“We definitely don’t believe that the whole thing can be done by A.I.” That’s College Possible Chief Executive Siva Kumari speaking to The New York Times earlier this year on artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted admissions advice for students. Over the past year, conversations about AI have become ubiquitous in many facets of personal and professional life, and that’s true for the college access and attainment field, too.
The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) has worked hard over the past year to better understand our members’ usage of AI and to share key concepts and tools in this area. We kicked off with a pre-Conference session last year at our National Conference in New Orleans, hosted a roundtable last December with members, and then surveyed members on their usage and sentiments. We just finished a four-part Spring Institute on AI and advising that was both well-attended and well-received.
Our next phase is to get even more feedback from NCAN members about what they’d like to see filled in next and to highlight more member programs who are successfully connecting AI and advising. To that end, I had the chance to interview Scott del Rossi, Vice President of College and Career Success at College Possible, to learn more about their approach and his advice for the field.
NCAN: First, tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been with College Possible? In the field? How did you get here?
del Rossi: I first joined what was then College Forward, now College Possible Texas, as an AmeriCorps service member back in 2009. After completing my AmeriCorps service, I joined the staff in 2011 and have been here ever since. As the first in my family to graduate from college, I knew firsthand how much mentors, professors, and loved ones had helped me succeed, and I wanted to pay it forward.
It was perhaps an odd choice for someone who graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from Philadelphia University, but I’ve never really looked back. Today I serve as Vice President of College and Career Success at College Possible, where I oversee our programs and technology that help students succeed in college.
Many readers will be familiar with College Possible, but for those who aren't, can you give us a thumbnail sketch of the model?
College Possible was founded in 2000 by another first-generation college graduate. Today, we're one of the largest college access and success organizations in the country. Our model uses a combination of full-time advising specialists and recent college graduates as near-peer mentors. We serve students starting their junior year of high school and continue supporting them all the way through college graduation.
College Possible focuses on pairing students from low-income backgrounds with coaches who help them navigate virtually every step of the process, from test prep and college applications to financial aid, enrollment, and, ultimately, degree completion. Compared with their peers from similar backgrounds, College Possible students are 30 percent more likely to enroll in college the year after high school graduation, and three times more likely to earn a bachelor's degree.
We now serve more than 25,000 students each year across seven regional sites — including here in Texas.
Moving into Coach Possible — what is it? What does it do? Who does it serve? Where does it stand today?
Coach Possible is an AI-powered student success platform that gives students 24/7 access to personalized guidance, learning tools, milestone tracking, and instant support, all in one place. It's built on the Salesforce platform and integrated with our existing CoPilot student information system.
Specifically, students get access to a generative AI support agent that can answer routine questions about financial aid, FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), deadlines, and scholarships. Those responses are all drawn from College Possible's own data and curriculum, not the open internet. It also provides an academic home during summer breaks and college transitions, when students often lack support.
On the coach side, it surfaces activity summaries and insights so we can be more targeted in our outreach. With Coach Possible, we've been able to scale each coach's capacity from roughly 60 students to as many as 200 while maintaining the quality of our personalized relationships.
What was the catalyst for building Coach Possible?
College Possible has 25 years' worth of data stored in Salesforce, but until recently, we didn't really have the tools to fully take advantage of that wealth of information. Our coaches—many of them just a year or two out of college themselves—would spend significant time manually searching through our curriculum and knowledge base to find the right answers for students.
We also knew students wanted answers on their schedule, not ours. Some of the most urgent questions about financial aid and tuition bills come in at midnight, not during office hours. In 2023, we were selected for the Salesforce Accelerator—AI for Impact program, which gave us the resources to build the tool. We developed Coach Possible in about six months.
How did you think about AI's role relative to your human coaches?
AI should enable advisors to focus on deeper student engagement. Instead of near-peer coaches needing to be subject matter experts on every single college policy and process out there, they focus on supporting the students in front of them. The human relationship is still the engine of our model.
How are your human coaches responding to Coach Possible? Have you seen it change how they spend their time?
The response has been very positive. It takes a lot of time off their hands and allows them to focus more on one-on-one interactions with students. Because students spend less time in meetings asking technical questions, they now have more time available to develop and deepen relationships with their coaches.
AI in student services is generating a lot of hype and a lot of skepticism. What do you wish the field understood better?
That this is technology, not magic. And it's not a shortcut. Building Coach Possible took years of groundwork. It couldn’t exist without 25 years of data, the Salesforce infrastructure, and our deep curriculum development. AI is only as good as the data and content you feed it. If you don't have that foundation, the tool just isn’t going to work.
What's your practical advice for other NCAN members thinking about incorporating AI?
Invest in your data infrastructure first. If your student data is scattered across spreadsheets and disconnected systems, even AI probably can’t help you. And talk to your students and your staff—early and often. Understand what they need, what they're comfortable with, and what they're worried about.
In other words: start with the problem, not the technology. What are the pain points in your advising model? Where are students falling through the cracks? Where are your staff spending time that could be better used working directly with students? That's your starting point.
Thank you, Scott, for taking the time to chat and share more about your work in the field.
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And thank you, readers, for following along and learning more about College Possible’s efforts. NCAN’s blog has only infrequently used interviews as a post format, and we’d love to hear your feedback. Does this work for you? Want to hear more from leaders in the field? Are there other formats you’d prefer? My inbox is open at [email protected].
In the meantime, stay tuned for more great webinars, roundtables, and learning opportunities, on the intersection of AI and advising and much more. Thanks for reading!