Can You Use ChatGPT for a College Essay? What 48 Writing Professors Actually Say

You Googled the Question. The Answer Is Complicated.

You Googled "can I use ChatGPT for my essay." The answer depends entirely on which class you are in.

We know this because we read 48 AI policies from college writing courses — freshman composition, creative writing seminars, writing-intensive courses across disciplines — and found 48 different answers. Not 48 versions of the same answer. Forty-eight genuinely distinct positions on whether, when, and how you can use generative AI to write.

This post uses real quotes from actual syllabi. Every blockquote below is taken verbatim from a professor's course policy. We did not paraphrase, soften, or editorialize. These are the words your instructors chose to describe the rules you will be held to.

Data source: Syllabi Policies for Generative AI Repository. For admissions-level AI policies, see the GradPilot AI Policy Observatory.

The Spectrum at a Glance

When you classify all 48 writing-focused policies by stance, the distribution looks like this:

• 83% say "it depends" — some form of conditional or mixed-use policy
• 12% ban AI outright — treating any use as academic dishonesty
• 4% welcome AI — explicitly encouraging students to use generative tools

That 83% figure sounds like a consensus, but it is not. "It depends" means wildly different things depending on who is saying it. For one professor, "it depends" means you can use ChatGPT to brainstorm topic ideas but must write every sentence yourself. For another, it means you can use AI freely for any stage of the writing process as long as you cite everything. For a third, it means the professor hasn't decided yet and reserves the right to change the policy mid-semester.

The spectrum is not a binary. It is a gradient with dozens of stops, and your grade depends on knowing exactly where your professor falls.

For the full cross-discipline analysis covering all 210 policies in the dataset, see our companion piece: Can You Use ChatGPT in College? AI Syllabus Policies by Discipline.

The Restrictive 12%: Where AI Is Plagiarism

Let's start with the hard line. A small but unambiguous group of writing professors treat any AI-generated content as academic dishonesty, full stop. No exceptions, no gray areas, no negotiation.

"Submitting work containing any content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) when not explicitly directed to do so by the instructor will be considered an act of academic dishonesty." — Old Dominion University, Freshman Composition

This is the most common formulation among restrictive policies: AI output equals dishonesty, unless the instructor explicitly says otherwise. The default is prohibition. The burden is on the professor to create an exception, not on the student to seek permission.

"Submit your own work. If you use a source for support, include quotes and a citation. Academic dishonesty includes taking content from an Internet search, another person/entity, or AI technology such as ChatGPT (either directly or with modification) and representing it as your answer." — Susan Leopold, Fashion Institute of Technology, Design Studio 1

Notice the phrase "either directly or with modification." This professor has closed the most common loophole students imagine — that rewriting AI output in your own words somehow makes it yours. Under this policy, if the idea originated with ChatGPT and you rephrased it, you have still committed academic dishonesty.

"all your work is your own and original, so stay clear of Chat GPT and other AI that creates any work, or part of the work for you." — Maura Jurgrau, Fashion Institute of Technology, Digital Design Studio

And then there are the policies that go beyond rules into something closer to a plea:

"I want to read ONLY the beautifully human writing that comes from your unique human brain." — UC Santa Cruz, Sociology (cross-disciplinary but writing-focused)

That last quote is worth pausing on. It is not threatening consequences. It is not invoking institutional authority. It is a professor telling you, directly, that they value your voice and do not want it replaced. Whether or not you agree with the policy, the motivation is legible: this professor believes your writing matters because it is yours.

The common thread across restrictive policies in writing courses is not technological anxiety — it is a conviction about what writing is for. Creative writing and freshman composition are the most restrictive contexts we found, and the reason is consistent: these courses exist specifically to develop your ability to generate language. If AI does the generating, the assignment has no point.

The Embracing 4%: Where AI Is Welcome

At the other end of the spectrum, a small number of writing professors have gone the opposite direction. They do not merely tolerate AI. They expect you to use it.

"You are welcome to use GAI (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, etc.) in your Writing Seminar." — University of Pennsylvania, WRIT 039

That is a writing seminar — not a computer science lab, not a business analytics course — a writing seminar at an Ivy League university that explicitly invites students to use generative AI. The policy goes on to outline how students should integrate AI into their process, treating it as one resource among many rather than as a threat.

