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As an Independent College Counselor and former AP English teacher, one of my core beliefs is that writing isn't meant to be easy; it is meant to challenge who you are and what you think.
For a long time (after navigating too many AI-generated essays on The Kite Runner or reading "personal" statements that lacked any humanity) I assumed all AI tools stripped writing of its power. My fear wasn't just that students would use AI to write—it was that if I also turned to AI to review their work, I'd be doing the same thing to them: replacing real insight with something hollow.
Then I was introduced to Athena. And I started to see how AI tools can sharpen judgement and make revision "easier" for IECs without undercutting the process or dehumanizing the product.
Unlike most AI writing tools, Athena is not student-facing. It's a tool for the counselor, not the writer. It generates feedback, never rewriting the essay for them. Instead of handing me an impersonal, fully-formed new draft, it creates specific in-line feedback comments. The human expert stays in charge, while the tool just does the heavy lifting of first-pass comments.
If I am honest, if I had a dollar for every time I had to write some variation of "Take this further. Give me an example of a time you applied X lesson after this experience" or "How do you plan to carry this lesson forward with you into college and beyond?" I'd have another undergraduate degree paid off by now.
Athena generates specific versions of those never-ending comments within a couple of minutes. You can then edit the tool's feedback, adding some personalization from that story your student told you about their mock trial competition sophomore year. It simply takes that initial time-intensive first step off your plate.
But if Athena just made the feedback process "easier," I would likely still not use it. What actually won me over is how the tool challenges my critical thinking. My favorite thing about Athena is that it generates feedback that I might not agree with.
On the surface, this might be seen as a flaw in the system. How could a tool trained by professionally trained IECs and Admissions Counselors generate comments that don't apply?
But in my experience, that disagreement is what pushes me to be a better IEC. I mean, the experience of being challenged is important enough for the Common App and schools like Northwestern to create entire essay prompts about it!
I remember one review session where Athena flagged a student's conclusion as underdeveloped, suggesting she hadn't fully articulated how her experience would carry forward. My first instinct was to dismiss it. I knew this student and I knew her story. I'd already decided the essay's ending had an "intentional restraint" to it.
But I sat with the comment anyway. Why didn't I agree with it? Was it that the feedback was wrong, or that I was too close to the essay to see it clearly? The more I turned it over, the more I realized it was pointing at something I'd unconsciously let slide because I liked the student's voice so much. I adjusted my feedback, she pushed her conclusion deeper, and the essay became undeniably stronger.
That's the moment I understood what this tool actually is. Every comment you disagree with becomes a question: Is this a blind spot? Could another counselor, equally trained, make this case? Does something in here apply even if the whole thing doesn't? With every review pass in Athena AI, you get the chance to refine your lens. It is like collaborating with a team of other professionals all at once.
You may find yourself working through all of that and still decide you disagree with Athena's comment. Great! That's not the point.
The point is that you thought about it critically and challenged yourself. By being faced with something you hadn't thought of before, you honed your skills and became an even stronger essay reviewer.
And after all, that is exactly what we are asking our students to do in these essays. That's what writing is all about.
If any of this resonates, try Athena free for 10 days. Use past student essays, explore the feedback, and see what your disagreements reveal about your own process.