Pounce texts help Georgia State students file for financial aid

In randomized trials at Georgia State in 2018-19 and 2020-21, chatbot outreach raised FAFSA filing by about 3 points from 59% in Atlanta and by about 2 points from 47% at Perimeter.

  • 2 a person

    Students who received the outreach were about two to three percentage points more likely to file the FAFSA by the end of spring.

Depth runs from 1, a convenience or time saved, to 5, a life or a livelihood preserved.

Status
Reported benefit.
Evidence

foundstudiedreportedclaimed

An independent peer-reviewed study supports the benefit.

Compared with

Students who received only the usual university communication. Measured.

The system’s part
Not isolated. Students were randomly assigned to receive the outreach or only the usual university messages. The estimate covers the whole service, including messages written by university staff and answers that staff supplied. The share due to the chatbot's automated answers is not isolated.
Limits
Not yet checked.
Costs and harms
Not yet checked.
Later
Not yet checked.

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Benefit type
Increased Access to Education
System
Pounce, Georgia State University's AI text-message chatbot built by Mainstay
Made by
Mainstay
Used by
Georgia State University (Atlanta campus and Perimeter College), through its National Institute for Student Success
Where
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Stage
In a pilot
Date
Kind
Aggregate result
Broad benefit
Communicating with People Outside the Organization, Selling or Influencing Others
Last revised
31 October 2026

Sources

  1. Peer-reviewed study, by authors with no tie to the system.

    Page LC, Meyer KE, Lee J, Gehlbach H. Conditions Under Which College Students Can Be Responsive to Text-Based Nudging. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness 19(2):298-326, published online 18 April 2025, doi:10.1080/19345747.2025.2481219. Quoted from NBER Working Paper 33257, December 2024.

    About 59 percent of control students in the GSU-Atlanta sample filed the FAFSA by the end of the spring semester, with treatment students about three percentage points more likely to do so.

Details

AI system

Workflow

The university wrote tailored message campaigns and sent some only to students with a relevant task, such as a registration hold. The chatbot answered questions that matched its knowledge base and emailed the rest to university staff.

Follow-up

Conditions for replication

The task is discrete, required and time-sensitive, like filing the FAFSA. Messages come from a source that students expect to hear from, such as their university.

Entry details

Sector

Education.

Purpose

Mainstay built Pounce for Georgia State University to send students text-message outreach and to answer their questions about administrative tasks.

References

Other identifiers

Sree: 9660.

Not yet checked: model, release, provider, role, configuration, inputs and outputs, autonomy, human oversight, AI contribution, beneficiaries, reach, distribution and access, duration, every measurement question, every money question, ownership and control, dependencies, cross-border connections, geopolitical implications, replication attempts, availability, institutional decision, grounds, action and result, success criterion, every evidence question, observed or intended, alternative assessments, related entries, category mappings.

Cite this record

Peter H. Vartanian. (2026). Pounce texts help Georgia State students file for financial aid (AIBD-0730). Artificial Intelligence Benefits Database, edition of 31 October 2026. https://petervartanian.xyz/aibd/records/AIBD-0730.html (archived at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AADSII, version 4.0)

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