Can AI Write an Academic Cover Letter?

Short answer: no.

Years back I wrote:

“Anyone can write a cover letter fast, over a weekend. A BAD cover letter, that is.

But to write a good one takes weeks, even months, of close, painstaking edits.”

Why?

Because academia is peculiar.  Academic readers are completely iconoclastic (although consistently so lol) and the issue with academic job documents is rarely what you say, because your CV has already said it.  It’s HOW you say it. Ie, how you frame your work in ways that speak to all those unspoken, indeed hidden, norms of prestige, hierarchy, insider-outsider boundaries, and disciplinary politics, as well as the particularities of the individual job ad, the department, the campus and TYPE of campus, and even region (think right wing attacks on DEI for example).

AI will indeed produce sentences that convert your cv into a grammatically correct narrative form, and even relate that cv to a job ad. But can it do it the way academics think, WHEN ACADEMICS NEVER DISCLOSE HOW THEY ACTUALLY THINK?

I mean, my own book and blog is AI’s biggest help in the enterprise, and ChatGPT etc may have certainly scooped my decades of advice. But as I always say: general advice only gets you so far.  The devil is in the details. The choice of a particular noun or verb or phrase actually communicates volumes within academia.

“My dissertation attempts to show…”

“I was lucky to receive the Fulbright”

“I studied X method in my Masters program.”

“I believe I’m a great fit for your program!”

“Teaching is my passion”

“It would be an honor to join your department”

“My work adds to the brilliant findings of Johnson (2023) and Wilson (2022).”

“I can teach your 101, 102, 104, 203, 207, 349, 372, and 446a and 446b courses.”

Etc.

all appear to the untrained eye as effective job doc verbiage.  They are not, for reasons I explicate in my book.  Briefly, because they 1) lean on emotions rather than evidence, 2) self-juvenilize by referring to obsolete grad student identity, 3) pander and flatter in undignified and North American culturally inappropriate ways, 3) self-sabotage by crediting ones successes to luck, reducing ones’ own work to an addendum of others’, and relying on hedging language, and 4) reduce teaching capacities to lists of decontextualized course numbers rather than substantive description.

And this list barely scratches the surface of the tonal ways that cover letters etc fall off the mark.

But don’t just believe me.

In this post I am going to share a CV kindly volunteered by a member of the Professor Is Out Facebook group, and the letter generated from that CV by ChatGPT with the instruction: “please write an academic cover letter based on a CV.”

A note on anonymity:  Sharing of CVs was requested on the premise is that I will anonymize the content to a degree, but no CV can be completely anonymous as some publication names, etc will remain unchanged.  The volunteers, being mostly oriented away from traditional academic careers (by virtue of being on the Professor Is Out page) were aware of the limits of anonymity and shared their CVs with that understanding. I have about 20 folks (so far) from TPIO who have volunteered for this experiment, and I plan to share more examples moving forward.

Today’s example is a very enthusiastic tenured faculty member who volunteered not only their CV but also the actual cover letter that they have used (successfully) on the job market, so as to provide a meaningful comparison with the AI-generated version. THANK YOU, VOLUNTEER!

Please note this is only the first foray.  I have already done a second experiment, which I will share in my next post.

Also caveats and limitations: I am not an AI expert in any degree and I am aware that those of you with expertise would know FAR BETTER sets of commands to get potentially better outcomes. However, I am comfortable with the limitations of this initial experiment, for the reason that I would expect the overwhelming majority of academic job seekers to similarly lack expertise in AI, and use the tool in the same sort of amateur and rudimentary way as I have. My premise is that the results I get will track rather accurately onto the potential results of Dr. Jane Doe, generic academic job seeker.

I certainly welcome discussion about different approaches and methods in the comments.

What follows is 1), the CV; 2), the ChatGPT generated cover letter; 3), the scholar’s actual cover letter; and 4) brief discussion.

INITIAL CV

Curriculum vitae

CURRENT EMPLOYMENT

• Professor of English, University of XXX, 2023-present.
• Technical Director of XXXX Editions, 2021-present

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., 19th c. British Lit., University of X, 2014.
• M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 2008.
• BA, English Literature and Theatre, Bowdoin College, Maine, 2000. Magna cum laude. 
• Visiting Student, English Literature, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, 1998-9.

