A New Blueprint for Student Success: Personalized Pathways From Day One

Rebekah Pryor Paré is a career services consultant and strategy coach with 20 years of experience in higher ed teaching, advising, academic policy, fundraising, and career services. 

Today’s students and families aren’t just looking for a place to go to college. They’re looking for a clear, credible answer to: “Where will this degree, certificate, or program take me?” 

And far too often, they don’t get one.

That disconnect is costly. Strada-Gallup and Lightcast’s National Career Mobility surveys show that while the majority of students pursue college to improve their employment prospects, only a quarter of working adults strongly agree their education was relevant to their job or daily life. 

Why is this happening?

One reason is the siloed nature of admissions, academic advising and career services. When students show interest in an institution, we ask them about their academic interests and share dozens of possible options. Academic advising is often required before enrollment. The main focus is on getting into the right classes at the right time.

But students are asking:

“What jobs can I get with this major?”
“Which majors will help me get into marketing or tech roles?”

And academic advisors often don’t have sufficient time to search and provide detailed analysis and best fit answers. Especially when the typical workload might be 500-1000 students per advisor.

When I served as a policy dean, I worked with countless students who were bright, motivated—yet completely stuck. They had followed all the academic requirements, but never had the space to step back and ask: “What am I working towards? What will I do when I graduate?” 

By the time they reached my office, they were often overwhelmed, behind in their career planning, and doubting whether their degree or selected course plan would pay off. Some were already disengaging—falling into distractions or at risk of leaving the institution entirely. 

First generation students had an even more challenging time. They often had to overcome questions at home, with peers, and in society and lacked the necessary vocabulary to advocate for their aspirations and current path.

My career advising staff would often share that they sat with graduating seniors who believed they hadn’t gained any skills during their college experience. This disconnect has vast impacts on students’ ability to land a job or graduate school position by graduation and on students’ satisfaction with their degree.

If the top reason for pursuing college is to improve career prospects, why do we delay the introduction of career exploration?

When should we introduce career services?

Most institutions introduce career support much too late. Students don’t know when—or how—to engage. Many think they need a complete plan before seeking help, so they wait, rush decisions, or miss key opportunities.

And the results are predictable: lost students, excess credits, delayed graduation, and declining confidence in the degree’s value.

For colleges and universities focused on improving student success and career outcomes, this is a losing game. 

Why? 

Today’s employers have higher expectations for college graduates’ career readiness than ever before. The requirements to get a job have steadily increased for students, and to be successful on the job market, students need to:

• Select the occupations they want to pursue
• Research employers and build relationships
• Understand recruiting timelines and prepare accordingly
• Gain experience in industry through case studies, student employment, project work, research, and internships as appropriate to the field
• Articulate the skills and competencies they’ve learned
• Prepare tailored job materials
• Practice and refine their interview skills

To get to a place where a student has most, if not all, of these experiences and materials ready by peak recruiting season (typically August - October prior to the start of an internship or job), students must begin exploring opportunities, learning how their majors connect to different professional pathways, and trying out a variety of experiences to be able to better assess their strengths and interests. 

It’s easy to see how students who don’t begin career preparation until junior or senior year are at a significant disadvantage. They come to career services frustrated and feeling left behind. 

When we integrate career services more holistically into the student experience from the time students begin engaging with us, we shift from a more reactive career services strategy to a more proactive, transformational one. That means students encounter career exploration and planning beginning in the admissions process, through orientation and the first-year experience, in academic advising, high-impact practices, and through the curriculum, and beyond.

This new model provides the kind of early and sustained support that helps spark students’ imagination for what’s possible with their degree, learn self-reflection, identify priorities, and make decisions with confidence. Seeing a path beyond college that the degree helps them achieve lowers anxiety, increases student motivation, improves retention, and strengthens graduation rates.

How Advisor AI Makes This Possible

Advisor AI provides teams with an advanced method to help engage and reach more students to create personalized, intentional pathways before they enroll. As students discover their best fit university courses, services offered, career support, and resources offered, they continuously navigate options through a GPS like system - from enrollment through graduation.

It helps prospective and first-year students:

• Explore majors and career pathways with adaptive assessments
• Understand compensation trends and aligned skills - specific to each program
• Build individualized pathways - with actionable tasks for each year and term 
• Connect with 24/7 support via an AI assistant, tailored to institutional data
  
  

This isn’t just about improving the student experience. It’s about transforming outcomes at scale.

Early career integration doesn’t just support enrollment—it helps career services shift from transactional to transformational. 

Institutions using AdvisorAI have reported:

• 8 percentage point increase in student confidence in the ROI for their degree
• 30% boost in student engagement with career services
• Shorter, more focused advising appointments
• Increased utilization of digital tools like interview prep, micro-internships, project-based experiences, and internship and job postings
• Fewer major switches and stronger alignment between student career goals and academic pathways

For enrollment leaders, it’s a necessary way to demonstrate value.

For career services, it’s a chance to rewrite the engagement model—embedding career exploration from day one, without increasing staff load. It allows centers to scale their reach and impact—extending high-quality, personalized support even during peak periods or with limited staffing. It also positions career services as a strategic partner in enrollment and retention, not just an optional resource later in the student journey.

The enrollment journey no longer begins with a campus tour and ends with a decision letter. It begins with a promise: This degree will take you somewhere.

Transform student experience from day one with Advisor AI.