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In the last school year, the national student-to-school counselor ratio improved by a meager 鈥� from 376 to 372 students per counselor.

That鈥檚 progress. But at this rate, it would take over 30 years for schools to reach the the American School Counselor Association鈥檚 (and still overwhelming) 1:250 ratio.

Students and schools aren’t waiting for human help to arrive. Nearly of students are already turning to artificial intelligence chatbots for college and career guidance, and schools are starting to use AI to answer students鈥� frequently asked questions to free up counselors鈥� time.

Turning to tech is rational when human resources are scarce. But swapping chatbots for overworked counselors masks a more fundamental problem: For decades, schools have tried to make a one-to-many advising model work.

AI could be a tool to help schools create something different: a many-to-one model in which each young person is surrounded by a strong network of teachers, alumni, family, mentors, employers, coaches and counselors working together to help students make progress.

That model is fundamentally grounded in a proven driver of student success: relationships. Research has long shown that relationships lead to success in , increase and , and ultimately unlock . 

That was the vision behind a pilot project my colleague Anna Arsenault and I led with 10 college and career guidance technology platforms, exploring how to build tools that didn鈥檛 just give AI-generated advice, but made it easier to find, reach and rely on their broader human networks. We worked with the designers of each platform to create and test features that would help students recognize their existing connections, practice reaching out and find new ones who assist them in achieving their goals.

Our new report, “,” describes three trends that highlight what schools and tools can do to move toward a many-to-one model of college and career support.

First, students need help recognizing the network they already have. This includes not only the many assets around them, but also the relationships students overlook entirely.

ESAI, a college admissions platform, piloted a network-mapping feature where students organized extracurricular activities and identified the “people in their corner” who could help them pursue their out-of-school interests. Family and teacher connections together accounted for 40% of selections; counselors made up just 10%, peers only 4%. Another platform, iCouldBe, analyzed student network maps from the past school year and found 54% of relationships were family members, 30% school-based and but just 1% came from work, internships or volunteering, school alumni, neighbors or faith communities.

Data like these don’t just diagnose a gap; they hand students and counselors a starting point to act on it, surfacing potential guides and mentors in students’ lives who would otherwise stay invisible.

Second, connection has to feel authentic. Even after students identify who鈥檚 in their corner (and who they might be missing), it’s often hard to get them to engage with those connections. The thing that mattered most: authenticity. Students didn鈥檛 want outreach to feel transactional or one-sided. 

Overcoming that involved creating content in which students talk about the benefits of networking in their own words, rather than adults explaining it to them. For example, Reach Pathways recorded videos of students describing how their relationships helped them accomplish their goals. Other platforms found it was critical not to force students to make an ask before they feel ready. For example, ESAI ‘s team discovered that after identifying “people in their corner,” over half (53%) of students first wanted to express gratitude to those supporters before asking them for something. Only 14% made an outright request for help. 

In other words, students are more likely to turn toward their networks if they see their peers doing so, and if they can start real gratitude 鈥� not with a premature request.    

Third, students need help turning relationships into sources of support. Even with more emphasis on authenticity, many students still reported that connecting with people and asking for help is daunting. Students wanted more assistance in reaching out and meeting the right people to support their college and career aspirations. 

To address that, some platforms, like Climb Together, Roadtrip Nation and FutureFit AI, built chatbots to coach students in seeking help, offering the chance to draft emails and even rehearse conversations with industry professionals. (Unlike most college and career chatbots, these tools weren’t meant to provide postsecondary advice 鈥� they were designed to build the confidence to reach a real person.) Across the board, students in the pilots using these chatbots reported modest increases in awareness of the networks around them and confidence in reaching out for help.

Other tools sought to curb anxiety by helping adults, like counselors and educators, step in to offer warm introductions. For example, Overgrad, a college and career planning platform, piloted an alumni directory to help counselors connect students with recent graduates in the colleges or industries they hoped to pursue. 

Taken together, the three trends show that a many-to-one advising model isn’t just a nice idea 鈥� it’s already taking shape with AI tools specifically designed to foster, rather than shortcut, connection. Platforms can help students see their networks, engage them without it feeling transactional and get the coaching or introduction that turns a contact into a helpful connection.

What’s possible, however, isn’t inevitable. To date, no state-level request for proposals 鈥� the documents that steer what ed tech companies actually build 鈥� lists stronger student networks as a desired outcome for college and career advising tools. Even states and districts that require postsecondary plans rarely ask whether a student can name who will help carry that plan out.

That needs to change. States and districts should demand that advising technology help students identify, strengthen and expand the human networks around them and measure whether those networks actually grow.

We could wait 30 years for the counselor ratio to reach 250:1. Or we could start building toward a different ratio altogether: many people, supporting every one student.

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