This week, a new data point made the rounds in education circles: a majority of high school students are now using AI to help navigate the college process, but most don’t actually trust what they’re getting back.
It didn’t surprise me.
Lately, more conversations start the same way. A student or parent shares something they read or were told, then pauses and asks, “Does that actually make sense?”
That hesitation is new. Not because there’s less information, but because there’s too much of it, and it all sounds polished and the same.
Everything now reads like it could be right. Same tone, same structure, same confidence. And in a process where nuance matters, that creates confusion.
You see it in how students present themselves. More profiles are starting to look the same on paper, even when the students are very different. Strong academics, solid activities, thoughtful essays that say all the right things. And yet something feels slightly off, like it’s been smoothed over just enough to lose its edge.
Admissions officers are picking up on it too. Not in an overt way, but in what they gravitate toward. When everything is optimized, authenticity becomes the differentiator almost by default.
At the same time, students are starting earlier and feeling more pressure to get it right, often without a clear sense of what that even means.
That’s where the gap shows up.
Families aren’t rejecting technology. They’re using it. But when it comes to actual decisions – what to pursue, how to position themselves, where they fit – they’re still looking for something else. Not just information, but interpretation. Not just answers, but context.
The students who stand out aren’t the ones who followed the most refined path. They’re the ones whose path actually makes sense when you look closely.
And that’s much harder to manufacture than it is to recognize.
Marc is the author of Untangling the Ivy League, a best-selling guidebook on the Ancient Eight. He earned a BA from Cornell University and an MBA from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Marc chaired the admissions ambassadors at Cornell and the admissions advisory board at UNC.
