Half of High Schoolers Use AI for College Search
Nearly half of high school students now rely on AI tools to help search for colleges, marking a significant shift in how young people make post-secondary decisions. A separate survey found more than half of teens across all grade levels are using AI to complete schoolwork, citing time savings and improved assignment quality. Students report AI platforms offer personalized suggestions tailored to their profiles while helping them understand difficult material.
- The use of AI in college searches saw a rapid increase in 2025, jumping from 26% of high school students in the spring to 46% by the fall, according to a survey of over 5,000 students by the education consulting firm EAB. - AI is directly influencing student decisions, with 18% of students reporting they have removed a college from consideration based on AI-generated information. - Students are also using AI for broader career and education questions, with 38% believing AI will decrease the number of jobs that require a college degree and 39% saying it has led them to consider alternatives to college. - In response to AI, universities have adopted a wide range of policies for applications; Brown University, for example, prohibits any use of AI for application content, while schools like Caltech and Cornell permit its use for brainstorming and grammar checks but not for writing essays. - The Common Application, used by over 1,000 colleges, updated its fraud policy to define the "substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform" as a misrepresentation of a student's own original work. - While students are embracing the technology, more than half state they would have a negative reaction to receiving messages from a college that they believed were generated by AI. - High schools are still developing their response to the technology; while 55% of high schools allow access to AI tools on their networks, only 13% actively encourage their use in all classes. - A majority of students (63%) who use AI for schoolwork have found errors or inaccuracies in the information it provides, and 64% of non-users cite a lack of trust in the information as a reason for not using the tools.
