulk. Cortex uses natural language processing (NLP) and optical character recognition (OCR) to pull out aggregate grades, keywords and other important data in a snapshot view to promote DEI recruitment and...

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[Styrene]

What about program directors etc running PSs through AI detection software and dinging people with high likelihood of significant AI writing in their PSs?

 

[GoSpursGo]

What about program directors etc running PSs through AI detection software and dinging people with high likelihood of significant AI writing in their PSs?

First of all I feel like that takes a lot of effort. Second of all, I’m not sure that those things are well verified.

 

[Goro]

What about program directors etc running PSs through AI detection software and dinging people with high likelihood of significant AI writing in their PSs?

They have too high a failure rate.

 

[APA 32]

Hey all, possible dumb question here. What is the consensus on using AI to help write ERAS personal statement? I plan to revise quite a bit after using AI to help structure. Basically I made an outline, filled in my outline, used AI to help it flow together, then plan to go through it after asking for others opinions and do several revisions. I tried looking for a thread on the topic but did not find one. Obviously I don’t want to do it if it’s a red flag. Any thoughts? Thanks

Would not recommend

 

[WildWing]

While the consensus is that you should limit your use of it, if you do use AI, keep an eye out for the overuse of adjectives. Especially these (I keep a list of words that ChatGPT seems to like to put into text):

• Esteemed
• Prestigious
• Meticulous
• Comprehensive

 

[mistafab]

Bro a PS is a single page of writing.

If you can't do that, just give up and drop out.

 

[Dr.SPAC3MAN]

lol we are not all gifted with great writing abilities. Who hurt you to be so aggressive over such a simple question?

 

[PeteytheFish]

For what it's worth, my husband is a market researcher and literally just yesterday returned a bunch of narrative work to a vendor because they had clearly used AI to generate it (which is unacceptable because in this case, it meant that the data were also falsified). Human writing comes with particular quirks that are hard for AI to replicate. When you read a lot of work written by a human and then read something written by AI, it is extremely obvious. AI has a tendency to write in a very easy to spot pattern and is in part given away because it is perfectly grammatical.

What I'm saying is that your readers will very likely know unless the majority of their applicants are also using AI.

My advice? Put something on paper. Just write a personal statement that gives an insight into who you are and why you are applying to this particular specialty. Then go find some people to help you clean it up. Does your med school have access to a writing center? Are your academic advisors able to help with editing? Do you have a particularly strong writer in your class? Can you get someone on SDN to help?

Bottom line: AI will write you a clean but not particularly good essay. By nature, it lacks the human touch and you're going to struggle to edit it such that you can undo that fatal aspect. Do yourself a favor and put yourself and your passion into the PS instead of letting some machine do it.

 

[operaman]

I’ve been using AI pretty extensively these days and when it comes to writing something nuanced where I actually care about style and subtlety, it seems to work better in more of an editor role than a content generator role. I can be pretty long winded and it’s helped me take a buzz saw to some things that really needed it. The newer LLMs are far beyond where they were even a year ago.

While I wouldn’t recommend using it to write a PS, I will say that most statements already seemed to read very much alike. The best advice I ever got on writing a PS was that it should be neither personal nor make a statement. AI is kind of the perfect tool to deliver just that!

 

[SurfingDoctor]

AI just proves how useless personal statements are.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

The best advice I ever got on writing a PS was that it should be neither personal nor make a statement. AI is kind of the perfect tool to deliver just that!

Interestingly, my advice is different. The PS is a chance to actually tell me about you as a person. Tell me something that's not already elsewhere in your application. Something about you, something that makes me want to meet you.

In IM, most PS's are about one of four topics/types:
1. Solving Puzzles - you may think this is original, but it's not.
2. Let me rehash my CV for you in prose format - why bother?
3. Why I want to do Internal Medicine - chances are, your reasons are no different than anyone else's.
4. Let me tell you about some patient - why would I want to hear about a patient?

Most are some combination of the above. I used to have a 5th category for a "pointless quote to start" but that seems to have fallen out of favor. And is equally pointless.

 

[MDMechEngr]

lol we are not all gifted with great writing abilities.

You do not need to be gifted. Use AI for editing and nothing more.

 

[GoSpursGo]

lol we are not all gifted with great writing abilities. Who hurt you to be so aggressive over such a simple question?

As noted above, you don’t need to be gifted, but I think part of what @NotAProgDirector is trying to say is that despite how daunting writing the personal statement is, 85% of the time it literally doesn’t matter. Unless you have something amazing to tell that doesn’t belong somewhere else on your application, it is very unlikely that your personal statement is going to be what convinces someone to give you an interview that you otherwise would not have gotten.

Where it may be important is that it is likely the last thing that your interviewer will read in the 3 minutes before your interview, so my general advice is to focus on the things you would like to talk about in an interview. Don’t regurgitate your whole CV cuz that doesn’t help anyone, but hone in on a few important things.

 

[Dr.SPAC3MAN]

I appreciate the advice everyone. Thanks!

Also to be clear I had drafted many paragraphs of my stories and experiences in my outline by myself, just used AI to help it flow together