The Generation of Content Creators - Gen Z Tells Their Story, Their Way

Insights on how your applicants are tackling the college application process.

By Julia Dixon, Founder, ESAI

Julia Dixon is the Founder and CEO of ESAI (pronounced [ES] + [AY] + [EYE]), the first-of-its-kind generative AI platform for college applicants and young professionals. As a former college advisor, working with students and their families for over 7 years, Julia saw a major inequality emerging as only the wealthiest families could afford resources for their students to stand out and get into the most competitive colleges and universities. She created ESAI to help level the playing field, so students of all backgrounds and resources could have a fair shot at telling their unique stories.

For high school students, the college application process has become increasingly chaotic, with the advent of social media and ChatGPT adding a new layer of complexity for Gen Z applicants. The constant influx of information and advice, some reliable and some not, has made the process even more overwhelming. As a former college advisor, I spent over seven years helping students and families navigate complexities from information overload, to confusing policy shifts, to skyrocketing costs. Yet, Gen Z is a generation of creators, with the tools and information to tell their unique stories quite literally at their fingertips — when they have the right support and ethical guardrails to do so. This inspired me to create ESAI, an AI-powered platform designed to make college admissions more intuitive, affordable, and effective!

ESAI asks students simple questions about their hobbies, values, challenges, cultural background, and more to suggest unlikely connections that can be made across their story.

From our first year of usage by over 100,000 applicants and a TikTok audience of 9M+, we've been able to compile a list of the top ten Gen Z application trends going into 2024:

1. Misinformation is everywhere. College admissions TikTok is gaining popularity among content creators, with hundreds of thousands of videos claiming to provide guidance. But not all advice is created equally. Teenagers may struggle to be discerning about the information they encounter online, as much of it has been deemed misleading or inaccurate by admissions officers.

2. Students are experiencing information overload. ESAI comment sections indicate that students often don’t know where to start. To address this, we direct students to our micro-tools that help them navigate individual steps of the process. By breaking up an application into manageable chunks, we help students feel more confident about beginning the journey.

3. Over 83% of ESAI users featured an "unlikely connection" in their college essay. ESAI helps students connect elements of their story—values, hardships, cultural background—to qualities admissions officers seek, such as career goals, passion for social issues, and campus activity plans. See image to the left.

4. Traditional career aspirations remain the most popular. Career goals like business, engineering, law, and medicine were 26% more likely to be indicated by our students than any non-traditional career.



5. Extracurricular activities are much harder to predict. ESAI users participate in a wide range of activities, from fostering animals and robotics clubs to running fandom account pages. No single activity dominates and many students lean into niche interests.

6. College essays have become an outlet. Social media posts indicate that students view their personal statements as a space to share emotional and impactful life stories. We always warn students, however, that it's important to avoid "trauma dumping" and to instead focus on showcasing their personality, strengths, and goals.

7. Major trends. Criminology, environmental science, and political science were the most commonly chosen majors among ESAI users last admissions season, being 18% more likely to appear in our data than any other major.

8. Most common schools. In 2023, the largest number of ESAI students applied to NYU, UCLA, and interestingly, Emory University, with Morgan State being the most common HBCU.

9. Common anxieties. Students on our platform express concerns about not getting into a "top" school, affording college, and lacking “unique” qualities to feature in their essays. See image below.

10. Social issues take the spotlight. Many ESAI students are passionate about social issues, with topics like climate change, immigration reform, and animal rights frequently appearing in their essays. This indicates a strong desire to make a difference and a deep engagement with global challenges.



With a predicted cohort of 200,000+ applicants in our 2024 application cycle, ESAI will continue to support these Gen Zers in sharing their unique stories as they navigate the complex application process. We’re excited to guide students with all kinds of backgrounds and interests through this pivotal time. It’s endlessly rewarding to witness students build the confidence in relaying their experiences and reach their educational dreams.

ESAI gamifies the application process by awarding students with shareable badges as they make their way through each tool. By celebrating student accomplishments with them, we take some anxiety out of the process and remind users this is a time to be proud of their progress!

To learn more about how your institution or high school could help student applicants through ESAI, contact us at info@harbingerlane.com.