TEACHING, SCHOLARSHIP, SERVICE

TEACHING

At UX (2014-present): Undergraduate English courses in all modalities (online asynchronous, online synchronous, face-to-face, hybrid, and international travel). 30+ unique preps at all levels:

• BA English
• General Education
• Dual Enrollment (high school students / college courses)
• MA English
• Lifelong Learning Institute (non-credit short courses for retirees, as a volunteer)

• Topics include: Victorian Literature, Romantic Literature, British Survey, British Novel, Writing Wales (Travel Course), Digital Humanities, Publishing Practicum, Literary Studies (research/writing methods course), Vampires, World Drama, World Literature (Les Misérables), The Hungry Forties [1840s], The British Novel [in the 21st Century], Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, Capstone in Literature: Literary Citizenship, The Sweeney Todd Project, Thoreau, Introduction to Literature, Women in Literature, The Victorian Era, Voices from Prison, Travel Writing, and more. All teaching incorporates Writing Emphasis Objectives and Assignments and some is informed by my decade of living and working in XXX
• At the University of XXX (2010-14), teaching included Composition (2 levels of undergraduate composition/Writing Foundations).
• At the University of XXX (2004-6 and 2008-10), teaching included Creative Writing (all undergraduate levels, various genres and topics).

At the XXX Institute, University of XXX:

• “XXX.” Scheduled for June 2024.

SCHOLARSHIP

BOOKS

• James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family. The first monograph on Rymer, inventor of Sweeney Todd and Dracula precursor Varney, the Vampyre. Advance contract with Routledge. Forthcoming 2024.
• With Stephen Basdeo and Mark Truesdale, critical edition of Robert Southey’s lost Robin Hood novel Harold, or, the Castle of Morford. Advance contract with Routledge.

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS INCLUDE

• 2 chapters (“In the Reading Gaol” and “Penny Bloods and Dreadfuls”) in XXX, 2024. Forthcoming.
• With Dino Franco Felluga and Priyanka A. Jacob. “Teaching ‘The New Classroom’” (Forum). Victorian Review 49, no. 1 (Spring 2024). Forthcoming.
• “Gothic Ideology in James Malcolm Rymer’s Penny Dreadfuls.” Penny Dreaduls and the Gothic, edited by Nicole Dittmer and Sophie Raine, 180-199. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2023.
• “Victorian Vegetarianism in Rymer’s Varney the Vampyre.” Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural 9 (2023): 80-99. https://www.revenantjournal.com
• “Lord of Misrule: Reynolds’s Christmas Fiction.” Reinventing G.W.M. Reynolds. Edited by Jennifer Conary and Mary L. Shannon, 261-282. London: Routledge, 2023.
• “‘Keeping Time at Arm’s Length’: Vampire and Veterans in Varney.” The Vampire in Nineteenth Century Literature: A Feast of Blood. Edited by Brooke Cameron, pp. 127-140. Routledge, 2022.
• “Mocking Andromeda in Julia Constance Fletcher’s The Fantasticks.” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens. 2023.
• Bibliography of James Malcolm Rymer.” The Oxford Bibliographies of Victorian Literature. 2022. Solicited by OUP. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199799558/obo-9780199799558-0165.xml
• “The Mystery of Sweeney Todd: G.A. Sala’s Desperate Solution.” Victorians Institute Journal 47 (2020): 15-45.

• “Lady Clara Cavendish: Reynolds and Rymer’s Political Hoax.” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens. 2022. https://journals.openedition.org/cve/10742

• “Penny Fiction and Chartism: A Literature’s Exclusion from the Canon.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class. Edited by Glora Macmillan. Routledge, 2021, pp. 281-292.
• Paul Schacht, Elizabeth Witherell, Rebecca Nesvet, Elisa Beshero-Bondar, Fiona Coll, and Nikolas Wasmoen. “Encountering Walden.” Scholarly Editing 39 (2022). Encountering Walden</em> | Volume 39 | Scholarly Editing

