Next-Level Admissions: AI in IEM

The discourse around artificial intelligence (AI) exploded in 2023. After a long gestation period, the technology seems to have broken through to a new level, with a promising, if somewhat unclear, future. 

But for international educators, AI already has a lot to offer. It’s not a magic wand, but AI tools can help reduce staff time spent on mundane or repetitive tasks, provide much-needed consistency in tone and language, and even spur creativity. 

“AI does not do all the work for you, but it can save time and effort,” says Dana Brolley, director of international services at the University of Idaho. This is true across international education, but international enrollment and admissions is particularly ripe to reap the benefits of some AI applications.

Chatbots, the First Frontier

Many admissions offices, both international and domestic, have already dipped their toes into AI waters by using a chatbot. A rudimentary form of AI, chatbots are designed to recognize and respond to certain questions but lack the ability to learn from questions and develop original answers. 

The University of California-Irvine (UC Irvine) has been using a chatbot in its admissions office since 2019. Bryan Jue, senior director of outreach and communications in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, says that the technology has been a lifesaver, particularly during the pandemic. 

“The whole reason to use it was to reduce the amount of customer service time,” he says. “A lot of time students were asking the same thing over and over.” 

More recently, says Jue, the university has starting using generative AI for the chatbot. “The onset of ChatGPT has allowed us to create answers that are much more sophisticated than a traditional decision tree,” he says. “With the traditional way, you have to write it up and maintain it. It’s almost as if you have to teach it every single day.” By contrast, says Jue, ChatGPT scrubs the UC Irvine website to inform its answers. It does this every 15 minutes, meaning information is always up to date and staff has to invest less time in manual updates.

“We’ve found that it’s 96 percent accurate,” Jue says. “We’ve been really surprised that it requires a lot less maintenance.” 

The other advantage is that ChatGPT is more, well, human. “ChatGPT is much more robust,” says Jue. “It has a sense of humor, so it has more personality to it.” UC Irvine has been A/B testing the chatbot with and without ChatGPT, and the results from ChatGPT have been so strong that Jue says they will probably move its entire chatbot over to ChatGPT for the next admissions cycle. 

A Jump Start for Creativity

Brolley says that she decided to explore AI at least in part because everyone else was using it. “AI is impacting higher ed and changing how we work,” she says. “Students and faculty are using the tools, and it’s important that we understand how AI can be used [both] positively and nefariously and how it might impact our work, students, and the wider community.”

Her initial foray into AI was on a policy manual that had been lingering for years for want of staff time. The staff decided to use AI to create an outline and first draft. As it turned out, that helped jump-start the project. 

“The results weren’t perfect, but it dramatically reduced the time required to draft the policy,” says Brolley. “While the results required review, the first draft was quick and generally acceptable.” Now, Brolley’s office has a draft manual of approximately 100 pages with images, diagrams, and data. 

Kate Lotz, director of global communications at KIC UnivAssist—which helps universities with international student recruitment—agrees that AI is helpful in spurring ideas. 

“I can’t stress enough its use as a primary-draft concept generating tool,” she says. “It’s good to get the creative juices going. It’s not something we could use as an end product. My rule is you have to rewrite anything AI writes.”

Lotz says KIC UnivAssist uses AI across its marketing, content, and social media. Designers may use Photoshop AI for photos, such as extending a background. For content, the team uses ChatGPT and Google Bard for first-draft writing, paraphrasing, editing for concision, and proofreading. 

AI can be especially useful for offices with fewer resources, she says. “Smaller shops where recruiters might be reading the applications and doing the marking have the most potential to benefit,” she says. “They might have a sense of hesitation because it will slow them down at the beginning. But just in terms of drafting email responses to students asking simple questions or making a PowerPoint slide, it will cut their time down to a percentage of what it was before.” 

For offices small and large, “[AI] helps to elevate content or design, make it a little more professional or a little more polished,” Lotz says. “I think AI is great for both of those things, without you having to put in hours and hours of more work.”

Creating Efficiencies

It’s not just a matter of adding polish. “The opportunity in AI is to help with more mechanical tasks so that colleagues can save time for more nuanced things, like talking with the actual students,” says Cheryl DarrupBoychuck, CEO of Funds Validator. 

Funds Validator uses machine learning to verify the banking accounts of students applying for admission to international programs. Currently, many institutions rely upon personnel to review bank statements to determine whether they may have been manipulated. Rather than having someone pore over these records to verify them, Funds Validator allows students to upload a copy of their statements, and AI takes it from there. 

“There are limited number of financial institutions around the world, and they are already in compliance with global standards,” says DarrupBoychuck. “There are massive volumes of bank statements, so we can understand what a bank statement should look like and detect anomalies. It streamlines the process. It’s more difficult to trip the system up than just a human eyeball.”

Students expect technological solutions as part of their admissions process, says DarrupBoychuck. “If a student moves through the application process and is not presented with a modern option, they are incredibly frustrated,” she argues. “The adoption hurdle is definitely on the institution’s side and not necessarily on the student’s side.”

As with content generation, using AI for rote tasks should augment human efforts, not replace them entirely. Duolingo’s English Test uses AI with “humans in the loop,” according to Lindsay Addington, senior strategic engagement executive at Duolingo and a former international admissions officer. AI helps generate thousands of test items, assess the language ability required for each test item, grade answers (both complex and multiple choice), and synthesize everything into a final test score. 

Addington says Duolingo uses AI “for operational efficiency in a lot of human-intensive processes. The idea is that through the use of AI, the human experts are able to invest more time in the overall test-development process as opposed to the minutiae of a particular test item that is more efficiently done by AI. It’s allowing humans to do what they do best.”

Experimentation and Transparency

Acknowledging that AI is a tool that enhances what people do is critical in helping combat fears about its use in the workplace. So is understanding that integrating AI into enrollment and admissions work will involve some trial and error. With the range of platforms available, picking the tools that work best to create efficiencies and free up staff time may be a matter of experimentation. One important lesson in using any AI program is to learn how to write precise prompts. 

“If you don’t ask for the right thing, you’re not going to get the right results,” says Lotz. “That takes practice.” For example, she notes, asking for design concepts for a university fair for international students won’t get you the same results that you would receive if you were to ask for design concepts for a university fair for high school students in Brazil. 

“You really have to practice and have your own experience with them,” says Lotz.

Once they determine which tools they’re using and how to use them optimally, admissions offices should be open in explaining to students how they use AI. “As someone who worked in higher ed for almost two decades,” says Addington, “my advice for universities is to be transparent about their considerations and expectations and communicate them to students.”

She stresses the importance of using AI responsibly and transparently. “Whenever we do in-person events, often around the benefits of AI, we talk about how to use it responsibly,” she says. Duolingo, for example, has published an 18-page paper outlining responsible AI standards for the Duolingo English Test. 

Looking Ahead

For all the attention that AI is receiving, its future is still unclear. “There’s still a lot of unpredictability about what its use can be,” says Addington. As the technology continues to expand, the possibilities for its use on campuses do as well. 

Jue says that he is looking at a variety of tools to help with admissions, including a virtual-reality headset powered by AI, as outreach for prospective students unable to visit the UC Irvine campus. “Maybe it’s not as personal [as an in-person campus tour], but you can do some research and exploration that makes it feel a little more real and give you a sense of what the campus is like,” he says.

In the meantime, AI can alleviate some of the daily burden for international enrollment and admissions professionals—and spark creativity to jump-start projects. “It’s a tool, but it’s not a substitute for personal work and effort,” says Brolley. “It’s something we all need to know and learn about!”  •