Let Them Write: College Essays, AI, Parent Involvement, and Student Agency

As a professional college admissions counselor and an essay coach, we have had the privilege of working with many bright, motivated, and thoughtful young people. We have also seen firsthand the quiet damage being done by a well-meaning but growing trend: parents and other adults heavily revising—or even writing—a student’s college application essays.

There is constructive feedback, and there is wholesale revision. The distinction matters for reasons that extend far beyond college admissions.

When adults take control of a student’s work, they risk undermining something adolescents need to develop as they move toward adulthood: agency—the capacity to make choices, take purposeful action, and influence the direction of their own lives (Bandura, 2001).

To be clear, this is not simply a question of ethics, although integrity certainly matters. It is also a question of ownership, agency, self-efficacy, and the developmental opportunities young people need as they move toward adulthood.

AI vs. AI: Artificial Intelligence or “Alternative Intelligence”?

We worry, appropriately, about students outsourcing their thinking to artificial intelligence. Yet in a college admissions environment where the stakes often feel far higher than they objectively are, there is another form of outsourced intelligence that receives far less attention: adults taking over a student’s work.

Call it “alternative intelligence.” The parallel is worth considering.

If a student is explicitly told not to use AI and chooses to use it anyway, the student has made an agentic choice. It may be a poor choice. It may be unethical. It may undermine learning, authenticity, and even the student’s own long-term agency. But the decision itself was still theirs.

When a parent, professional writer, counselor, or other adult substantially rewrites a student’s essay, something different happens. The student loses the opportunity to make the decisions at all.

There is a meaningful difference between choosing to relinquish responsibility and having responsibility taken away.

Neither situation is desirable. But developmentally, they are not the same.

Emerging research on generative AI and learner agency makes this distinction even more important. Recent scholarship suggests that AI can either support or undermine agency depending on how it is used (Roe & Perkins, 2024). When students remain active, reflective decision-makers, AI may enhance their ability to direct and personalize their learning. When students become overly reliant on it, however, AI may contribute to cognitive offloading, dependence, and diminished independent judgment (Wang et al., 2026).

So the concern is not simply whether AI is present.

The deeper question is:

Who is doing the thinking, making the decisions, and owning the process?

That same question should guide how we think about adult involvement in college essays.

Why Agency Matters

The concept of agency has particular significance for Dr. Fine. Albert Bandura’s research on self-efficacy and human agency was at the core of her doctoral work and dissertation, and it has continued to shape how she thinks about adolescent development.

Bandura rejected the idea that people are simply passive recipients of their circumstances. In his agentic view of human behavior, studentcan intentionally influence their own lives through forethought, self-regulation, reflection, and purposeful action. At the same time, he was clear that agency does not mean complete control over outcomes. People act within social, environmental, and structural conditions they cannot fully control. What matters is that they retain meaningful influence over their own choices and actions (Bandura, 2001).

That distinction is especially important during adolescence.

Young people need opportunities to make decisions, solve problems, make mistakes, reconsider choices, experience consequences, and discover what they are capable of doing for themselves.

Agency does not mean always making the right decision; rather, having the opportunity to make the decision.

That distinction is especially important during adolescence.

Young people need opportunities to make decisions, solve problems, make mistakes, reconsider choices, experience consequences, and discover what they are capable of doing for themselves.

Agency does not mean always making the right decision; rather, having the opportunity to make the decision.

The Essay Is the Student’s Voice

 The college application essay is more than a writing sample. It is one of the few opportunities students have to speak directly to admissions officers on their own terms and in their own voices—to share something about themselves that cannot be captured by grades, test scores, activities, or letters of recommendation.

It is a chance to demonstrate insight, character, maturity, growth, critical thinking, and, perhaps most importantly, authenticity.

When students write their own essays, they engage in self-reflection. They decide which experiences matter to them, what those experiences mean, what they are willing to disclose, and how they want someone who has never met them to understand who they are.

Those are not merely writing decisions.

They are agentic decisions.

When someone else writes the essay—or rewrites it so substantially that the original voice and thinking disappear—those decisions are no longer fully the student’s.

Support Agency, Don’t Replace It

Bandura distinguished between personal agency, in which individuals act directly on their own behalf, and proxy agency, in which they rely on others to help them achieve desired outcomes.

Adolescents certainly need adults, and asking for help is not a failure of independence. Parents, teachers, counselors, and other adults can play an enormously important role in helping young people develop.

The issue is not whether adults should help.

