How Ivy & Ocelot Improves Enrollment at 2,750+ Institutions in 2026

AI student enrollment support

Enrollment teams at colleges and universities face pressure most of the year — but the window between admission and the first day of class is where students are most likely to slip away. Unanswered questions about financial aid, housing deadlines, or next-step requirements don’t just create frustration. They create dropouts before the semester even begins.

That’s the specific problem Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty was built to solve. By delivering AI-powered, 24/7 student support across chat, SMS, email, and voice, the platform helps enrollment teams stay in front of every admitted student — without adding headcount. More than 2,750 institutions are using it today, and the results at Purdue University Northwest and Penn State make the case concretely.

Purdue University Northwest: 9% more accepted students, 87% fewer routine calls

Purdue University Northwest (PNW) serves approximately 6,000 students across two Indiana campuses, with a student body that includes a high share of first-generation and Hispanic/Latino students. When inquiry volume surged during peak enrollment cycles, staff spent most of their time on repetitive, tier-1 questions — leaving little bandwidth for the high-touch conversations that actually move students through the funnel.

PNW deployed Ivy & Ocelot (their AI assistant is named “Ask Leo”) and integrated it directly with Banner and Slate. The outcome was significant:

  • 100,000+ student questions answered automatically
  • 97% accuracy rate in delivering correct responses
  • 40% of inquiries came after hours — and 16% on weekends — demonstrating clear demand for always-on support
  • Housing applications filled one month early, driven by proactive reminders
  • 9% increase in accepted students attributed to two-way messaging and deep CRM integrations
  • 5% overall enrollment increase tied to timely, personalized outreach
“By implementing Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty, we were able to deliver more personalized student experiences while all touchpoints were tracked back into our ERP and CRM. It saved our team time so we could focus more on supporting student success.”

Heather Zamojski, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Success Technologies at Purdue University Northwest

The platform didn’t require PNW to grow its tech team. Gravyty handled setup and ongoing optimization, which meant staff could stay focused on students rather than system maintenance.

Penn State: 47,000 questions handled, 6 departments unified

With more than 88,000 students across 24 campuses, Penn State faces a different kind of scale problem. Its administrative offices — Bursar, Registrar, Admissions, Financial Aid, IT, and Housing — each fielded thousands of student questions daily. Staff backlogs grew. Response times lengthened. The university needed a single solution that could serve every department without requiring a different tool for each.

Penn State implemented “LionChat,” built on Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty. Rather than a campus-wide rollout all at once, each department configured the assistant to meet its own needs — with admissions using applicant-type hot buttons, financial aid maintaining a dedicated content library, and IT handling routine support tickets automatically.

After launch, the results across all six departments in one year:

  • 47,000 student questions answered autonomously
  • 93% accuracy rate across key service areas
  • Staff freed from repetitive inquiries to focus on complex, personalized support
“LionChat has become a key part of how we serve our students. It’s not just a virtual assistant — it’s a tool that helps our teams work smarter and deliver the kind of responsive, modern support our students expect.”

Penn State

The phased, cross-departmental approach is what made this work. Each team dedicates just 3–5 hours per week to reviewing interactions and updating content — a manageable lift that keeps the AI current without overwhelming staff.

What’s driving results across all 2,750+ institutions

The PNW and Penn State outcomes aren’t outliers. The same mechanics are producing similar results at community colleges, regional universities, and flagship research institutions alike. A few factors explain why:

Always-on support fills the gaps staff can’t

Nationally, the average yield rate for four-year public institutions sits around 27%, according to NACAC data. Every inquiry that goes unanswered outside business hours is a potential yield loss. Ivy & Ocelot’s AI responds in over 100 languages, any time of day, across chat, SMS, WhatsApp, email, and telephony.

Deep integrations make responses accurate

The platform connects with more than 30 campus systems including Ellucian, Salesforce, Canvas, and other CRMs and SIS platforms. That means students get answers based on their actual enrollment status, financial aid file, or course registration, not generic FAQs. This level of data connection is what makes a 9% lift in accepted students possible.

A purpose-built content library accelerates launch

Ivy & Ocelot ships with 65+ pre-built content libraries covering admissions, financial aid, academic advising, student success, and more. San Diego Mesa College, for example, reported the AI assistant correctly answering approximately 80% of student questions after moving from a fragmented, decentralized chatbot to the unified Ivy & Ocelot platform.

Proactive outreach reduces summer melt

The platform doesn’t just wait for students to ask questions — it nudges them. Automated SMS and email reminders push admitted students toward housing applications, FAFSA completion, and orientation registration before deadlines pass. That’s exactly how PNW filled housing one month early.

The enrollment gap that AI closes

Every enrollment team already knows the friction points: peak-cycle overload, after-hours silence, repetitive tier-1 questions that crowd out meaningful advising conversations. What Ivy & Ocelot from Gravyty does is address all three simultaneously — through automation that’s trained specifically on higher education, not adapted from generic enterprise chat tools.

Institutions looking to improve enrollment outcomes with peer-driven tools or strengthen alumni membership and network engagement can find that Gravyty’s platform spans the full student and constituent lifecycle — from admitted student to active alumni donor.

For enrollment leaders who want to see specific numbers from their own institutional profile, the clearest next step is a demo with the Ivy & Ocelot team. With 15.6 million interactions logged across 1,100+ higher ed institutions, the platform’s AI doesn’t just answer questions — it gets better with every conversation.

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