• “‘Two Men of Note’: Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes. Oscar Wilde: Critical Insights. Edited by Frederick Roden. Salem Press, 2020, pp. 187-200.
• “1837: Miss Whitehead, the Bank Nun.” BRANCH. 2020. https://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=rebecca-nesvet-miss-whitehead-the-bank-nun
• “The Bank Nun’s Tale: Financial Forgery, Gothic Storytelling, and Economic Power.” Victorian Network, vol. 8, 2019, pp. 28-49. https://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/article/view/83
• “Sweeney Todd’s Indian Empire: Mapping the East India Company in The String of Pearls.” Victorian Popular Fictions Journal 1, no. 2 (2019): article 5. https://victorianpopularfiction.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/5-Nesvet-VPFJ-1.2.pdf
• “James Malcolm Rymer’s Cockney Mazeppa: Byron Reassembled.” Nineteenth Century Studies 30 (“2018”): 45-75. Actually completed and published in 2019.
• “Mary Shelley and Sade’s Global Network: The Case of Eugénie de Franval,” Women’s Literary Networks and Romanticism, edited by Andrew O. Winckles and Angela Rehbein. Liverpool UP, 2018, pp. 245-273.
• “Penny Bloods and Dreadfuls.” Teaching Victorian Literature in the 21st Century, edited by Jen Cadwallader and Laurence Mazzeno, Macmillan 2017, pp. 53-68.
• “Blood Relations: Sweeney Todd and the Rymers of London,” Notes and Queries, vol. 64, no. 1, 2017, pp. 112-116.
• “Robert Southey, Historian of El Dorado.” Keats-Shelley Journal, vol. 61, 2012, pp. 116-121. Reprinted in NCLC: Robert Southey, edited by Lawrence Trudeau and Laurie Langbauer.  Layman Poupard, 2017. Gale CEngage. 
• “‘The Scene Itself’: Rousseauvian Drama and Roman Space in Shelley’s The Cenci.” Rousseau in Britain, edited by Russell Goulbourne and David Higgins, Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 131-48.
• “Missing Persons: Lucy Hutchinson, Feminist Biography, and the Digital Archive.” The Invention of Female Biography, edited by Gina L. Walker, Routledge, 2017, pp. 74-82.
• “Patagonian Giants, Frankenstein’s Creature, and Contact Zone Catastrophe.” Prism(s): Essays in Romanticism, vol. 21, no. 1, 2014, pp. 53-64.

DIGITAL CRITICAL EDITIONS

• Co-editor, with XXX and XXX, XXX.  Projected completion 2027. For this project, we applied for a 3-year grant from the XXX.

• Editor, A Mystery in Scarlet, by James Malcolm Rymer. COVE Editions, 2020. Peer-reviewed critical edition of this 18-instalment serial loved by Robert Louis Stevenson. https://editions.covecollective.org/edition/mystery-scarlet

• “Science and Art, A Farce in Two Acts, by Malcolm Rymer (1820).” Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing, vol. 18, 2017. Peer-reviewed TEI edition of the copy-text published by the author’s son James Malcolm Rymer in 1842. http://scholarlyediting.org/2017/editions/scienceart/intro.html

GRANTS & AWARDS

• UX System Fellow, Institute for Research in the Humanities, UX, 2022-3
• Huntington Library UK Travel Grant for 2020. Due to pandemic, completed July 2021.
• Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship at the Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, in Spring 2018.
• Various internal grants from XXX.
• XXX System Teaching Scholar, 2019-20.
• Lore Metzger Award, Best Graduate Paper, International Conference on Romanticism, Arizona State University, 2012, for “Patagonian Giants, Frankenstein’s Creature, and Contact Zone Catastrophe.”

SERVICE

FIELD SERVICE INCLUDES

• PhD. Dissertation committee member. One student at XXX, 2023-present.
• Reviews Editor, Victorian Periodicals Review. Johns Hopkins UP. 2023-present.

• Technical Director, XXX Editions, XXX), 2021-present.

• XXX

• Pedagogy Consultant, XXX
• Board, International Conference on Romanticism, Charleston, South Carolina, 2021.
• Board, Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities, Carroll University, Wisconsin, 2023-present.

• Co-editor (junior of two), Reviewing the Evidence, www.reviewingtheevidence.com.

DEPARTMENTAL AND INSTITUTIONAL SERVICE INCLUDES:

• Chair of the English Program (undergraduate), University of X, 2023-present. (Co-chair 2018-2023).

