Bots Can’t Fake This: Why Your Weirdest Interests Are Your Secret Weapon

Let’s be honest. AI is everywhere.


By now, most students have at least thought about using ChatGPT to help with their college essays. Some might even use it to draft full responses. But here’s what admissions officers are saying out loud: they can tell.


Bot-written essays tend to blend together. They sound polished but flat. They follow the rules but leave no fingerprints. There’s no real personality. No weirdness. No spark.


And that’s where you win.



Your secret weapon in the age of AI is the thing that no bot can fake: your odd, nerdy, oddly specific interests. Your quirks. Your voice. The things you love that no one else quite understands.


Real Is the New Impressive

Forget trying to impress colleges with a big moment or perfect narrative arc. That’s what the bots are doing.


Instead, go small. Go weird. Go real.


Maybe you have a running playlist organized by punctuation marks. Maybe you once spent an entire summer building a Rube Goldberg machine to feed your cat. Maybe you have an encyclopedic knowledge of diner menus across Texas.


That’s the kind of stuff that makes a reader stop and think, Only this student could have written this.


What Weird Looks Like on the Page

Let’s be clear—when we say “weird,” we don’t mean random or irrelevant. We mean specific. Unexpected. Personal.


Here’s the difference:

Bot version:
“I’m passionate about technology and its impact on society.”


You version:
“When I realized I could reprogram my grandma’s smart fridge to play ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ every time the door opened, I knew I was in love—with code, not the song.”


One is forgettable. The other makes the reader sit up.


Your Interests Don’t Have to Be Big to Be Meaningful

A lot of students think they need a long-standing “passion” to write a strong college essay. Not true.


Colleges want to know what makes you curious. What holds your attention. What brings you joy when no one’s watching.

Maybe you’ve tried ten different hobbies over the past four years. That’s okay. Talk about the process. Talk about what you learned from chasing ideas, even if you didn’t stick with all of them. That’s human. That’s honest. That’s you.


Why Weird Works in the AI Era

AI can write essays that sound good. But it cannot write essays that feel true.


It can’t replicate your inside jokes. Or your awkward science fair fail. Or the way your brain connects things that seem totally unrelated.


Weird works because it is specific. And in the college essay world, specific = believable.


That’s what readers are hungry for this year. They are scanning for signs of real life. Your weirdest interests are proof that a real person is behind the page.


How to Find the Weird

Not sure where to start? Try these:


  • What do your friends come to you for?
  • What’s something you do that would confuse most people?
  • When was the last time you lost track of time doing something small?


Write about that.


Bottom Line: Don’t Play It Safe

This is not the year to play it safe. This is the year to sound like yourself.


The students who will stand out in this AI-saturated cycle are not the ones with perfect grammar or resume-ready stories. They are the ones who are brave enough to be specific.


So lean into the thing that makes you different. Share the weird, wonderful parts of your life. That’s where your real voice lives.



And bots? They can’t fake that.