This page covers three kinds of education websites: K-12 private and charter schools, colleges and universities (admissions, continuing education, international offices), and independent course creators and bootcamps. The job is the same for all of them: answer the pre-enrollment questions that clog your inbox, and route anything about a specific student to a person.
What do prospective students and parents ask?
| Visitor question | What the bot does | Knowledge source |
|---|---|---|
| “When is the application deadline?” | Gives dates by term and decision round | Admissions page |
| “Do you require SAT/ACT scores?” | States the testing policy | Admissions requirements |
| “How much is tuition, and what’s included?” | Quotes published tuition and fees, links the net price calculator if you have one | Tuition and fees page |
| “Do you offer financial aid or payment plans?” | Explains options and FAFSA or school codes you publish; routes individual aid questions | Financial aid page, handoff |
| “Can I transfer my credits?” | Explains the policy, collects course list for an advisor | Transfer page, lead capture |
| “Is there a campus tour this month?” | Shows the tour booking link as a button | Business profile |
| “What visa do I need as an international student?” | Explains your documented I-20 process, routes specifics to the international office | International admissions page |
| “Is this course self-paced? How long do I have access?” (course creators) | Answers from the sales page | Course page |
| “Can I get a refund if it’s not for me?” | Quotes the refund window, creates a Refund ticket if they ask for one | Refund policy, tickets |
| “What were my child’s grades?” / “Did my application arrive?” | Does not answer. Hands off to the registrar or admissions | Custom instructions |
| “Does the bootcamp help with job placement?” | Gives published outcomes only, no promises | Outcomes page |
Inquiry capture and qualification
Admissions teams live on inquiry quality. In the custom instructions, tell the bot to ask, after it answers:
- Who’s asking: student, parent or counselor.
- Program or grade level and intended start term.
- Student type: first-year, transfer, international, adult learner.
- Contact: name and email. Phone only if your team calls.
Inquiries with a lead score of 50 or more and a contact show up in Leads. Export them as CSV for your admissions CRM or, on Pro, send each new one to Slate, HubSpot or another system through the lead.created webhook and Zapier, Make or your own endpoint. There is no native CRM connector.
Hand off to staff when the visitor asks about their own application status, a specific aid package, disability accommodations, or anything disciplinary. With human handoff, an admissions counselor can reply from Telegram, and the reply goes by email if the family already left.
For course creators, the same flow applies with simpler fields: which course, current skill level, and whether they are buying for a team. Put your checkout links in the business profile so the bot can show them as buttons.
What to put in the knowledge base
- Admissions pages: requirements, deadlines, how to apply, testing policy.
- Tuition, fees and aid: exact figures for the current year, with the year in the heading so the bot doesn’t quote last year’s numbers.
- Program and course catalog pages, imported from your sitemap. Click Refresh website when the catalog for a new year goes live.
- Academic calendar and orientation dates as a text source.
- Business profile: office hours for admissions, registrar and financial aid, phone numbers, tour booking link.
See Knowledge base for limits per plan. A large university catalog can exceed Starter’s 100 pages; Pro covers 500 and Business 2,000.
FERPA, minors and what not to automate
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protects students’ education records at schools that receive U.S. Department of Education funds. Schools generally need written consent to disclose personally identifiable information from those records, with limited exceptions such as properly designated directory information.
Keep the chatbot on the public side of that line:
- Do not upload grades, transcripts, IEPs or 504 plans, disciplinary records, financial aid files or class rosters to the knowledge base.
- Do not let the bot answer questions about a specific student. A parent asking “is my son passing chemistry?” gets a handoff to the right office.
- Visitors can attach files on Starter and up. Tell the bot in the custom instructions to ask people not to send transcripts or ID documents in chat, and to email the admissions office instead.
- Children under 13. If your site or a section of it is directed at young children, the FTC’s COPPA rule applies to collecting their personal information. Aim the bot at parents, and don’t place it on pages built for young kids.
- No individualized admission predictions. “Will I get in with a 3.4?” gets the published middle-50% ranges and a nudge to talk to a counselor, never a yes or no.
Feedbot has no SOC 2 report or education-specific certification, so if your district’s procurement requires one, check that first.
Sample conversation
Visitor: Hi, my daughter is a junior and interested in the nursing program. Is it hard to get in?
Bot: Nursing is one of the more selective programs: admitted first-year students last year had a median high school GPA of 3.7, and the program requires chemistry and biology with a grade of B or better. Applicants apply directly to nursing on the main application. Would she be applying as a first-year for fall 2027?
Visitor: Yes. Can we visit the nursing labs?
Bot: Yes, the Saturday campus tours include the simulation lab. You can book a date here: [Book a tour]. If you’d like, I can have a nursing admissions counselor email you before the visit. What’s the best email?
Metrics to watch
| Metric | Where | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiries with contact | Leads page | Direct pipeline from the website |
| Questions by topic | Conversation categories and tags | Which pages to improve (often aid and transfer) |
| Unanswered questions | Content gaps | Missing facts on your site |
| Handoffs to staff | humanNeeded in stats |
Staff load; should be specific, not routine |
| Non-English conversations | Inbox | Whether to translate key pages |
Research on Georgia State University’s admissions assistant, a text-message bot run as a randomized trial, found admitted students with access to it were 3.3 percentage points more likely to enroll (Page and Gehlbach, AERA Open, 2017). That bot sent proactive reminders over SMS, which Feedbot does not, but it shows how much timely answers matter between admission and enrollment.
Set it up in 3 steps
- Create a bot from your admissions site and add tuition, aid and calendar pages in Bot → Knowledge.
- Install the snippet in your CMS template (install guide), or share the hosted chat link in admission emails and on QR codes at college fairs.
- Connect Telegram, Slack or email in Settings → Notifications, turn on handoff, and add your FERPA and student-records rules to the custom instructions.
See pricing, or the broader guide to a knowledge base chatbot.