--- title: "ChatGPT-Inspired Letter of Recommendation Gets Prestigious Cambridge Scholarship" description: "ChatGPTeach Turns out students aren't the only ones using ChatGPT to cheat. According to The Atlantic, teachers are using the AI tool to, among a few other use cases, write letters of recommendation — and one of these ChatGPT-assisted letters was apparently so good that it got a student a prestigious scholarship at Cambridge University. […]" date: "2023-04-24" modified: "2023-04-24" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-letter-recommendation-cambridge-scholarship" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "academia" - "ai" - "chatgpt" - "the digest" --- # ChatGPT-Inspired Letter of Recommendation Gets Prestigious Cambridge Scholarship ![Teachers are reportedly using ChatGPT to write AI-assisted letters of recommendation — which are apparently good enough to win Cambridge scholarships.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Breaking the Mould A University of Victoria academic used ChatGPT in a fascinating way to write a recommendation letter for a student, [*The Atlantic* reports]() — and it worked so well that it helped the student win a prestigious Cambridge scholarship. "A dirty secret of academe is that most professors have a cache of letters separated into different categories," Matt Huculak, the head of advanced research services at the University of Victoria, told the *Atlantic*. In other words, it's an extremely formulaic approach that results in equally formulaic recommendation letters. In an effort to break out of this kind of monotony, Hucalak had an interesting idea: he asked ChatGPT to write an "excellent" reference letter — and then used it as a template to write an opposite, "anti-formulaic" letter himself. "What I wrote," Hucalak told the *Atlantic,* "ended up feeling like the most 'human' and heartfelt letter I've written in a long time." As it turns out, the letter was heartfelt enough to win the student in question a prestigious scholarship to Cambridge University. ## Laying it Bare Hucalak's use of ChatGPT is fascinating, and in a way, flips not only the conventions of academia — a field notorious for its rigidity — and even ChatGPT, which has been widely touted for its creative process, on their respective heads. After all, ChatGPT was trained on human-written data and likely spat out an amalgamation of countless formulaic recommendation letters. Therefore, using the output as a template on what not to write in order to bring a bit of humanity back into the mix is arguably pretty clever. Speaking to the *Atlantic,* Hucalak called this process "\[laying\] the genre" of recommendation letters "bare." ## Opposite Day Of course, the ethics of a teacher using ChatGPT to write a recommendation letter are pretty murky. But since Huculak only used it as a reference, his use case seems pretty ethically sound. In fact, given the student's success in getting into Cambridge, it could be seen as a call to ditch the formulaic templates once and for all. **READ MORE:** [*The End of Recommendation Letters*]() \[*The Atlantic*\] **More on AI and education:** [*89 Percent of College Students Admit to Using ChatGPT for Homework, Study Claims*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()