The Question behind the Submit Button
A student fills out an inquiry form. To us, that's a lead landing in a CRM, one more row somebody will pull into a report next Monday. That same click is a risk to them. They just raised a hand and said, notice me.
That's the gap Lauren Werner, Dr. Raquel Bermejo, and I spent forty-five minutes on this month at the Encoura RNL National Conference, in a session called Meeting Students Where They Feel. Raquel brought the research, built from a 2026 College Planning Report drawing on thousands of student responses. Lauren brought what Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina has actually built because of data like hers: our chatbot and the staffing decisions that came with it. What I couldn't stop thinking about was smaller than either of those: how much of what we call an enrollment process is really just a string of moments where a student decides whether we're paying attention.
Response time is not an operational metric
More than half of students expect to hear back within a few days of reaching out to a college, according to the research Raquel presented. Only about one in ten are comfortable waiting longer than a week. We measure response time in hours and business days. Students measure it in belonging. Every day we don't answer isn't neutral. It's another day for a student to talk themselves into believing they weren't that interesting to us to begin with.
Students measure response time in belonging.
AI is filling the silence colleges leave behind
Nearly two-thirds of high school students are now using AI somewhere in their college planning, not just for essays, but to understand how the process even works and to compare programs, the same questions they used to bring to a counselor or to us. When we're too slow, something else fills the silence, and increasingly that something is a chatbot that never sleeps.
Students are handing AI a specific job, and it's narrower than we tend to assume. Fast, low-stakes questions go to a tool. When the decision gets real, about money, about whether they belong, about fit, about a choice they can't take back, they still want a person. Their patience for how slowly we deliver that person is what's actually shrunk.
Speed buys back time for the conversations that need a person
At Forsyth Tech, our chatbot, BlazeBot, has handled more than 30,000 student conversations and saved north of 309,000 minutes of staff time, much of it after hours, when nobody on our team was awake to answer. That time goes back to our advisors, so they're available for the conversations a chatbot can't have. Forsyth Tech hasn't solved this. We're still figuring out how to be fast and warm at the same time, the same as most of us in that room, if we're honest.
First-generation students want a person, and the gap widens as the decision gets closer
First-generation students want a real person at every stage of the college search more than continuing-generation students do, and the gap widens the closer they get to actually applying. By the time it comes to completing the application itself, 70 percent of first-generation students want a person walking them through it, against 57 percent of their continuing-generation peers. That's a student who doesn't have someone at home who's already done this, reaching for the one reliable thing in the process. A fast, human response isn't a nice touch for that student. It's the whole thing.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean to meet students where they feel?
It means recognizing that students experience the college search emotionally before they experience it as a process, and building outreach, response times, and support around how a student feels in the moment, not just where they sit in an enrollment funnel.
Why does response time matter so much in college recruiting?
Because students interpret silence as rejection. Research from Encoura and RNL's 2026 College Planning Report found that more than half of students expect a response within a few days, and 67 percent said not hearing back made them feel worse about the institution.
Are students using AI to research colleges?
Yes. Nearly two-thirds of high school students report using AI somewhere in their college planning, most often to understand how the process works and to compare programs, filling the gap when colleges respond too slowly.
Do first-generation students need more support during college applications?
Research shows first-generation students are significantly more likely to want a real person guiding them through the process than continuing-generation students, especially at the application stage, where the gap reaches 13 percentage points.
Here's what I left that room believing. Meeting students where they feel doesn't lower any bar. It just means understanding that a capable student can slip out of your funnel simply because they waited a week for an answer and quietly decided nobody was paying attention. That's ours to fix.
