Inquiries are flat and the applicant pool is shrinking.
Students now ask AI which program to pick.
A 19 year old deciding on welding and a 35 year old leaving retail for nursing both ask ChatGPT the same kind of question: best program near me, how long, how much. The answer names two or three schools. If yours is not one of them, that student never reaches your inquiry form. MentionedOn shows you whether you are named, who is named instead, and what the answer says about your tuition, length and start dates.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: up to 6 priority questions on paid scans. Results may be reused for up to 7 days; availability varies by question.
What's the best trade school for welding near Tulsa, and how long does it take?
Ironfield Welding Academy
large campus, frequent start dates, accelerated day schedule
Arkansas River Technical Institute
welding and pipefitting certificates, evening option
Prairie Forge Career College
hybrid program with online theory coursework
Your result is not known yet
Run your own scan to see whether your trade school is named in the completed answers.
See what AI tells your future students
Sound familiar?
What enrollment and marketing leaders at community colleges, trade and career schools, nursing programs and small private colleges are seeing
More spend, same inquiry count
Paid search budgets went up and lead vendor invoices went up, but program inquiries did not follow, and WICHE projects the number of US high school graduates will decline steadily after peaking in 2025. The students you did not hear from made a shortlist somewhere you cannot see.
Adult learners arrive comparing you to someone else
Career changers call admissions already weighing you against an online program or the biggest school in the state. They got that comparison before they ever opened your site.
Callers quote numbers you never published
A prospect asks about a tuition figure, a program length or a start date that does not match your catalog. Somebody told them that number, and it was not you.
The big school gets named for programs you also run
You have an LPN cohort or an HVAC lab with open seats, but when a student asks for options in your area, the answer names a larger institution first and stops there.
The common thread: the shortlist now forms inside an AI answer, before anyone visits your site, calls, or fills in a form. Your name is either in that answer or it is not.
What you're already paying for, and where it stops
None of this is wasted. Each one does its job. None of them was built to put your name in an AI answer.
Paid search and paid social on program keywords
Ads buy a click after someone searches. An AI answer is not an ad slot, and the shortlist it gives is built from what is published about schools, not from your bids.
Third-party lead vendors and program directories
You pay for leads that often went to several schools at once. Those directory pages can be what AI reads, which means the answer names the directory's featured schools or a national online program instead of you.
An SEO agency and refreshed program pages
Pages built around keywords often keep the facts students ask about (total cost, weeks to finish, next start date) in a PDF catalog or behind an inquiry form. AI assistants answer from plain text they can find, so those facts get filled in from somewhere else.
High school visits and counselor relationships
These still matter for students in the building. They do not reach the adult career changer asking a chatbot at 11pm, or the parent double checking the program their kid mentioned.
Rankings and review sites
You do not control what those sites say or when they update. AI blends them with other sources, so a stale profile can outweigh your own current information.
What a missed decision is worth
A student who never hears your name does not show up in any report. Put your own numbers in to size what that costs over the years they would have stayed.
Example numbers. Replace them with yours.
Lifetime revenue from one year of missed students
$180,000
per student per year × years they stay × missed per year
Use average net tuition and fees per student per year from your business office, and the typical time to complete your most common credential; for a short certificate, enter a fraction of a year.
The questions prospective students ask AI about programs like yours
Examples written for Tulsa. We track the questions your future students ask in each market you serve. Daily priority checks on ChatGPT and Gemini, plus a weekly sweep across all four assistant families.
See the full methodology →- →What's the best trade school for welding near Tulsa?
- →What's the cheapest LPN program in Tulsa I can do while working full time?
- →Is community college or a trade school better for becoming an electrician in Tulsa?
- →How long is an HVAC program in Tulsa, and how much does it cost?
- →Which nursing programs near Tulsa have good NCLEX pass rates?
- →I'm 35 and want to change careers. What evening or weekend certificate programs are there in Tulsa?
- →Which CDL training schools in Tulsa accept financial aid or workforce grants?
- →Are there accredited cosmetology schools in Tulsa with a class starting in the next two months?
What AI gets wrong about schools like yours
Things to check in the answers about you. The evidence explorer keeps the full text of every answer, so your team can read exactly what was said.
