Common App Adds AI Advising Tool

Navigating the college application process can be challenging for many students, particularly those who are the first in their family to attend college or come from lower-income backgrounds. To help address those barriers, Common App announced a new partnership today that will integrate nonprofit College Possible’s AI-powered advising tool into the application platform.

The tool, called Coach Possible, provides students with 24-7 support as they explore colleges, complete applications and track admissions-related tasks. The integration will allow students participating in College Possible’s advising program to access information about application requirements and monitor their progress within Common App, while coaches can view student activity and identify where additional support may be needed.

College Possible serves more than 25,000 students annually through college access and success programming focused on Pell-eligible students. The nonprofit partners with more than 180 high schools and colleges across seven regional locations.

Siva Kumari, CEO of College Possible, said the integration will reduce friction in the application process and help students access support outside traditional advising hours.

“Information is not the problem these days—it’s the human connection and the motivation to do the right things at the right time,” Kumari said. “Students don’t just need information delivered through a coach, which was our previous model.”

Kumari said the AI-powered tool allows students to get answers to their questions directly as they work through the application process.

“Questions like ‘What was that deadline?’ or ‘What should I be thinking about right now?’—things students would normally ask a coach,” she said. “Opening up that information allows us to extend support beyond traditional advising hours while still reinforcing the human connection that moves students forward.”

Scaling student support: Kumari said the technology has increased the organization’s advising capacity. Before launching Coach Possible, a coach typically worked with about 60 students. Now coaches can support up to 250 students, she said. Coach Possible handles many routine questions, freeing advisers to spend more time addressing complex issues that require individualized support.

But Kumari said the benefits extend beyond allowing coaches to serve more students.

“It’s not just the quantitative, but the qualitative as well,” Kumari said. “We’re able to take coaching conversations and say, ‘You need to talk to the student about this.’ That’s one aspect that has made us really smart, and as we develop Coach Possible more and more, we hope to have insights that the data could provide us that we wouldn’t have been able to derive ourselves.”

She noted that Coach Possible is not limited to college application support and can also help students through the transition to college, including addressing summer melt—when admitted students change their plans after high school graduation and never make it to campus in the fall.

“We keep talking to the students about the need to stay engaged and make sure they come into college,” Kumari said. “It takes a lot of effort for both the student and us to get them admitted, so we want to make sure they actually enroll.”

AI and advising: Kumari said the partnership with Common App will help College Possible better identify students who may need additional support and tailor Coach Possible’s advising to their needs.

“It gives us the ability to diversify the kind of service we provide based on the emerging risks we see with students,” Kumari said. “We can identify which students need more support and provide more differentiated service, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, because we don’t always have that information.”

Still, she cautioned against viewing AI as a replacement for human advising relationships.

“There’s a lot that AI can do—but we shouldn’t confuse information availability with human motivation and action,” she said. “Human connection is something we don’t want to lose in this process.”

Kumari said the goal is to ensure technology reinforces—not replaces—the organization’s advising model. “I don’t see [AI] going away, and it shouldn’t go away,” she said. “But students still need human connections to succeed.”

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