Even more striking is the case at UMass Amherst, where a professor in English Writing 112 directly overrides the university-level policy:

"The University prohibits the usage of AI for schoolwork. However, I have made an exception and I expect you to use generative AI tools."

Read that again. The university says no. The professor says yes — and not just "yes, if you want to," but "I expect you to." This is a writing instructor at a public research university who has looked at generative AI and concluded that learning to write with it is more valuable than learning to write without it.

Both of these embracing policies come from elite research universities. Both trust students to integrate AI thoughtfully. And both are in writing courses — the exact discipline where you might expect the greatest resistance. Their existence proves that "writing professors hate AI" is a caricature, not a description.

The Messy Middle: 40 Flavors of "It Depends"

The remaining 83% is where things get complicated. These policies allow some AI use but restrict other forms, and the lines they draw are wildly inconsistent from one syllabus to the next. We identified at least six distinct sub-camps within the "mixed" category.

The "Brainstorming Yes, Drafting No" Camp

This is the single most common position among writing professors with mixed policies. AI can help you think, but it cannot help you write.

"AI can help generate ideas for your writing, or help you to plan what you want to present in your paper/assignment/project." — Hunter Eichman, Austin Community College, Horticulture

Yes, even Horticulture courses have writing AI policies now. The universality of this debate is one of its most telling features. Every course with a writing component — and that is nearly every course — must now take a position on generative AI.

Under brainstorming-only policies, you might use ChatGPT to explore angles on a topic, generate a list of potential thesis statements, or map out an argument structure. But the moment you ask it to produce a sentence that will appear in your submitted work, you have crossed the line. The distinction rests on a clean separation between thinking and writing that many professors find intuitive and many students find confusing.

The "Grammar and Editing Only" Camp

A related but distinct group draws the line at the revision stage rather than the pre-writing stage. You must write the draft yourself, but you can use AI to clean it up.

"AI can be used for grammar, formatting, and editing." — Austin Community College

This position treats AI as a sophisticated spell-checker — one that can catch comma splices, suggest clearer phrasing, and fix subject-verb agreement, but that should not generate ideas, arguments, or new content. It is the most permissive form of restriction, and it maps neatly onto what tools like Grammarly have been doing for years. The difference is that ChatGPT can do much more than fix grammar, and the temptation to slide from editing into drafting is real.

The "Use It but Disclose Everything" Camp

Some writing professors have decided that the question is not whether you use AI but whether you are transparent about it. Their policies allow broad use but impose rigorous disclosure requirements.

At Skidmore College, a writing professor requires students to submit screenshots of all AI queries, include in-text ChatGPT citations, and add a Works Cited entry for every AI interaction. The documentation burden is significant — but the principle is clear: AI is a source, and sources must be attributed. This approach borrows directly from the conventions of academic citation that students are already learning in writing courses.

The "disclose everything" camp makes a pragmatic bet: students will use AI regardless of what the syllabus says, so the most productive policy is one that teaches them to use it honestly. Whether this constitutes acceptance or resignation depends on your perspective.

The "We'll Explore It Together" Camp

A smaller group of professors positions AI as a subject of study rather than just a tool or a threat. These courses build AI literacy into the curriculum itself.

"BIOL110 Introduction to Biology: The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools...is an emerging skill, and throughout the semester, I will provide basic tutorials." — College of Marin (writing about science)

This is a science course with a heavy writing component, and the professor has decided that learning to write with AI is itself a learning objective. Students are not left to figure out the technology on their own. The instructor provides tutorials, models appropriate use, and treats AI as something to be studied, not just regulated.

This camp is growing. As AI becomes more embedded in professional writing — journalism, marketing, technical communication, grant writing — the argument that students should graduate knowing how to use it responsibly becomes harder to dismiss.

The "Calculator Analogy" Camp

Multiple professors reach for the same metaphor: AI is to writing what a calculator is to mathematics. It can produce correct answers, but using it before you understand the underlying concepts defeats the purpose of the course.

The calculator analogy is intuitive and widely understood. But it also has limits. A calculator performs computation — a mechanical process with objectively correct outputs. Writing is not computation. There is no "correct" essay the way there is a correct answer to a long division problem. The analogy works for grammar checking and fact retrieval. It breaks down for argumentation, voice, and originality — precisely the things writing courses are designed to teach.

