The survey, titled "Findings from EAB's 2026 Parent Survey," polled 2,515 parents of high school students nationwide between April 16 and May 14, spanning a range of household incomes, regions and students' grade levels. It found that 57 percent of parents have used AI tools such as ChatGPT to evaluate colleges and compare options for their children, and that about a third — 34 percent — said AI surfaced schools they had not previously considered.
"Our survey findings suggest that AI has become a gatekeeper in the college search process, not only for teens, but for parents as well," said Pam Royall, EAB's head of research and a co-author of the report. "AI is shaping how families perceive institutions before they ever attend an information session or speak with an admissions counselor."
The findings mark a shift in a college-search process that for decades ran through campus websites, mailers, email campaigns and, more recently, social media. Increasingly, families are asking AI systems to synthesize that material for them rather than combing through it directly. EAB's data show that 84 percent of parents report searching online for college information on their child's behalf, and that AI-generated summaries now often stand between families and the sources schools produce.
"A new challenge for university leaders is to ensure their digital content resonates with the people they're trying to recruit and is easily sourced by the AI systems that now interpret that information for families," Royall said.
Despite AI's growing role, parents' feelings about the technology are far from settled. More than a third of respondents said they are "very" or "extremely" concerned about AI's effect on their children's critical thinking skills, and parents were about evenly split on whether AI will change the number of jobs that require a college degree.
The survey also reinforces that affordability remains parents' dominant concern — 64 percent cited the cost of college as a top worry, outpacing every other issue, including college fit, by 14 percentage points. But the survey suggests parents are increasingly filtering that cost question through a single question: will it pay off in a job?
Asked what makes a college or university "worth the cost," parents overwhelmingly pointed to characteristics tied to employment. The four most-cited factors were internships, co-ops and other active-learning opportunities (39 percent), successful job placement after graduation (38 percent), good career prospects (34 percent) and strong earning potential (30 percent) — all ranking above traditional academic measures such as the breadth of a school's course catalog or its faculty-to-TA ratio.
"For years, conversations about college value centered on affordability and sticker price," Royall said. "While price and affordability remain critically important, parents increasingly are considering whether a particular college can deliver the career planning, internships, and employment outcomes that justify the investment.”
That’s true for Wanda McReynolds, whose 16-year-old son, Troy, is beginning to look at colleges.
“There are so many schools out there and it’s a bit overwhelming,” said McReynolds, who lives in Chicago. “AI has been a blessing, because it has provided critical information that has allowed me to ask certain questions as we begin looking at all of the colleges and universities to see what might be the best fit.”
That shift tracks with a broader trend EAB has tracked since 2022: the share of parents citing their children's post-graduation job prospects as a top-five worry jumped 81 percent between the 2024 and 2026 surveys, the largest swing of any measure in the study. The share of parents citing a school's financial aid award as central to a college's value also climbed 23 percent over the same four-year period.
EAB, a Washington-based education research and technology firm, works with more than 2,800 K-12, college and university partners nationwide and has conducted the parent survey every two years since 2022.
