Ep 71: Quick Take: What Would ChatGPT Say About Your College?

Student search behavior has changed dramatically, and if your college isn’t showing up in AI answers, your prospective students may never find you. Why? Today’s students are using generative AI as the starting point of their college search, often long before they ever visit a college website. In this quick-take episode, Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, explores what happens when prospective students ask AI tools like ChatGPT questions such as “What college has the best nursing program near me?” or “What is student life like at this college?”

This episode unpacks how AI search tools work, what sources they pull from, and why visibility today is about more than traditional SEO. Cheryl introduces the concept of being “understandable” to AI and highlights the growing importance of a college’s full digital footprint, from websites and FAQs to reviews, social media, and third-party platforms like Reddit and Wikipedia. Because in this new search landscape, visibility is no longer just about ranking. It’s about being understood.

What You’ll Learn:

• How AI search tools actually work and where they pull information from
• What colleges should be doing right now to ensure their websites increase discoverability on AI platforms
• Why it’s important for colleges to run their own AI searches
• How colleges can write content that answers real student questions 

Thanks for listening!

Connect with GradComm:
Instagram: @gradcommunications
Facebook: @GradCommunications
LinkedIn: @gradcomm
Send us a message: GradComm.com

Higher Ed Conversations is hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, a marketing and branding agency specializing in community colleges and public education.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Cheryl Broom: Hi, I am Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm and host of Higher Ed Conversations, and I'm here with this month's quick take. If a student asked ChatGPT, what college has the best nursing program near me? Would your college even show up in the answer? What if they searched? What is student life like? At your college, what would come up?

[00:00:26] Cheryl Broom: What would ChatGPT say, do you know? Well, that's what I'm here to talk about today. And before we dive in to the episode and give you some tips on how to make sure that your college is showing up the way you want it to show up in AI search. I do have a disclaimer. I wanna say upfront GradComm has created an awesome way to audit how your college is showing up in search tools.

[00:00:49] Cheryl Broom: ChatGPT, Google, SGE, and perplexity. And I'm gonna share you with the end of this episode, I'm gonna share with you how you can get one of these audits and how amazing they are. But let's save that to the end. 'cause right now I wanna get into some real talk. And I just first off, want to start by saying what you probably already know, student search has changed.

[00:01:13] Cheryl Broom: So if you go back to episode 70. Of this podcast I did a fantastic interview with my son, Dylan and Piper, who are two high school seniors, and I asked them how they started their college search and both of them started in chat, GPT. So they started asking ChatGPT questions so that they could create a list of colleges they were interested in.

[00:01:38] Cheryl Broom: From there, they checked out social media, and it was only when they were ready to actually apply to a college did they visit the college website. So completely different student digital journey than what we would've seen just a couple of years ago. And it's not a fluke. It's not just, you know, two kids on Cheryl's podcast.

[00:01:58] Cheryl Broom: It's actually a huge behavior shift. In fact, I just learned that Google now only accounts for 27% of search activity, and the other 73% is now spread across Reddit threads, YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, e-commerce reviews. Chat. Generative AI answers podcasts Instagram. So Google's not the one stop search shop.

[00:02:23] Cheryl Broom: It used to be people are going so many different places to find the information that they not want and that they need. So the big takeaway for you as college marketers is that if you are just optimizing still for Google rankings, you're really becoming more and more invisible for most of the modern search journey.

[00:02:43] Cheryl Broom: So lots to focus on, but today I just wanna focus on AI search. So how does a AI search work? Well, it it search tools like ChatGPT, Google, SG, and Perplexity. They generate answers, not lists. So obviously when you go into Google and you type something up, you're gonna get a list of websites that you can select from.

[00:03:07] Cheryl Broom: Well, with AI search, you're actually getting answers. You don't have to visit the website to get the answer that you're looking for. Now, how are they trained? Well, good news for your website. Your website's more important than ever because first they're trained off your website content. They're also trained on how well your website is structured, So it's very important to have your website optimized correctly, but beyond your website, AI search is also looking at trusted. Third party sites. So, you know, things like Wikipedia, really important news, news articles that have been generated about your college blog posts, so, so places that are, are trusted and are outside of your immediate control.

[00:03:54] Cheryl Broom: They're also searching reviews. Reddit, YouTube transcripts, LinkedIn, Google's business profiles. So really the key point here is you are not just fighting anymore for that top line on Google. You are fighting to be mentioned in an AI answer, which means you have to be mentioned across the internet. So in other words.

[00:04:22] Cheryl Broom: SEO made you visible to search engines, but GEO what we're talking about today is gonna, is what's gonna make you understandable to AI. So what will make you understandable and visible to AI? Like I already said clearly your website, that's your home turf. Clarity and structure are gonna matter more than keyword density.

