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Guidance and Policies Related to Use of GenAI for Rackham Applicants

In 2023, the University of Michigan (U-M) launched tools and guidance on use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), including guidance and resources for students. This guidance is also relevant to prospective Rackham graduate students. The U-M GenAI guidance for students notes that this technology can be biased and misleading.

Additionally, as prospective future Rackham graduate students, you are expected to understand and observe the graduate school’s academic and professional integrity policy. Rackham’s policy on plagiarism (section 8.1.2) provides several examples of academic misconduct that are relevant to considering how to use GenAI with integrity. Applicants must not represent the ideas or work of others, including ideas generated using GenAI, as their own.

Ethical Use of GenAI Guidance for Rackham Applicants

Keeping Rackham’s policies related to academic and professional misconduct and U-M GenAI guidance in mind, Rackham Graduate School has guidance for ethical use of GenAI in your application to graduate school. Your application will include several essays, including the academic statement of purpose and the personal statement. Given that scholars should not represent the ideas or work of others as their own, including ideas generated using GenAI, your application essays should reflect your unique academic, research, and life experiences, and you should be the sole author of all written passages in your essays.

Below are several considerations for how you can ethically use GenAI in your graduate school application process:

  • GenAI tools may be used to search for guidance and suggestions on the application process to graduate school.
  • GenAI tools, like Grammarly, may be used to review grammar and spelling of your application essays.
  • GenAI tools, like Google Translate, may be used to aid and check translation of words and phrases.

Unethical use of GenAI in your application process would include:

  • Use of GenAI tools to outline, substantively draft, or write the content of your application essays, including copying and pasting language generated by GenAI tools.
  • Use of GenAI tools to generate prose or replace your unique voice and style as a sole author of your essays.
  • Use of GenAI tools to translate substantial portions of an essay written in another language into English.

This guidance for appropriate use of GenAI is analogous to ethical considerations for how you involve other individuals in the preparation of your applications to graduate school. It is appropriate to ask other individuals for guidance on the application process, or to review your essays for grammatical mistakes. However, it is not appropriate to ask other individuals to substantively draft, write, or fully translate your essays.

In addition to ethical considerations, as U-M’s GenAI guidance for students emphasizes, GenAI can mislead. Therefore, do not assume GenAI guidance on applying to graduate school is accurate. Always research the suggestions yourself. Request guidance from your undergraduate faculty mentors for information on best practices for applying to graduate school.

Similarly, machine-aided translation tools are known to produce errors. As a result, you should always consult a native speaker of English or a non-native speaker with a very high level of competency in English regarding translations into English suggested by GenAI tools before submitting your Rackham application essays.

Additionally, GenAI can produce generic essays. Our belief is that you will present your strongest application by writing required essays in your own unique voice.

Finally, please note that the Rackham Graduate School application will require your attestation that you are the sole author of all written passages in your application, including the academic statement of purpose and personal statement. You will be asked to acknowledge the above constraints on ethical and appropriate use of GenAI, and to attest that your essays are your own and not that of others or generative AI.

Consequences for Unethical Use of GenAI in Applications

There are several potential consequences for applicants who falsely attest that they have not used GenAI in unethical or inappropriate ways, including:

  • Admission to Rackham may be revoked if any part of the application contains falsifications, misrepresentations, or omissions. This includes falsely attesting that you have not used GenAI in unethical ways in your application. Please see Rackham’s Policy for Revoking an Offer of Graduate Admission for additional details.
  • Evaluation to determine if an enrolled student unethically used GenAI in their application, which would be handled in the same manner as other forms of academic and professional misconduct.