Using AI to write your scholarship essay: where the line is

Generative writing tools became widely available in the past year, and scholarship committees have started reading essays that were clearly produced by one. They read as fluent, structureless, and interchangeable — which is exactly what committees are screening against.

There are legitimate uses: brainstorming angles, checking grammar, asking whether an argument is clear. The problem is generated prose, because the entire point of the essay is evidence that a specific person wrote it.

The practical test is whether the essay contains details only you could know. AI can't supply those, and their absence is what makes a generated essay obvious.