An interesting story of how a professor at the University of Victoria leveraged the potential of ChatGPT to write a very human yet successful recommendation letter to help a student secure a prestigious scholarship to Cambridge University came to light recently. According to Matt Huculak, head of advanced research services at the University of Victoria, he wanted to break the mould of the usual monotonous and formulaic conventional letters.
To do this, Huculak came up with the idea of getting help from ChatGPT by asking it to write an ‘excellent’ reference letter. Afterwards, using the ChatGPT output as an example, Huculak wrote his own anti-formulaic letter with a greater emphasis on the human element.
Remarkably, this anti-formulaic letter was enough to help the student get into Cambridge, prompting questions about how ethical it is to use ChatGPT in such a manner. Although, Huculak was only using the output as a reference rather than a direct copy, so it seems he was in line with the ethical parameters.
This use case of ChatGPT presents a unique opportunity to break away from the boring traditional way of letter writing in academia and use creativity to inject more humanity into the same. As Hucalak aptly put it, the use of ChatGPT helped in ‘laying the genre of recommendation letters bare’, and the student’s success further proves Hucalak’s approach was no doubt a masterstroke.
The University of Victoria is an educational institution located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It is the oldest post-secondary institution in the province of British Columbia, and its goal is to improve the lives of the people of British Columbia through research, teaching, and engagement.
Matt Hucalak is the head of advanced research services at the University of Victoria. He is an academic professor and has dedicated his life to helping students reach their full academic potential. His innovative thinking outside the box and willingness to try something unconventional were key factors in the success of his student who won the prestigious Cambridge Scholarship.
