Point Park University launches AI chatbot to field admissions questions
For high schoolers, late-night hours are often an optimal time to research colleges and polish applications.
There lies an issue, though, for both teenage applicants and college admissions officials: After-hours questions go unanswered until staffers are back in the office.
That’s why more schools — including Point Park University in Downtown Pittsburgh — are introducing artificial intelligence chatbots to accommodate high schoolers’ schedules.
Point Park plans to roll out its 24/7 AI chatbot this week. In addition to offering greater convenience to students, it also will alleviate the workloads of admissions counselors, said Marlin Collingwood, the private school’s vice president of enrollment management.
“It’s going to meet the demands that students and parents have, and free up our staff to review applications and talk to students,” Mr. Collingwood said.
Thanks to a partnership with Pittsburgh-based software company Skilly AI, prospective Point Park students will quickly get answers to their questions on the application process, program offerings, tuition and more, said Mr. Collingwood.
Currently, Point Park’s chat feature is manned by an admissions staffer who sits at a computer answering questions during an 8-hour shift. Nine in 10 questions can be answered by AI, Mr. Collingwood estimates.
After the rollout of the chatbot, if a student has a question that AI can’t answer, they’ll be redirected to a Point Park employee.
“We are using AI in ways that allow us to still have genuine relationships with prospective students,” Mr. Collingwood said. “We’re never going to look at AI as a way to replace real people. It’s going to help real people.”
Nationwide, other universities are also exploring ways to use AI to assuage the admissions process for themselves or their students. At Virginia Tech, an AI tool is reading 58,000 applicants’ essay questions alongside one human reader, vice provost for enrollment management Juan Espinoza told ABC News in January. It’s saved the admissions office thousands of hours of review.
Meanwhile, at California Institute of Technology, AI is interviewing students, with humans later reviewing the exchange, reported the Los Angeles Times last month.
Admissions offices began using this technology about three years ago, said Michael Koppenheffer, vice president for marketing, innovation and AI strategy at Washington-based educational consulting firm EAB.
Initially, that use involved ground-up experimentation — individual counselors would implement ChatGPT to draft rejection letters or ask it to summarize general themes in essays to learn more about their applicant pools.
In the past year, though, efforts have taken a more top-down approach. A growing number of colleges are using AI to read transcripts, recalculate GPAs for standard equivalence and service chats, Mr. Koppenheffer said.
So far, AI implementation in admissions has been “moderate and somewhat cautious,” he noted.
“It's still not systematic, pervasive or particularly advanced,” Mr. Koppenheffer said. “It still feels very experimental and exploratory… I wouldn't say that it has been transformational yet.”
As more schools turn to AI, Mr. Koppenheffer noted that it cannot fully replace human tasks.
Counselors should be on the lookout for hiccups and inaccuracies in AI’s work, Mr. Koppenheffer said. He also cautioned admissions offices against replacing staffers with AI.
Higher education is an “extremely human experience and extremely human product,” he said.
“For something very important, like a decision about whether a student is going to get into a college or not, you don't want to give that over to AI,” he said. “AI can be helpful in specific parts of processes, but you really don't want to cut the human out of the loop.”
Looking ahead, Mr. Koppenheffer anticipates continued experimentation. Chatbots in particular could become very popular, he envisions.
“If you implement it right, [AI] is actually making things better for families, students and colleges,” Mr. Koppenheffer said. “I think we're going to see more of that, because it supports the mission of what admissions offices are all about.”
First Published: February 4, 2026, 12:00 p.m.
Updated: February 4, 2026, 12:57 p.m.
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