The issue is how they help.

Does adult involvement strengthen the student’s capacity to act, or does it replace it?

A parent who asks, “What are you trying to say here?” supports agency.

A parent who rewrites the paragraph answers the question for the student.

A counselor who says, “I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Tell me more,” supports agency.

A counselor who supplies the insight the student is supposed to discover does not.

A parent who points out that a sentence is confusing and asks the student to reconsider it supports growth.

A parent who opens the document and rewrites the essay in adult language has crossed into a fundamentally different role.

The goal should never be to eliminate adult guidance. The goal should be to provide enough support for students to succeed without taking away the experience of succeeding for themselves.

Beware of Unintended Consequences

When parents become overly involved in the college essay process—whether by rewriting, directing topics, or strongly suggesting content—they may unintentionally steer students away from subjects that genuinely matter to them.

Because many adolescents understandably want parental approval, they may abandon an idea that excites them and instead pursue a topic an adult believes will be more impressive.

The result is often an essay that feels flat and forced, lacking the energy and authenticity that comes from genuine investment.

What should be a meaningful exploration of self becomes more like an assigned essay on a Shakespeare play the student struggled to comprehend: technically completed, perhaps, but disconnected from the writer.

Excessive adult involvement can also make writing harder.

When students try to satisfy multiple adult voices—parents, college counselors, teachers, coaches—they may become confused about what they are “supposed” to say. They begin second-guessing themselves. They may become afraid to make a wrong choice. In some cases, they stop writing altogether.

Instead of asking, "What do I want to say?", the student begins asking, "What do they want me to say?"

That is precisely the shift we should be trying to avoid.

What the Research on Autonomy Tells Us

None of this means adolescents should complete the college admissions process without support.

Quite the opposite.

Research on autonomy support suggests that young people benefit when adults provide structure, encouragement, feedback, and guidance while still preserving the student’s sense of ownership.

A 2023 meta-analysis by Sakhavat Mammadov and Kayla Schroeder synthesized 378 effect sizes from 179 independent samples involving more than 213,000 students. The researchers found that perceived autonomy support from parents and teachers was positively associated with outcomes including autonomous motivation, engagement, mastery orientation, self-regulated learning, positive self-beliefs, and academic performance (Mammadov & Schroeder, 2023).

The lesson is not that parents should step away.

It is how adults help that matters.

Students need both autonomy and structure.

They need adults who can ask questions without supplying all the answers, provide perspective without dictating conclusions, and offer feedback without taking over the task.

The objective should not be independence without support.

The objective should be support that gradually builds independence.

Integrity Matters—Now More Than Ever

There is also an ethical dimension.

In a competitive and often confusing college admissions environment, adults can convince themselves that unusually high stakes justify unusually aggressive intervention.

But ethics should not become situational.

If a college expects a student to submit their own work, then having another person substantially produce that work violates the spirit—and potentially the explicit expectations—of the application process.

The same is true when a college explicitly limits or prohibits the use of AI.

Students may still choose to violate those expectations. If they do, they should own both the choice and the consequences. But adults who take over a student’s work send a different and troubling message: when the stakes are sufficiently high, someone more capable should step in and take control.

That is a dangerous lesson to teach young people at precisely the moment they are preparing for greater independence.

Personal Agency and Confidence Building

Every time students write their own stories, they practice agency.

They choose.

They revise.

They reconsider.

They become frustrated.

They solve problems.

They decide when something finally says what they intended it to say.

And in doing so, they have the opportunity to think:

This is who I am.

This is what I learned.

This is what matters to me.

This is my story.

I did this.

When someone else controls the narrative, students lose that opportunity.

Worse, they may internalize a very different message: My voice isn’t good enough. My story isn’t interesting enough. My writing isn’t strong enough. Someone more capable had to fix it.

Recently, a student spent hours diligently developing an essay, only to have it substantially reworked by a “professional writer.” Hired by parents who felt the essay wasn’t “shiny” or “interesting” enough, the end result was that the student’s voice was largely erased.  

The writer changed far more than sentence structure.

The student’s actual feelings about the experience were reframed to such an extent that the submitted essay was more fiction than autobiography.

Perhaps the adults involved believed they had improved the product.

But consider what was lost.

The student’s voice disappeared.

The student’s interpretation of their own experience disappeared.

The student’s ownership disappeared.

And apparently, none of that mattered as much as producing a more polished essay.

We must remember what the document is called:

A personal statement.