Tuition and total cost
Check whether AI quotes an old tuition figure, leaves out fees, tools, kits or uniforms, or mixes in-district and out-of-district rates. Students budget from that number.
Program length and schedule
Check whether AI says a program takes fewer or more months than it does, or claims an evening or online option you do not offer.
Accreditation
Check whether AI confuses institutional and programmatic accreditation, or describes a nursing or allied-health program's approval status incorrectly. For these students that detail decides licensure eligibility.
Start dates and enrollment windows
Check whether AI says a program is full, closed, or starts once a year when you run rolling or quarterly cohorts.
Financial aid eligibility
Check whether AI tells students a short-term program does or does not qualify for federal aid, GI Bill benefits or workforce funding without matching what your aid office says.
Job placement and earnings
Check whether AI repeats placement rates or salary figures from a third-party site instead of what you actually report. A wrong outcome number can hurt you in either direction.
Your first 30 days
Steps your own team can take, in this order. Monitoring shows which of them moved the answer.
Run the student questions for your three most important programs
Pick the programs where you have open seats or a new cohort. Ask the questions above in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity for each campus city and read the full answers. Write down which schools are named and every fact stated about yours.
Put a plain-text fact block on every program page
Total cost with fees and tools itemized, length in weeks or months, day or evening schedule, next start dates, the credential earned, institutional and programmatic accreditation, and which aid it qualifies for. Plain HTML text on the page, not only in the PDF catalog.
Publish outcomes that match what you already report
Use the same completion, placement and earnings figures you report to the Department of Education or your state, and link to your College Scorecard entry. One set of numbers, stated the same way everywhere.
Clean up the listings AI reads
Update the Google Business Profile for each campus, your state's eligible training provider listing, accreditor directories and the program directories you pay for. Program names, lengths and costs should match your site exactly.
Answer the comparison questions honestly, then check again
Publish a page that answers what students actually ask, such as community college versus trade school for electricians, with real schedules and costs. After two to four weeks, rerun the questions and compare the answers with what you recorded in step one.
The plan that fits most colleges and trade schools
Growth
$399/mo
Up to 5 locations or brands, 120 tracked questions each.
Most schools have several programs and often more than one campus, and each program draws a different set of student questions. Growth covers up to five locations or brands and 120 questions. Systems with many campuses, or teams that want the work done for them, fit Concierge.
A mention is not a signed student. We measure whether and how you are named in sampled AI answers, show who is named instead, and rank the fixes. We do not promise placements.
Questions enrollment and marketing leaders at community colleges, trade and career schools, nursing programs and small private colleges ask us
We're a public community college. Do we really compete for students like a business?+
You compete for the same student's decision. When someone asks an AI assistant where to train as an electrician, the answer names a few options and the student usually starts there. Public, private and online programs all show up side by side.
Our lead vendors already deliver volume. Why add this?+
Lead vendors sell you students who were already comparing schools, often through the vendor's own pages. This shows you whether students who skip the vendor and ask AI directly hear your name, and what they hear about you.
Compliance won't approve new marketing claims.+
The 30-day plan mostly moves facts you already publish (cost, length, start dates, accreditation, reported outcomes) into plain text on your program pages. That is usually easier to approve than new claims, and it reduces the chance AI fills the gap with wrong numbers.
Can AI really be wrong about our tuition or start dates?+
It can be, and you can check. MentionedOn records the full answer text for every question, so your team can read exactly what each assistant says about your school and flag anything that is out of date.
Will being named in AI answers increase enrollment?+
We can't promise that, and nobody honestly can. A mention is not an application. What we measure is whether and how your school is named in sampled answers, who is named instead, and which fixes are worth doing first.
Our programs change every term. Will the monitoring keep up?+
You choose the questions, and you can add or retire them as programs change. Monitoring checks your top questions daily and the full set weekly, so you see when an answer shifts after you update a page.
See what AI tells students about your programs
Run a free scan in about 30 seconds. You will see whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity name your school, which schools they name instead, and the full answer text so you can check the facts yourself.
Check what AI says about us →