The most accurate AI grader for Illinois essays.
Kolly was built and calibrated on hundreds of thousands of essays from students who actually got into University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the rest of the T20. Paste your draft, create a free account, and your first review reads it like a Illinois admissions officer. All six dimensions, paragraph-level notes, and the single most important fix, in about a minute.
What Illinois reads for in a college essay.
Every top school weighs essays slightly differently, but the underlying dimensions are stable: hook, theme, detail, authenticity, reflection, and writing. Illinois readers, like their counterparts at peer schools, read fast, read tired, and form an impression in the first paragraph. Kolly tells you whether your opening is doing the work it needs to do, then walks the rest of the essay paragraph by paragraph against the specific shape of Illinois-admitted writing.
Why Kolly beats a ChatGPT read for Illinois.
ChatGPT and other generic models were trained on the open internet. They grade your essay against the open internet, which is not what Illinois readers do. Kolly was calibrated against accepted essays from students admitted to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the rest of the T20, then cross-checked against a second model so the score holds up under scrutiny. Same essay always gets the same number, and the same diagnosis. That's what most generic AI essay reviewers cannot do.
Looking for the canonical reviewer?
Kolly runs at the main free AI essay reviewer too. This page is just a convenience landing for Illinois applicants. Same scoring, same Kolly.