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Prohibits AI-written essays
Stanford GSB draws the hardest line of the twelve schools we track. Its application terms state that it is improper to have another person or a tool write your essays, and a violation can cost you an offer that has already been made. There is no disclosure question because there is nothing to disclose: at Stanford, AI simply may not write any part of your essays.
This is our plain-English reading of Stanford GSB's published materials, not the school's own words. Read the official source before you rely on it.
Stanford treats an AI drafting tool the way it treats a paid ghostwriter. Feedback on writing that already exists and is already yours sits inside the line; the school itself acknowledges that getting a review or two of your essays is normal. Generation is the violation, whether that means whole drafts, single paragraphs, or the one sentence you could not quite phrase.
The enforcement clause deserves attention. Stanford reserves the right to revoke admission for application misconduct, so the risk does not expire when you get in. The safe posture is simple to state: every sentence in your GSB essays should have been typed by you, and any tool involvement should have been reactive (critiquing, questioning) rather than generative.
Stanford GSB's official policy · Sourced Jul 14, 2026
Wherever a school asks for a disclosure, the statement itself should be yours. Our free compliance check audits how you used AI against Stanford GSB's rules and shows what your own statement needs to cover; it never writes it for you.
Run the free AI-policy compliance check →The full field, side by side, lives on the MBA AI-policy hub. Stanford GSB's current essay prompts are on the prompt tracker.
Brainstorming that stays on your side of the keyboard (questions, prompts to your memory, critique of a draft you wrote) is consistent with the policy as we read it. The moment a tool's phrasing lands in the essay, you have crossed from review to writing.
The application terms make misrepresentation grounds for canceling an offer, including after admission. Stanford does not publish its detection methods, and does not need to; the standing risk is the deterrent.
A disclosure question presumes permitted use. Stanford's position is that writing by any hand other than yours is improper, so there is no bounded use to disclose. Editing tools applied to your own text occupy a gray zone we suggest treating conservatively.
School policies change between and within cycles. This page reflects Stanford GSB's public materials as of the sourced date above; always confirm against the live application before you rely on it.