Teens are increasingly using generative AI tools to evaluate and choose a college or university, prompting concerns about whether the technology is providing sound advice.
A new report based on a survey of more than 5,000 high school students finds that about half of them are using AI to help them select a postsecondary institution, and that the technology is ultimately influencing where they apply, and what they study. It could even, more fundamentally, be influencing whether they pursue a postsecondary education at all.
But while AI can be a useful tool—especially for students who don’t have easy access to a good school counselor—there’s also plenty that can go wrong, said Madeleine Rhyneer, the vice president of consulting services and dean of enrollment management at EAB, the education consulting company that conducted the survey.
“That’s not a riff on AI,” she said. “The quality of the answers people get is determined by the quality of the questions or what the prompt looks like. If people overweight the advice they get from AI, over their families, or their high school counselor, or a teacher or a coach, that could potentially go wrong in my view.”
How, exactly, are teens using AI to research colleges and plan their futures?
First, more teens are turning to AI as a resource to research their postsecondary options. Twenty-six percent reported using the technology for that reason in spring of 2025, rising to 46 percent by the end of the year.
High schoolers are using AI to find schools that are a good match, research the application process, discover new schools they weren’t already familiar with, put together college applications, and prepare for standardized tests.
They’re also using generative AI chatbots to create school lists that allow them to compare different institutions.
A little more than half of teens say that AI is making their college search easier, and a quarter of all teens say that they are having ongoing chats with AI tools about their college search.
As one student responded in the survey: “I appreciate how the [ChatGPT] chat box is like messages, it feels like an actual admissions officer is communicating with me through text.”
AI is shaping students’ choices of academic majors
Beyond aiding in research about admission processes, AI is also shaping students’ college decisions. A third of high schoolers say that their interest in a particular college has increased based on their AI research and about 1 in 5 say they have removed a college from their list because of information provided by a chatbot. Nearly half of students say they have discovered a school they didn’t know about.
“AI can be a helpful resource in your process of discernment,” Rhyneer said. “Every student, because applying to college is very different than when their parents went to school, can benefit from sort of dispassionate advice.”
Furthermore, a quarter of students say they are no longer considering a particular major because of what their AI-powered research yielded, and 17 percent say they are now considering a new major because of AI.
Even though more students are using AI in their college search process, many are skeptical about its benefits overall, the report found. Thirty-seven percent said they were skeptical of AI, more than any other sentiment—such as curious, concerned, or optimistic—that they could choose from in the survey question.
That skepticism is probably a good sign, said Rhyneer. While chatbots can be efficient tools when it comes to quickly gathering information and brainstorming, the platforms should never usurp advice from trusted adults who know the student.
Plus, AI tools often generate misleading or inaccurate information, can be biased based the data that is put into them, and don’t offer the kind of nuanced perspectives that a school counselor, teacher, or parent can offer about picking a college or university, experts say.
Rhyneer said she can envision a scenario where a student who doesn’t have much support from adults in their college research decides to forgo applying because a chatbot told them the quickest way to make money is to become an influencer.
But at the same time, experts point out that not every high school student has access to a good school counselor. And even the good ones have heavy caseloads of hundreds of students and often struggle meet the needs of all of them, Rhyneer said.
“We still need counselors more than ever,” she said. But “for students who don’t have college counselors or they have a counselor [who doesn’t] have a lot of time to do college guidance, [AI] allows them to get some information that they might not have been able to get.”
Students also weighed in on how they believe AI will change their career trajectories. Forty-three percent said AI will influence what career they pursue, with 38% said they believe AI will reduce the number of jobs requiring a college degree.
Nearly 4 in 10 said that AI—and how it’s changing the workforce—is pushing them to consider alternatives to college, such as starting a business or pursuing an apprenticeship.
