Gen Z is rethinking how they discover, research, and choose a college. From AI-powered search to social media, prospective students are forming impressions long before they visit your website. Explore what these changing habits mean for higher ed marketers and how to reach students with content that builds trust and supports their decision-making.
A prospective student scrolls TikTok, not Google. They ask ChatGPT a follow-up question instead of clicking through to your website. They watch a fifteen-second clip about your program before they ever read a single page of your site. Compared with previous generations, Gen Z students are forming their impressions of a school one piece at a time across different platforms rather than following one clear path. If your marketing strategy still assumes people start with a search engine and end on a landing page, it's worth stepping back and looking at how this generation actually spends their time online. Gen Z's media habits look different from the generations before them, and AI is the fastest-moving piece of that shift.
AI Tools like ChatGPT have gone from a novelty to a habit. Asking an AI tool a question is starting to feel as normal as running a search ever was and that's true. Whether someone is doing homework, planning a purchase, or researching where to apply to school, AI is becoming a key part of the process.
For a long time, "search" meant typing something into Google. That's no longer the default for many Gen Zers. Social platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become a go-to way to find information, whether that's a product review, a news update, or research on a college program. Traditional search hasn't disappeared, but it's no longer the first, or only, stop.
Format matters just as much as platform. Short-form video is the clear favorite. Long articles, long videos, and live TV all take a back seat to something quick, visual, and easy to scroll past if it doesn't hold its viewers’ attention in the first few seconds.
None of this is exactly new. Social platforms have been eating into search traffic for a while, and AI tools have been around long enough to be familiar. What's changed is the pace and the stakes. More of Gen Z's decisions, including big ones like choosing a college, now run through platforms and tools that didn't exist as decision-making resources a few years ago.
For higher ed specifically, that means prospective students are forming opinions about a school before admissions ever has a chance to make a direct impression. An AI-generated answer, a TikTok comment section, or a quick Instagram search can shape a student's shortlist long before they fill out an inquiry form.
AI doesn't just show up once in the process. It shows up at nearly every stage, just in different ways.
Early on, when a student is still figuring out what they even want, AI tools are being used almost like a sounding board. A student might describe what they liked and didn't like about a few schools they've toured and ask for suggestions based on that, the same way they might have once asked a school counselor or a parent's friend who went to college.
Once a student creates their shortlist, AI helps them break it down further. Instead of opening five different admissions pages in five tabs, a student can ask a direct question and get a synthesized answer: which of these schools has a better placement rate for this major, which one costs less after aid, which one has the stronger internship pipeline. The answer they get is only as good as what the AI tool can find and trust, which means if your institution's information is thin, outdated, or scattered across a dozen disconnected pages, you may simply not be part of the answer.
Social platforms can influence a student's decision as well. Student vloggers, campus tours filmed by actual students, and comment sections can carry more weight than anything an admissions office publishes directly. AI helped students narrow their lists. Real people help them make the final call.
Ranking on page one of Google used to be the goal. Now there's a second, related goal: being the source an AI tool actually cites or recommends when a student asks it a direct question.
AI tools tend to pull from content that is clear, current, and structured in a way that's easy to lift, things like specific program outcomes, cost breakdowns, and answers to direct questions, rather than tone-heavy marketing copy. A page that's beautifully designed but vague will often lose out to a plainer page that actually answers the question being asked. That means keeping program pages, cost information, and outcomes data accurate and easy to extract matters more than it used to, not less.
This implementation doesn't replace traditional SEO. It sits alongside it. But writing for AI is worth treating as its own discipline rather than assuming that whatever already works for search will automatically carry over.
Here's the part that's easy to miss: using AI constantly doesn't mean Gen Z fully trusts it. Recent research suggests that as AI usage climbs, actual enthusiasm and excitement about AI may be cooling. A lot of Gen Zers are wary of content that feels obviously AI-generated or automated, but still use those tools themselves every day.
So instead of making a blanket statement like, "Gen Z loves AI,” instead think "Gen Z relies on AI regularly and is still figuring out how much to trust it." That's the framework to plan a marketing strategy around.
For higher ed marketers, that distinction matters. Being on the right platform isn’t enough on its own. Showing up in the right place still has to be paired with content that feels authentic, not recycled or automated, or it risks getting scrolled past just as quickly as anything else.
The goal is to meet students where they already are rather than trying to pull them back to a traditional search-and-landing-page journey. A few places to start:
Gen Z's media habits have shifted, and AI is the biggest, fastest-moving part of that shift. They're using it constantly, but that doesn't mean they trust it without question. The opportunity for higher ed marketers is showing up early, in the right formats, with content that feels real rather than automated. The institutions paying attention to this now will have a real head start on the ones waiting to be asked about it.
At Click Rain, we help higher ed institutions understand exactly where their audience is spending time and build marketing strategies that meet them there.
Transform Your Higher Ed Marketing
Olivia "Liv" is our well-organized associate media strategist. Her happy place is found in building creative strategies and developing campaigns with purpose.
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