Meet Ana—Your Student Retention Solution
Try Ana out with our new Dare to Fly Pilot Program. Pilots begin in fall 2026!
Meet Ana—Your Student Retention Solution
Try Ana out with our new Dare to Fly Pilot Program. Pilots begin in fall 2026!
Ana doesn’t just listen. Ana takes action.
Most solutions stop at identifying student needs by flagging risks or surfacing insights without ensuring anything actually happens next. That leaves students aware of their challenges but still on their own to navigate support.
Ana is different. Ana is an AI-powered virtual assistant that proactively engages students through text, helping them identify needs, access resources, and take action in real time. Instead of waiting for students to seek help, Ana meets them where they are and starts the conversation.
What sets Ana apart is how it combines intelligent automation with human support. Ana can answer questions, recommend resources, and guide students through next steps instantly. When a situation requires more care, such as complex needs or signs of distress, Ana seamlessly escalates to trained human staff who can step in and provide personalized support.
The result is more than just responses. Students get timely, guided, and meaningful help exactly when they need it most.
- Important reminders & deadlines
- Information about campus resources
- Encouragement
- And much more!
Ana vs. Leading SMS Chatbot
| Ana | Leading SMS Chatbot |
|---|---|
| AI + Trained Human Support | AI Only |
| Real Conversations | Automated Responses |
| Student Escalation Identification, Routing, & Follow-Up | Student Escalation Identification & Routing Only |
| Customized Campaigns For Every School | Limited Customization |
| 13+ Proactive Campaigns Each Semester | 4-6 Campaigns Each Semester |
| Deep Data Insights & Benchmarking | ✓ |
Dare to Fly: Ana Pilot Program
Our new pilot program is a low cost and low risk way to bring Ana to your students. The 12-month guided pilot begins in the fall semester and runs through the spring. It’s designed to demonstrate measurable impact on engagement and persistence by providing students customized:
- Reminders about key deadlines
- Referrals to campus and community resources
- Encouragement
- Surveys
Students can also text Ana at any time to receive answers to commonly asked questions. Most importantly, our Ana Support Team will be on hand to support and escalate at-risk students. Administrators will save time and receive real-time data insights on student needs, campaign engagement, and escalations.
From First Message to Real Outcomes
Proactively Engages Students
Reach students where they are with timely, personalized outreach that drives real responses.
Identifies Barriers in Real Time
Understand what’s really holding students back from academic challenges, financial stress, belonging, or life circumstances.
Connects Students to Support
Guide students directly to the right campus, community, or Upswing resources when they need them most.
Escalates When It Matters
When situations require more care, our trained Ana support team steps in to provide personalized support.
Drives Measurable Retention Gains
Turn engagement into impact with improved persistence, stronger connections, and better student outcomes.
See Ana In Action
Before launching a pilot, it helps to see how Ana is already supporting students. Our 2024-25 Ana Insights Report highlights real student interactions, including common needs, engagement patterns, and how proactive outreach can surface risks early and connect students to support.
Explore how institutions are using Ana to better understand and respond to their population as well as our recommendations on how to improve your own student communication.
Proven to Increase Graduation Rates
Ana doesn’t just improve engagement. It drives measurable gains in student success. Upswing conducted a randomized controlled trial to measure Ana’s true impact on student outcomes. Students were randomly assigned to either receive Ana’s support or serve as a control group, ensuring a true comparison of outcomes. Students who engaged with Ana graduated at a rate of 6.6% vs. 5.8% for the control group. That’s a 13.7% relative increase!
For every 1,000 students, Ana helps produce around 8 additional graduates. The results show that proactive, human-backed engagement can meaningfully improve persistence and completion. When you combine proactive outreach, real-time insights, and human support, the result isn’t just better engagement, it’s more students crossing the finish line.
Give Advisors Their Time Back Without Losing Student Connection
Advisors are stretched thin. Ana helps institutions scale support without sacrificing quality.
- Automatically identifies and prioritizes at-risk students
- Handles repetitive student questions instantly
- Surfaces insights advisors can act on immediately
- Reduces manual outreach while increasing engagement
Focus your team where they’re needed most while Ana handles the rest.
Catch Challenges Before They Become Dropouts
Ana identifies risk through real conversations and real student behavior. This gives institutions the ability to intervene and act early. When a student expresses any distress, our team alerts you immediately. We then help you follow up with the student to ensure they are back on the path to graduation. Ana:
- Detects risk through student conversations
- Surveys students to better understand likelihood to persist
- Uncovers barriers in real time
- Reaches students who might otherwise go unnoticed
Actionable Insights—Not Just Sentiment Scores
Ana delivers a deeper understanding of your students by combining quantitative data with real, qualitative insight.
What you’ll see:
- Real-time student needs and concerns
- Categorized barriers (academic, financial, belonging, wellness, logistics)
- Engagement and response trends
- Resource usage and referral patterns
- Human-reviewed escalations for added context
Understand not just how students feel—but why they’re struggling and how to help.
Ana FAQs
Partners have access to a specialized and detailed breakdown of campaign engagement and response data that admins can view in real time. This data is available at the campaign level and at the student level. Additionally, admins can view individual conversation history between students and Ana, allowing full transparency.