"Make this better" is the wrong request
Ask a model to improve your essay and it will rewrite it. What comes back is fluent, generic, and no longer in your voice — and the thinking in it is now partly the model's, which means you cannot honestly submit it. You have also learned nothing, because you did not do anything.
Worse, it usually isn't better. Models sand off the idiosyncratic argument that would have earned a first and replace it with a competent, unobjectionable middle-band essay.
Ask it to be a hostile examiner
- "What's the strongest objection to my thesis?" The objection you're avoiding is usually the difference between a 2:1 and a first.
- "Which paragraph doesn't earn its place?" Then *you* cut it.
- "Where do I assert something without evidence?" Ruthlessly effective, and slightly humiliating.
- "Does my conclusion actually follow from my argument?" It frequently doesn't, and nobody notices in their own work.
- "What would a marker who disagrees with me say?"
- "Which of my sources actually supports the claim I attached it to?" — a question worth asking of your own footnotes more often than people do.
Every one of these leaves the writing and the thinking with you. The model is doing the job of a very available, very patient, slightly pedantic supervisor — which is exactly what the essay assistant is built for, and why there is deliberately no button that turns a title into an essay.
The one thing to be careful about
Proofreading — grammar, typos, clumsy sentences — is usually fine, and many institutions say so explicitly. But some don't, and "I only used it for language" has been the beginning of some very unhappy meetings. Check your policy.