Your story. Your voice. Your essay.
Dakota’s Application Coach is designed to comply with the Common App Fraud Policy. It protects a simple principle: your application must remain your own work.
Dakota can help students understand an application question, think more deeply about their response, and improve the mechanics of what they have already written. It does not write, rewrite, generate, or supply application content—including essays, paragraphs, sentences, outlines, stories, ideas, or experiences—and it will not produce language intended for submission as a student’s own work.
What the Common App Fraud Policy says
The Common App Fraud Policy defines fraud to include intentionally presenting as your own work:
“another person’s thoughts, language, ideas, expressions, or experiences”
or:
“the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology, or algorithm.”
That distinction matters. The policy is not simply concerned with who typed the final words. It protects the student’s ownership of the ideas, experiences, language, and substantive content of the application.
Dakota was built around that line.
How Dakota protects student authorship
1. Dakota does not write or rewrite student work
Dakota does not generate application content of any kind, including essays, paragraphs, sentences, hooks, outlines, anecdotes, or themes. It also does not rewrite or “polish” student writing or provide alternative versions of their text. The final application remains entirely the student’s own work and wording.
2. Dakota supports mechanics without replacing language
Dakota can identify issues in grammar, punctuation, syntax, clarity, and word usage, and explain why something may be unclear or imprecise. It may also define terms or explain rules, but it does not provide replacement prose or rewording. Students are guided to make their own revisions.
3. Dakota provides vocabulary suggestions
If a student highlights a sentence, Dakota can Dakota can flag when a word seems imprecise or inconsistent with what the student means and help the student find their own better wording.
4. Dakota coaches by asking questions
A good college counselor does not supply a student’s story—they help the student think more deeply about it. Dakota follows the same approach using the student’s own material and asking questions such as:
- What actually happened?
- What, if anything, changed for you afterward?
- What do you think about that now?
- What would you want this essay to add that the rest of your application doesn’t already show?
Dakota does not answer these questions. The insight, reflection, and language must come from the student.
5. Students can turn coaching off
Students can disable coaching questions at any time. With coaching off, Dakota is limited to basic writing support such as grammar, punctuation, and clarity checks. Students can then work directly with any of their team members through Dakota’s collaboration tools, supporting different school or institutional policies.
Educators have a separate professional workspace
Counselors and tutors can access an advanced educator version of Dakota trained on successful applications, essay analysis, and admissions guidance.
It includes an Admissions Read that helps counselors evaluate how an essay may be interpreted, where clarity is lacking, and what a reader may still want to understand. This gives them a broader admissions lens while keeping the student-facing Application Coach focused on coaching rather than evaluating the application.
Write it yourself, not AI-generated text
General-purpose AI tools can quickly generate essays, stories, and polished language in seconds. Using substantive AI-generated content in an application can violate the Common App Fraud Policy and may replace your authentic voice with generic writing.
Dakota is designed differently. It does not generate or rewrite application content. Instead, it helps students think more clearly, examine their own experiences, and improve writing they created themselves.
Your words. Your ideas. Your experiences. Your perspective. Your story.
Read the full Common App Fraud Policy.
Individual colleges and universities may impose additional restrictions on use. Students should always review the policies of every institution to which they apply.
Ask your school what tools you can use and show them Dakota if you are concerned.