7 Tips to Score Higher on Casper

CASPER is touted as an exam you can’t study for by its administrator, Acuity Suite. However, like your preparations for the SAT or ACT, that doesn’t mean that you can’t prepare. Having a strategy to approach this situational judgment test can improve your performance and score in the top percentile against your peers. Required by many medical, dental, and BS/MD programs, the CASPER (Computer-Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics) is designed to assess what type of student you are beyond your resume and transcript. According to the Acuity Insights website, “it asks what you would do in a tough situation, and more importantly, why.” CASPER evaluates you on the following skills:

● Collaboration

● Communication

● Empathy

● Equity

● Ethics

● Motivation

● Problem Solving

● Professionalism

● Resilience

● Self-Awareness

Here are 7 tips to help you score higher on CASPER.

1. Consider multiple facets. As you prepare your response to the ethical questions, remember there is often no one true “right” answer. Instead, the raters want to see your ability to consider multiple perspectives, show empathy, and ultimately commit to a course of action while discussing its pros and cons. You should display that you come from a place of understanding and compassion while maintaining your ethical values. When

ChatGPT: How Students Should (and Shouldn’t) Use It When Applying to Colleges

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that was released in November 2022. At a basic level, it means people can ask it any question, and it will respond for free. Because it has been trained on text data from the internet, it can understand and create human-like language. While some students might be tempted to use ChatGPT to write their college application essay for them, it isn’t recommended. In fact, some schools, including the New York City public school district, have banned it from being used.

Even if it hasn’t been banned at the school you are applying to, it still isn’t a good idea to use ChatGPT to write your college admissions essays. ChatGPT lacks the ability to convey empathy, growth, and introspection. While it can write about a lot of things, it won’t be personal to you and might be missing out on the key details that make your story your own. Additionally, ChatGPT creates writing that tends to be more cliché and don’t fully answer the prompt, which could be red flags to college admissions counselors. Ultimately, it won’t be able to produce high-quality essays that will help students get into top universities.

With the exploding popularity of ChatGPT, colleges might turn to different ways to evaluate students, including having them submit video responses so they can ensure the student is the one producing the work. Schools like Brown University, Washington University in St. Louis and Bowdoin College already have an optional video introduction that students can submit. There might be an increase in this requirement in response to ChatGPT.