Northwestern students do a lot — apply for jobs, cook, do their homework (most of the time) and more. Increasingly, they’re doing it all with the help of artificial intelligence.
Nearly 70% of Northwestern students use generative AI at least weekly, according to The Daily’s Spring 2025 Campus Poll. You can find the other results here. More than a quarter (27.4%) use it every day.
These numbers show an increase in AI usage since The Daily’s fall poll, in which 9.8% of respondents cited daily AI use. The number of students who never use AI has dropped from 25.1% to below just 9.3%.
Students studying math-related subjects — including computer science and statistics — are the most likely to use AI daily (38%), followed by those in engineering (33%) and the social sciences (30%). Across schools, McCormick students use AI most frequently.
Though AI use is becoming increasingly common, students have mixed feelings about it.
More than 40% agreed with the statement that AI makes them better students. Thirty-five percent said they somewhat or strongly disagree.
These numbers were relatively consistent across genders and class years, but there were differences between schools.
McCormick students were 10% more likely than any other undergraduate school to agree that AI made them a better student, and McCormick was the only school with a majority positive response.
The Daily also asked students whether they thought AI helped their career prospects and was generally good for society.
More than half of respondents said they were at least somewhat pessimistic about AI’s impact on their careers, and only 22% responded positively — a split which remained relatively consistent across demographics.
Students are split approximately evenly on whether they think the development of AI is good for society, with 42.4% agreeing and 39.2% disagreeing. McCormick students (55.6%) and male respondents (51.4%) are more likely to agree than the whole student body.
ChatGPT remains the most popular generative AI tool, as 92.5% of respondents said they have used it at least once before. At least 10% of respondents have also used Microsoft Copilot, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity.
Students cited a variety of reasons for their AI use. The most popular included summarizing a class reading (50%); solving a problem for class (48%); editing a written assignment (48%); and finding sources or generating ideas for a written assignment (46%). Several respondents also cited non-academic uses, such as life advice and recipe generation.
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