• Serve [number] faculty and [number, estimated.] English majors and minors.
• Oversee curriculum updating on a regular basis
• Liaise between Unit Chair, Deans, and English Faculty and Staff
• Lead and participate in recruitment activities
• Grant-writing to support and grow the program
• Designed and implemented (2022-present) UX’s inter-institutional partnership with UY in Y Country.

• Faculty Senator, UX, 2014-2022.

• Coordinator (Assistant to Prof. X, Director of Student Success), Peer Success Coaching Program (Pandemic Crisis Resource), UX, 2021-2.

• Library Redesign Committee, 2022-3.

• XXX

• Service on various university committees, including Discipline (plagiarism, etc.), University Awards, Humanities Awards, International Education, General Education, and several successful faculty and staff search committees.

• Vice President, XXXX), 2020-2. Stepped down in order to take up a full-time fellowship at UX in 2022-3.

• XXX

 ***CHATGPT COVER LETTER (time to completion, approx 5 seconds)

Dear Hiring Committee,

I am writing to express my interest in the [position title] position at [University/Institution Name], as advertised. With a robust background in academia, extensive teaching experience, and a proven track record of scholarly contributions, I am excited about the opportunity to contribute to your institution’s academic community.

Currently serving as a Professor of English at the University of X, and concurrently holding the position of Technical Director at XXX Editions, I bring a wealth of experience in both traditional academic settings and innovative digital humanities initiatives. My educational journey, including a Ph.D. in 19th-century British Literature from the University of X, and an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, has equipped me with a diverse skill set and a deep understanding of interdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching.

Throughout my tenure at UX, I have developed and taught a wide range of undergraduate English courses, incorporating various modalities to cater to diverse learning styles and preferences. From Victorian Literature to Digital Humanities and beyond, my teaching repertoire encompasses over 30 unique course preparations, each designed to foster critical thinking, creativity, and a passion for lifelong learning. My commitment to pedagogical innovation is further exemplified by my upcoming participation in the [FIELD] Summer Institute at the University of XXXX, where I will be presenting on “[TOPIC]” in June 2024.

In addition to my teaching responsibilities, my scholarly endeavors have centered on shedding new light on lesser-known literary figures and texts from the Victorian era. With forthcoming publications such as my monograph on James Malcolm Rymer and critical editions of Robert Southey’s lost Robin Hood novel, I am dedicated to advancing our understanding of the literary landscape of the 19th century through meticulous research and analysis.

Furthermore, my service contributions at both the departmental and institutional levels underscore my commitment to academic excellence and community engagement. Whether chairing the English Program at UX, serving as a Faculty Senator, or mentoring graduate students on dissertation committees, I am deeply invested in fostering a supportive and inclusive academic environment that nurtures intellectual growth and collaboration.

I am particularly drawn to [University/Institution Name] for its reputation for academic excellence and its commitment to fostering interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives. I am eager to bring my expertise in both traditional and digital humanities to your institution and contribute to its continued success.

Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss how my background, skills, and passions align with the needs of [University/Institution Name]. Please find attached my CV for your review.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

 

SCHOLAR’S ACTUAL (previously successful) COVER LETTER

Dear Professor X and Search Committee:

I write to apply for the position of Professor of British Literature, 18th-21st Centuries, at the Department of English at the University of XXX. My internationally recognized publications, national grants and fellowships, in c. 1780-1918 British Literature, my teaching of 18th-21st Century British Literature, World Literature, and the Digital Humanities, and my program administration equip me to fulfill your innovative program’s needs and goals, now and as the HE landscape evolves.