The Power of Authenticity

 Admissions officers read thousands of essays and spend their careers listening to adolescent voices. They do not need a seventeen-year-old to sound like a professional writer.

According to Kaitlin Crepps, Associate Director of Undergraduate Admissions at George Washington University, “With the rise of AI and reported increase in parent involvement in the application process, I find that a student's use of their unique voice and perspective provides them an advantage in this process.”

She further explains that she “loves reading essays that might not be grammatically perfect or have incredible sentence structure, but are dripping with a student's passion or humor or specific interests.”

Some of the most engaging essays are about seemingly ordinary things. Their power comes not from the magnitude of the topic but from the specificity of the student’s observations and the unmistakable humanity of the voice.

Jeremiah Rakowski, Former Regional Assistant Director of Admissions at American University, offers similar advice:

“It’s important to edit for clarity and fix things like grammar and typos, but not at the cost of losing your authentic voice. When an essay is over-edited, it can start to feel less like you and more like a fictional version of who you think they want. The most powerful essays are honest, imperfect, and uniquely yours.”

Ultimately, what makes a college essay resonate is not perfection.

It is authenticity.

Admissions officers do not need doctoral-level vocabulary or professionally engineered prose. They are trying to glimpse the person behind the application.

Students should prioritize connection.

Impression will follow.

A Sense of Accomplishment Matters

Writing a quality college essay is difficult.

It requires brainstorming, reflection, drafting, frustration, editing, revision, and occasionally throwing out what isn't working and starting again.

That difficulty is precisely why completing the process matters.

Students need opportunities to experience themselves doing difficult things successfully.

Bandura’s research on self-efficacy helps explain why. A central source of efficacy beliefs is mastery experience: encountering a challenge, working through it, and discovering through experience that one can succeed.

If adults consistently intervene before young people have the opportunity to struggle, reconsider, problem-solve, and find success, they may inadvertently remove the very experiences from which confidence grows.

The goal should not be to protect students from all frustration.

Some struggle is productive.

When students wrestle with an opening paragraph, reject three topics, discover the story they actually want to tell, and revise until the words finally sound like them, they earn something more valuable than a polished essay.

They earn the right to say:

“I did this.”

Crepps describes that developmental benefit well: “A student's ownership of their essay lets them feel like they've put their genuine self into what they've produced and provides space and time for self-reflection. It sets the tone of ownership for college as an emerging adult.”

That last sentence may be the most important.

College applications arrive at almost exactly the developmental moment when adolescents are expected to assume increasing responsibility for their own lives.

If adults take over whenever something feels especially consequential, we risk teaching the opposite lesson:

When something really matters, someone more capable should do it for you.

Parents: Do the Right Thing by Doing Less

It is natural for parents to want to help their children.

The college process is emotional. The stakes can feel enormous. Parents have spent eighteen years protecting, advising, correcting, and advocating for their children.

Stepping back can be difficult.

But sometimes the most developmentally valuable form of parenting is not solving the problem.

It is helping a young person discover that they can solve it for themselves.

Ask questions.

Listen.

Encourage reflection.

Help students think through competing ideas.

Point out something that is unclear.

Provide structure.

Remind them of deadlines.

Reassure them when they doubt themselves.

Then allow them to do the work.

Let the words be theirs.

Let the ideas be theirs.

Let the decisions be theirs.

And let the accomplishment be theirs.

Since the timing coincides with the significant transition between adolescence and adulthood, the college essay can be more than a simple tool for gaining admission. Under the right conditions, the process challenges young people to decide what they value, reflect upon who they are becoming, articulate something meaningful about themselves, tolerate uncertainty, accept feedback, make decisions, and complete something difficult.

Ownership helps strengthen the person who eventually arrives on that college campus.

Let them write.

For more information on writing college essays or any other aspect of the college admissions process, feel free to contact me at kathy@fineeducationalsolutions.com.

References

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1 (Annual Reviews)

Mammadov, S., & Schroeder, K. (2023). A meta-analytic review of the relationships between autonomy support and positive learning outcomes. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 75, 102235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2023.102235 (ScienceDirect)

Roe, J., & Perkins, M. (2026). Agency in the age of generative AI: A critical review of educational implications. Academia AI and Applications, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.20935/AcadAI8422 (Academia)

Wang, G., Wang, W., Yang, D., & Ren, J. (2026). Generative AI, cognitive offloading, and learner agency in higher education: A scoping review. Behavioral Sciences, 16(7), 1150. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16071150 (MDPI)