Students turned to SAVY twice as often during this year's back-to-school period. While last year SAVY held just short of 1,800 conversations, in the last two weeks of August, and the first two weeks of September, it held 3,599 conversations in the same period this year.

SAVY, York's student virtual assistant, converses with thousands of students yearly about academic success, health & wellness, student life, campus services and career development. On June 28, SAVY had its 100,000th conversation, answering a question the student had about degree requirements.

York and IBM launched SAVY's new software to improve SAVY's feature set, which was timed to coincide with the launch of the new eClass. After the launch, students had 8,112 conversations with SAVY in May and June, compared to 3,453 conversations during the same time frame last year.

Between December 8 and January 8, SAVY had 1,122 conversations with 414 students. SAVY answered 88% of all questions, including requests about academic tips, career advice, grades and York facts. This is an improvement over the same period last year, during which SAVY answered almost 80% correctly.

SAVY is a frequent path students take for back-to-school information. Two weeks before the fall term began, more than 700 students had over 1,000 conversations with SAVY. More than 150 of those conversations included questions about York's pandemic approach for the upcoming term.