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No. According to April 2023 reporting, University of Victoria academic Matt Huculak asked ChatGPT to generate an example of an excellent reference letter, then wrote the submitted letter himself. Huculak said the student later received a University of Cambridge scholarship, but the reports do not prove that the letter caused the award.
What Huculak reportedly did
Huculak, identified in coverage as the University of Victoria’s head of advanced research services, described using ChatGPT as a drafting foil rather than as the final author. He prompted the system for an “excellent” recommendation-letter example and used the result to challenge the formulaic language common in academic references.
He then wrote his own letter. The detailed account reported by Futurism, attributing the comments to Huculak’s interview with The Atlantic, says the generated text served as a template or contrast for a more personal letter. Huculak characterized the result as unusually “human” and heartfelt.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The letter was not presented as ChatGPT’s final work
The available reports do not say that Huculak submitted ChatGPT’s generated text, nor that the system directly wrote the recommendation sent to Cambridge. The distinction matters: the reported process was AI-assisted idea generation followed by human writing and judgment.
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What happened with the Cambridge scholarship
Huculak said the student subsequently received a Cambridge scholarship. That is a reported sequence of events, not a measured finding that the recommendation letter secured the award.
- The reports do not name the student.
- They do not identify the scholarship or its monetary value.
- They do not provide the selection criteria or competing applications.
- No Cambridge committee member is quoted attributing the decision to Huculak’s letter.
Because those details are unavailable, the anecdote cannot establish causation. A scholarship decision may reflect academic results, research experience, references, interviews, funding limits and other factors that the coverage does not document.
Why Huculak used an AI example
Huculak’s stated goal was to avoid stock recommendation-letter conventions. Futurism quoted him saying that many professors keep collections of letters sorted into categories, an observation he used to illustrate how easily references can become standardized.
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India Today quoted Huculak describing his letter as among the best he had read, noting that it was concise, used concrete examples and addressed the candidate’s ability to collaborate. Those are Huculak’s assessments, not an independent evaluation by Cambridge.
What this episode does—and does not—show about ChatGPT
It shows a possible brainstorming use
A generated example can expose clichés, suggest an organizational structure or give a writer something to critique. In Huculak’s account, that outside model helped him reconsider how he presented specific evidence about the candidate.
It does not show that AI earned the scholarship
This is one person’s account from April 2023, not a study of recommendation letters or scholarship outcomes. It supplies no success rate, controlled comparison or committee testimony. The reports also should not be read as evidence of current ChatGPT capabilities or of any current University of Cambridge or University of Victoria policy.
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How to interpret the headline
The headline-style claim that a “ChatGPT letter of recommendation” got someone a Cambridge scholarship is therefore misleading if it suggests the chatbot wrote and submitted the winning letter. A more accurate description is: Huculak used ChatGPT to produce an example, wrote his own recommendation, and later reported that the student won a Cambridge scholarship.
The Bottom Line
ChatGPT reportedly supplied an example that Matt Huculak used while writing a recommendation letter himself. He said the student later received a Cambridge scholarship, but the available reporting does not establish that the letter—or ChatGPT—caused the result.
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