In the AI era, more college counselors than ever feel pressured to embrace the technological future and incorporate AI into their practices. Families often expect it as well, believing that embracing AI in the college admissions process will bring down costs and be more reliable. It would make sense, then, that a solo college counselor like me would embrace AI to streamline processes and bring on more students to maximize my profits, right?
Wrong.
Let me tell you why I broadly avoid AI in my small business, and why it is actually not financially prudent for solo practices like mine.
1. As an elder millennial, I grew up with the rise of the World Wide Web. A member of the high school graduating class of 2000, I completed my college applications on paper. They were short and direct for the most part. Today as an educator and college counselor, I see the impact of the Internet, social media, and digital marketing on college admissions, and I don’t see it as a positive for students and their families.
While I live in southwest Indiana, I work with students across the United states, and a common theme among all of them is pressure. Pressure to perform. Pressure to be a perfect candidate. Pressure to get into top-ranked schools even if they don’t know how those rankings are calculated. Pressure to appear a certain way on social media. Pressure to never crack, lest they be seen as weak. For readers who can identify with this pressure, I highly recommend reading Never Enough by Jennifer Breheny Wallace.
2. As AI expands and infiltrates all areas of our lives, students feel pressured to use it to improve their grades (ironically weakening their greatest assets– their brains), touch up their photos in the quest for an unreal “perfection,” and even make life decisions through “conversations” with AI “assistants.” They are losing what it means to be human– to have flaws, to make mistakes and learn from them, to connect with other people authentically. I see AI weakening students’ problem-solving skills as well as their sense of grit and perseverance. Like never before, I have seen students need their hands held through simple tasks like creating accounts or taking the time to read short statements of what they’re agreeing to when they check “accept” on a form. These are basic life skills being lost.
On the parent side of things, AI is fostering magical/delusional thinking too often. Parents often forget that the college advice they’re getting from AI chat bots has been scraped from all of the Internet, including unreliable online forums and outdated data, often resulting in unrealistic perspectives on how admissible their child should be to any given school. They often neglect to consider the confirmation bias built into AI chat bots, which seeks to keep its users more engaged by affirming them rather than challenging their thinking.
It’s not realistic and it’s not sustainable. No child applying to a university with a 10% acceptance rate is highly likely to get in. Statistically, they will not get in. That’s not to say it’s not worth it to apply to big reach schools that are otherwise a good fit, but applying needs to come with a realistic understanding that the student is likely to face rejection and prepare them for that potential disappointment in a way that is healthy.
3. AI is making everything more expensive. With the exception of my professional affiliations, every single software and electronic resource I use in my business has become more expensive this year, by anywhere from 15% to 40%. Every single one of these tools has forced AI integration onto its users, even if we don’t want it and don’t use it, and the price reflects the AI upcharge. From Adobe products to QuickBooks to my web hosting services to Microsoft 365, everything has gone up in cost because of AI features I cannot opt out of.
Costs are rising for professionals, and surely you know who they’re being passed on to. In 2027 I am raising my hourly rate for the first time in 4 years because of these new expenses. (And with a planned increase to $140/hr beginning in January, I will still be charging less than half the national average of $288/hr.)
4. Most importantly, I believe AI is making kids lose themselves and a sense of realism, often thanks to the adults around them. More than ever before, I see students who attend schools that claim to be against the use of AI, yet whose teachers and administrators deploy it liberally to promote school events and create personal avatars. At my son’s own high school, even the art department has begun creating AI flyers for events. (I confess it makes me want to flip a table. Imagine what a talented art student could do without AI to promote a school event and build their portfolio.)
These same students sometimes border on tears in meetings, worried for their futures during a time when they hear constantly about an unstable economy, climate change, war, and the long-term impacts data centers will have on their lives. Fear and despair permeate their existence, even as they hit “submit” on applications during what deserves to be an exciting time for them. My own child has asked me if I believe his generation will grow up to live a normal adult life span, or if the world will be destroyed for them.
Talk about a sobering conversation and a worry no teenager should be saddled with, especially as they see adults around them claim that students should be skeptical of AI while also fully embracing it themselves.
As a solo college counselor who cares about students and relationships more than anything else, I choose to have faith in my brain and in the value of learned knowledge.
I choose to model that for and encourage my students accordingly.
I choose to not embrace AI as a central structure of my business because I choose to walk the walk of a person who cares about these young people and their futures.
I choose small classes of students and families I can get to know personally over huge classes dominated by canned checklists and little personal touch. I choose to lift “my kids” up as individuals, build their confidence, and help them grow into who they’re meant to be.
I choose people over profits. Of course I need to be able to pay my bills and plan for my own future, but I choose relationships and a balanced life over greed.
Of course there are applications where AI can be a helpful tool, like in helping a student with ADHD stay organized, or empowering a student with a learning disability via alternative assistive technology, or in giving an overwhelmed person a jumping-off point from which to learn more on their own.
By and large, though, my company will remain a practice that rejects generative AI and avoids making adolescents back-seat passengers in their own journey. I’ll make my own social media posts that might not always be beautiful but are honest. I’ll collaborate with kids on writings and talk through tough decisions with students and families, and I’ll do it all with integrity.
As always. Because students deserve nothing less.