[00:04:46] Cheryl Broom: We are seeing that sites that use great Q and a formats or FAQ blocks that have lists and tables and scannable content are doing much better. Showing up in AI search, you need to write like people talk, because when we search Google, we may be searching, you know, for something in five words, but when we're asking chat, we're actually having a conversation.

[00:05:10] Cheryl Broom: So chat's looking for the answers to the way that people actually ask questions. Schema ready content means that your content is organized enough to be labeled for machines. So, where else does AI pull from besides your website? Well, social media, transcripts and videos, student reviews and testimonials, accreditation listings, Google Business Profile and LinkedIn pages, third party directories and media coverage.

[00:05:38] Cheryl Broom: Lots of different places. So what do you need to do now? I mean, that's a good question, right? You're like, oh my gosh. Just when we thought AI was taking over marketing, it's made marketing even more complex. It's made marketing even more important. And there's things that you need to do now to make sure that you're showing up where potential students in your community are searching for you.

[00:06:00] Cheryl Broom: Number one, clean up your website. Obviously it's gotta be mobile friendly, it needs to be fast, it needs to be structured correctly, right? add FAQs on important pages. Look at the way that you're writing, use consistent writing. So look to your website, write for real questions. Use natural language.

[00:06:22] Cheryl Broom: Don't just jam in a bunch of key words and hope that you're gonna be picked up by, by a search engine. Use clear headings and structured content FAQs, program guides, step to enroll. Beyond your website, you need to look at your digital footprint. You need to see what reviews are out there. What, how is my social presence beyond just whether or not you are posting regularly on your college social channels?

[00:06:51] Cheryl Broom: Are people talking about you? Are they asking questions on Reddit? And are these questions. Being answered in a positive way, or do you maybe have some haters out there? How, how are your Yelp reviews going? Have you answered any of them? Have you engaged with people in dialogue online? These are the type of things that are really going to help you show up the way that you wanna show up when somebody asks an AI engine a question.

[00:07:21] Cheryl Broom: You also should be regularly running your AI, your own AI tests. You should be asking ChatGPT, perplexity, Google, SGE questions that you know that your students are asking. what's the best college? Close by near me and let's, let's use my old college. I used to work at MiraCosta, for example. What's student life like at MiraCosta?

[00:07:42] Cheryl Broom: How are the professors at MiraCosta? What's the best professor at mta? How's the food there? How are the athletics? you know, am I gonna make friends ask questions and see what, what turns up? See where you can even see where AI's pulling the information from. You could ask the question and say, tell me where you got this information from, and then backtrack and see if it's something that you can correct or enhance.

[00:08:07] Cheryl Broom: Or maybe it's an area online that you need to pay more attention to. So, like I said I was a little bit worried at the beginning of last year, 2025. I'm like, oh my gosh, our agency, like we are up against a wall. Like people aren't gonna need us anymore. AI is gonna take our jobs over. And then when I started really learning and digging into what AI is doing, the more I realized that the world needs marketers now more than ever because we need to make sure.

[00:08:34] Cheryl Broom: Our message is consistent, that it's clear and that it's helpful, and that's what your job is. I mean, you're out there being an evangelist for your college, and now you have to do it even better across the entire internet. So if this all seems overwhelming or you just wanna get a head start and get a leg up, send me an email cheryl@gradcomm.com.

[00:08:57] Cheryl Broom: We've begun doing AI visibility and reputation audits for community college clients. We can actually do them for any industry if you've. Stumbled across this podcast, and I don't know, you're in insurance and you're interested in this but we can assess how your content is showing up across AI platforms.

[00:09:15] Cheryl Broom: We will evaluate, your website, how you know, a couple pages the most popular pages are doing in terms of their setup and their writing. We will also see how you're showing up on external sites like Reddit and Wikipedia. You'll get a customized report. That shows what these AI tools are seeing when they scan your brand.

[00:09:36] Cheryl Broom: And you can get recommendations on how to fix it or enhance what you're doing. Bonus, if you need even more help, we're here to help you fix anything that needs fixing. So if you wanna know how your college appears and AI generated answers. Let us run the audit for you. It's not that expensive. It's going to give you a lot of information that you can take back to your college leadership to show them A, how important your job is, how critical it is to be present across the internet, but b, also.

[00:10:07] Cheryl Broom: To make sure the students are getting the information that they need to make these life changing decisions to go to college. So email me, cheryl@gradcomm.com and stay tuned for future episodes and some of my video blogs where I'm gonna dive into even more what's, what's going on in, in higher ed marketing and, and an AI.

[00:10:27] Cheryl Broom: As always, thanks for listening and thanks for all the work that you do on behalf of students. See you next time.