Our field experiment extends prior work on college matriculation by testing the extent to which an artificially intelligent (AI) chatbot’s outreach and support to college students (N = 4442) reduced summer melt and improved first-year college enrollment at a 4-year university. Specifically, we investigate which students the intervention proves most effective for. We find that the AI chatbot increased overall success with navigating financial aid processes, such that student take up of educational loans increased by four percentage points. This financial aid effect was concentrated among would-be first-generation college goers, for whom loan acceptances increased by eight percentage points. In addition, the outreach increased first-generation students’ success with course registration and fall semester enrollment each by three percentage points. Our findings suggest that proactive chatbot outreach to students is likely to be most successful in reducing summer melt among those who may need the chatbot support the most.

我们的现场试验通过检测范围延伸上大学预科之前的工作其中人工智能（AI）聊天机器人的推广和支持大学生（ñ= 4442）减少了暑假，并改善了四年制大学的一年级大学入学率。具体来说，我们调查干预最有效的学生。我们发现AI聊天机器人通过导航财务援助流程提高了整体成功率，从而使学生接受教育贷款的比例提高了四个百分点。这种经济援助效应集中在可能成为第一代大学毕业生的人身上，他们的贷款接受率增加了8个百分点。此外，外展活动使第一代学生的课程注册和秋季学期入学率分别提高了三个百分点，从而提高了他们的成功率。我们的研究结果表明，在最需要聊天机器人支持的人中，主动地向学生进行聊天机器人推广可能会最有效地减少学生的暑假。