Harvard College Plans AI Chatbot To Guide Students on Courses, Requirements Beginning This Summer

Harvard College plans to roll out a new AI chatbot this summer to help the incoming Class of 2030 navigate academic policies and course planning, Assistant Director of Advising Programs Brooks Lambert-Sluder wrote in a Wednesday statement to The Crimson.

Some advisors in the Office of Undergraduate Education and Peer Advising Fellows have been testing early versions of the chatbot and providing feedback since the fall, Lambert-Sluder wrote. The tool draws on resources including the Fields of Concentration Handbook and the Student Handbook to answer students’ questions about concentrations, graduation requirements, and course selection.

“A chatbot that can help students begin to navigate the resources here is not meant to replace human advising, but rather to improve students’ access to information that already exists online, and to direct them to appropriate advising resources,” Lambert-Sluder wrote.

The chatbot was built using ChatGPT Edu, a version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT rolled out for educational institutions in 2024. Lambert-Sluder said the College may switch to a different model “depending on the right technology for the purpose,” after further consultation with Harvard University Information Technology.

The College ended a two-year pilot program that assigned freshmen to faculty pre-concentration advisers in March 2025. At the time, the College said Harvard was “considering new ways to enhance advising,” including the use of technology.

Georgia G. Bohney ’28, a current PAF, said the tool would help centralize the College’s advising resources and open a new avenue for students to find answers to basic academic questions.

“It’s a tool for students to ask quick questions so that they’re not searching online for a really long time,” she said. “I loved my PAF — she was absolutely wonderful — but I don’t know that I would have actually texted her if I had a question so simple as what do I need to do for my language requirement.”

Bohney added that having a chatbot handle basic policy questions would free PAFs to focus on building personal relationships with their advisees.

“We can spend more time focusing on human interactions,” she said, “and the students can spend less time trying to Google search for hours about physics requirements or language requirements.”

Alex I. Draghia ’28, another PAF, said the chatbot could streamline an advising process that currently results in students hunting across multiple Harvard websites for straightforward answers.

“Over 50 percent of the questions I get from the students I’m PAFing are questions that have an absolute answer somewhere on Harvard’s website,” Draghia said.

“The only takeaway here is that there will essentially be a new Google for Harvard resources,” he added.

—Staff writer Wyeth Renwick can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @wzrenwick.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.

—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at csimon.13. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.