The Environmental Argument

One of the most unexpected policy justifications we encountered comes from the University of Washington:

"Outsourcing your writing to generative artificial intelligence services like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude violates academic integrity policies, slows your development as a college-level writer, and silences your voice. Not to mention that a conversation with ChatGPT can consume 16 ounces of fresh water." — University of Washington, ENGL 131

Three arguments in three sentences: institutional (it violates policy), pedagogical (it slows your growth), and environmental (it consumes resources). That water statistic — 16 ounces per conversation — has been circulating in academic circles and appearing in more policies each semester. It reframes AI use not just as an academic integrity issue but as an ethical consumption question. In a writing course focused on rhetoric and argumentation, the inclusion of an environmental appeal is itself a rhetorical move worth noticing.

The Religious, Environmental, and Philosophical Arguments

Beyond the practical question of what is allowed, some writing professors grapple with why. Their policies become mini-essays on the nature of writing, creativity, and human expression. These are among the most revealing documents in the dataset.

"An Affirmation of Humanity: God created humans in his image, and gifted us with creativity and language." — Biola University

At a Christian university, the argument against AI is theological. Writing is not just a skill to be developed — it is a divine gift to be exercised. Outsourcing it to a machine is not merely academically dishonest; it is a failure to honor the capacity that makes you human. You do not have to share this theology to recognize the depth of conviction behind it.

"ChatGPT cannot imagine freedom or alternatives; it can only present you with plagiarized mash-ups of the data it's been trained on." — Columbia University

This professor is making a philosophical claim about the nature of imagination. AI can recombine existing language. It cannot envision what does not yet exist. Whether you find this argument persuasive depends on your theory of creativity, but it is a serious position, not a reactionary one.

"Finding this style usually happens in a zone that Brian Eno terms, 'happy accidents.' Utilizing AI to generate your own work prevents you from making those accidental connections." — University of Pittsburgh

The Brian Eno reference is apt for a writing course. "Happy accidents" — the unexpected sentence that takes you somewhere you did not plan to go, the word that shows up and changes the argument — are central to how many writers describe their process. AI generates text by predicting the most likely next token. By definition, it trends toward the expected. The accidental, the surprising, the strange turn of phrase that becomes the best sentence in the paper: these emerge from the friction of human thought against language, not from statistical prediction.

"You are already a better writer than Copilot." — Colorado Mesa University, English 111

Six words. No argument, no justification, no citation. Just a professor telling first-year writing students that their voices are worth more than an AI's output. It is the simplest and most direct version of the conviction that runs through every restrictive and most mixed policies in our dataset: that the point of a writing course is you.

These professors frame writing as a fundamentally human activity that AI cannot replicate, only dilute. You may use AI in other contexts. But in these classrooms, the writing must come from you — not because the institution demands it, but because the act of writing is how you become a thinker.

What to Do Before Your First Day of Class

If you have read this far, you understand the landscape. Here is the practical advice.

Read the full syllabus before submitting anything. This sounds obvious, but the AI policy is often buried several pages in, sometimes under "Academic Integrity," sometimes under "Course Tools," sometimes in an appendix. Find it. Read it twice. If the syllabus does not mention AI, that does not mean there is no policy — it may mean the department or university policy applies by default.

When the syllabus is ambiguous, ask. Many of the policies we reviewed explicitly invite students to ask questions about AI use. Professors know their policies are new and evolving. A respectful email asking "I'd like to use ChatGPT for brainstorming on the first essay — is that consistent with your AI policy?" will almost always get a clear answer and will never get you in trouble. Silence, on the other hand, is risky.

The safest default: disclose everything. Use AI for brainstorming and editing only. Write your own drafts. If you use AI at any stage, say so. This default will keep you in compliance with virtually every policy in our dataset, from the most restrictive to the most permissive. It is the only strategy that works universally.

Keep records. If your professor allows AI use with disclosure, save your chat logs, take screenshots, and document your process. Several policies in our dataset require this documentation. Even if yours does not, having records protects you if questions arise later.

For guidance on writing AI disclosures, see How to Write an AI Disclosure for a College Application. For the broader question of transparency, see Should You Tell Colleges You Used AI? and ChatGPT vs Real College Essays. For admissions-level policies at specific institutions, search the AI Policy Observatory.

Data Credit

All professor quotes in this post are drawn from the Syllabi Policies for Generative AI Repository, a publicly maintained collection of course-level AI policies submitted by faculty. For admissions-level policies, see the GradPilot AI Policy Observatory, which tracks AI policies at 174 universities.