What generic AI gets wrong with this prompt
A combined word count over two questions is a resource-allocation problem, and generic AI doesn’t allocate — it fills. That single flaw drives most of what follows.
It answers “why now” with reasons anyone could give
“To further develop my leadership and analytical skills” — the why-now clause is the most personal part of Part I, and generic AI answers it with the least personal material it has, because timing arguments don’t exist in training data disconnected from a life. A why-now that isn’t tied to something that just changed in your career is a why-ever.
Ask your AI — “What changed in my career in the last year or two that makes this the moment? Does my draft name it, or does the why-now paragraph work for someone applying in any year?”
Part II gets the leftovers
Generic AI writes autobiography fluently — there’s endless Part I-shaped material in its training — so it spends the window there and compresses Part II into a closing gesture. But Kellogg made the contribution question a full, separate part. A one-sentence answer to half the prompt is a visible decision the committee gets to read.
Ask your AI — “Count the words my draft gives Part I versus Part II. If a stranger saw only the split, which question would they think Kellogg cared about?”
It recaps the career instead of examining the decisions
Asked for pivotal experiences and decisions, generic AI walks the timeline — first job, then the move, then the promotion — because your inputs arrive in resume order. A walkthrough covers every year and examines none of them. The prompt’s word is decisions; the committee wants the forks, what you weighed at each one, and what that reveals about how you’ll decide things next.
Ask your AI — “Which sentences in my draft describe a decision I actually weighed, with the alternative visible? Which just report the next thing that happened?”
It pads Part II with perspective-flavored filler
“I hope to share my unique perspective from my industry” — Part II from generic AI is the average of a million contribution paragraphs, which is precisely what makes it no contribution at all. Classmates don’t experience a perspective; they experience what you do in a study group at 11pm, or in the club you took over.
Ask your AI — “Turn each contribution in my draft into a scene a classmate would actually witness. Which ones can’t survive the conversion?”