 

Teaching

Since earning my PhD at UX in Nineteenth-Century British Literature in 2014, I have been employed at the University of X, where I am now a Full Professor. I teach a XXX [load] base schedule (but usually XXX or more) in a wide range of subjects: British surveys, Romantic and Victorian courses, World Literature (Drama and Les Misérables and its Legacies), Sherlock Holmes, Vampires, the 21st century multi-ethnic British novel, The Hungry Forties [1840s], Book Editing Practicum, and Digital and Public Humanities. My ‘relationship-rich pedagogy’, praised by students and colleagues, is characterized by diverse and inclusive reading lists, Open Educational Resources (OER) or low-cost teaching materials, and accessible methods in a variety of analog and digital modalities. Marginalized writers such as formerly enslaved abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, Jamaican adventuress Mary Seacole, working-class Londoner Rymer, LGBTQ+ icons Oscar Wilde and Amy Levy, and Black Cardiffean Leonora Brito anchor my survey courses. In more experimental ‘undisciplining’, I redesigned UX’s World Literature: Drama course to focus on Pan-African currents in global drama and I enlist primary sources to relate Jane Eyre’s indictment of the deadly Lowood School to the experiences of children in colonial mission schools across the British Empire. I have taught essay-writing, undergraduate research, and study and professionalization skills in UX’s English Capstone and Literary Studies (lower-level methods) courses, and would be happy to teach Composition again in [recruiting institution city].

When curricular needs or local opportunities arise, I convert my teaching accordingly and have found that in so doing, I learn and grow. To this end, I would be delighted to teach XXX courses (and have done something like that at the University of XXX, where we had XXX). I would also be eager to teach project-based courses involving U-XXX treasures such as the XXX Library’s XXX collection well as my personal collection of Victorian ‘penny dreadfuls’, family magazines, and [Institution] resources. I’d be also eager to help coordinate [recruiting campus’s regular events].

 

Scholarship

I maintain a world-recognized research agenda in Romantic and Victorian literature, focusing on Victorian penny fiction (‘dreadfuls’), its radical contexts, its Romantic influences, and its contributions to women’s and family leisure reading and modern British literature. In 2022-3, as a Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at UX, I wrote the first monograph on the working-class penny novelist who invented Sweeney Todd. James Malcolm Rymer, Penny Fiction, and the Family argues that Rymer’s contributions to family magazines revolutionized working-class family reading and celebrated, in radical and reactionary ways, the working families of Britain and the expanding empire. This book is contracted with Routledge and I will submit it in January 2024. I also am contracted with Routledge to co-edit Romantic Poet Laureate Robert Southey’s unpublished novella Harold, or, the Castle of Morford–the earliest known Robin Hood novel in English literature and a text key to Southey’s adolescent self-education and 1790s radicalism. I’m also interested in how print technology and endeavors such as the XXX built Britain’s working-class reading nation.

My articles on penny fiction, Romantic literature, and Digital Humanities appear in peer-reviewed journals including Victorian Review (forthcoming), Victorian XXX (forthcoming), Essays in Romanticism, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, Victorian Popular Fiction, Nineteenth Century Studies, Victorians Institute Journal, Nineteenth Century Gender Studies, Scholarly Editing, edited volumes from Bloomsbury, Liverpool UP, the University of Wales Press, Macmillan, Routledge, and E.E. Root, and an Oxford (University Press) Bibliography. Additionally, I serve as Reviews Editor of XXX and Co-Technical Director of XXX, a NEH-funded open-access scholarly publishing and teaching platform [description]. If hired by UX, I would involve my colleagues and students in XXX’s global work as roles – more specific description redacted.]

 

Leadership

An enthusiastic and effective Co-Chair and then Chair of English at UX, I have grown our program—the [description redacted] —by expanding access and collaborating with other programs and inter-institutionally. Working with the chair of our XXX program in XXX, I developed a grant-funded distance-education pathway through that program and the BA in English. It serves adult continuing and other place-bound students from across our [number]-county catchment area. To further enhance our English and XXX programs’ appeal and rigor, I founded an inter-institutional partnership with the XXX program at XXX University, involving low-cost, short time commitment physical exchange and no-cost virtual exchange opportunities. I can think of no better place for XXX students who live in the metropolis of XXX to develop nature-writing skills than the [recruiting school’s region].

 

Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity, and Access

I support diversity, equity, inclusivity, and access in a variety of ways. As I have indicated, all my courses incorporate diverse writers’ and historical witnesses’ perspectives, especially from across the British Empire, without which British literature and culture are incomprehensible. I design my distance education courses to accommodate internet scarcity, full-time work, and caregiving and to combat poverty and isolation. I also work for positive change on the institutional level. This term, I spearheaded reform of our absence policy to support our growing population of adult returning students who are parents or caregivers, aiming to practically support them and to reinforce their sense of belonging.

