OpenAI said on October 7, 2026, that it will add a College Planner feature to its ChatGPT for Teens service, initially targeting U.S. high school students in grades 10–12, according to a company blog post.
The tool is designed to help students manage college applications without replacing the personal guidance of counselors and families, the company said. It will consolidate application requirements, deadlines, tasks and financial-aid steps for multiple schools into a single, updatable plan, and allow students to ask ChatGPT questions about the process.
Since introducing ChatGPT for Teens—a default experience for accounts identified as under 18—OpenAI said users with access sent about 2.7 million more learning-related messages on average than those without. The most-used conversation prompts include asking questions to develop ideas and checking evidence. In one recent week, nearly 1.2 million teens used Learning Visualizations for math and science, and more than 180,000 used Study Mode.
College Planner, which will arrive “soon,” is aimed at students who may lack equal access to college application support, OpenAI said, noting that hundreds of thousands of U.S. teens already use ChatGPT each week to plan for college. The feature will also help students understand financial aid requirements, track aid deadlines and explore scholarships. OpenAI is supporting the nonprofit College Advising Corps to place advisers in under-resourced schools and create an AI fellowship for advisers.
Alongside College Planner, OpenAI announced new study tools for teens: flashcards that save to a library, interactive quizzes created directly from uploaded notes, and a continuous multi-photo capture feature for iOS that combines several pages of notes into a single PDF for upload. The company said it is working on bringing the capture tool to Android.
The announcement did not specify whether College Planner will be free, though OpenAI emphasized a goal of making help more accessible “regardless of financial circumstances.” No independent testing of the tools was provided. OpenAI also said it is supporting Boston Children’s Hospital’s Digital Wellness Lab and its Student Advisory Council over three years to gather teen feedback on safety defaults, parental controls and AI literacy.