Thank you very much for reading this letter. I would be delighted to discuss with you how I might serve [your state’]s students, academic community, and other stakeholders. Furthermore, I would very much like to live in [XXX university city] for what I promise would be the most productive and generous phase of my career. I sincerely hope you’ll be in touch.

Best wishes,

 

DISCUSSION

As I anticipated, ChatGPT generated a letter that is not usable. Or rather, it is usable in the sense of being a recognizable English language letter of application, but it is not usable in the sense of obtaining employment. The letter reads like what your parents or a generic corporate career coach (with no knowledge of academia) would identify as a “good” letter. It is not a good letter.

As the volunteer responded when I shared it, “Oh yikes. This is awful. I’d never send it.”

Does it contain elements of the record? Yes.

Does it communicate those in a way that speaks to the actual needs and expectations of an academic department, that provides the EVIDENCE a search committee requires to make a short list judgment? No.

The issues are manifold and I don’t want to devote much time to something that should be (I HOPE) so obvious to my academic readers, but they revolve around direct and indirect errors. The direct errors are a lack of adequate substance about the range of teaching expertise and methods, the true scope, argument and contribution of scholarly research, the integration of research and teaching into a coherent praxis (something the actual letter does very well), and effective tailoring, among other things. It also badly misrepresents several forms of academic labor/contribution, including a substantive leadership role that it reduces to “presenting.” The IN-direct errors are, in my view, worse. The tone is jaunty, the phraseology trite (“my academic journey”?), the writing filled with tedious and vague list addiction. Worst of all, the letter relies on a series of subjective opinions communicated through hackneyed adjectives including robust, extensive, proven, wealth of, diverse, deep, wide, meticulous. It uses corporatese (“various modalities”) sure to raise academic hackles. And it continually returns to weak, trite “white noise” verbiage like “foster critical thinking, creativity, and a passion for lifelong learning”, “shedding new light” “reputation for academic excellence,”  “supportive and inclusive academic environment,” and “environment that nurtures intellectual growth and collaboration.”

To be clear, some of the examples of what I call “white noise verbiage” are not in and of themselves bad. But to rise above the noise, they have to be utilized in a context of targeted specificity and detail. They require examples, and particularities that demonstrate the candidate’s actual record and practices. As they are used in the above ChatGPT doc, however, they are just job search jargon being tossed around thoughtlessly.

And if there is something an academic reader bristles at, it is a “thoughtless” presentation.

I could go on, but what I would write here would just repeat what I’ve written about since 2011 on what makes for good and bad, effective and ineffective cover letters.

An important note: I did not work on our wonderful volunteer’s cover letter, and if I had, it would look somewhat different. The current version is excellent for our purposes in this post!  But for purposes of an application I’d recommend various edits consistent with the advice you’ve probably seen in my book and blog posts–a future research project, much more tailoring, more institutional service (given writer’s senior level), less listing of course types and more substantive discussion of classroom approaches and outcomes. But that is neither here nor there and I clarify it just to reassure long-time readers and clients that my cover letter advice has not changed!  The point is, the letter you see got the candidate interviews, so it worked. It does most of what a cover letter needs to do, in the way that it needs to do it. The ChatGPT cover letter does not. It shows no awareness of the peculiarities of academia, and does not utilize “insider” forms of language.

In short, while I know the ChatGPT can do nothing if not learn and learn fast, I have a lot of skepticism that in the hands of untrained applicants, it can help more than it hurts on the academic job market.

I also want to be clear, I actually appreciate ChatGPT and use it in my own life. I am not a luddite and am generally positively disposed about new technology. I think it’s a fascinating (although granted existentially terrifying) tool, one which I enjoy playing with and utilizing in other contexts, while being abjectly glad I never have to manage its use in a classroom setting. I am not dismissing ChatGPT; I am seeking to delineate its limitations.

My point in this post is to offer a caution to anyone who is still very very early in their process and has not yet had the chance to grasp just how fully insular and peculiar academia really is, and how closed its communicative norms. My caution is that while AI will appear at first glance to generate a reasonable academic cover letter draft, the draft it generates will do you more harm than good.