Reach
Detection without outreach
is just a longer list.
Reach texts the student directly, clears the barrier in the same thread, and escalates to a human the moment it should.
Hi Maria — your FAFSA has a fixable error on parent income. Want me to walk you through it?
The difference
A list doesn't reach anyone.
The dashboard model
Detect the risk. Rank the list. Put it on a dashboard. Wait for an advisor with 800 students to open it.
Hope they have time to call. The student doesn't answer. Leave a voicemail.
The student is gone.
Reach
Detect the barrier. Text the student. Resolve it in the same thread — the missing document, the registration hold, the tutoring slot.
Escalate to a human the moment the situation needs one.
The advisor's time goes to the conversations that require a person, not the ones that don't.
The SMS proof
This is what autonomous outreach looks like.
A real exchange — anonymized — between Boom and a student with a FAFSA error. No portal login. No phone tag. No staff time. The barrier gets identified, walked through, and resolved in the same thread.
"I don't even know what I did wrong."
— Maria, student, 9:04 AM
Boom AI
● automated
Hi Maria — your FAFSA has a fixable error on parent income. Want me to walk you through it?
I don't even know what I did wrong
No worries. You left a field blank. Can you text me the number from your parents' 1040?
Hold on... ok, $42,800
Got it. I've submitted the correction. Your aid hold lifts in 24 hours.
You're clear to register for Fall, Maria.
Guardrails
The boundaries are the product.
Reach acts within limits you define. It escalates when it should. It never goes silent on a student without a human who can see what happened.
Every conversation can be routed to a staff member in one message. The student never has to ask for a human — the system offers one.
Crisis-language detection runs on every message. If a student is in distress, the conversation is handed to a counselor immediately and Reach steps back.
Students can opt out of outreach at any time by replying STOP. The opt-out is honored instantly and permanently.
Staff can read every conversation, every message, every outcome. Nothing happens in the dark.
Student data is handled under FERPA-compliant agreements. No data leaves the institutional boundary without written authorization.
The boundary
What Reach resolves. What Reach escalates.
The line isn't arbitrary. It's based on whether the barrier has a clear fix or needs a human's judgment. Reach handles the first kind so your staff can handle the second.
Reach resolves
- Financial aid errors and missing documents
- Registration holds with a clear fix
- Academic check-ins with tutoring slot links
- Belonging outreach for disengaging students
- Appointment scheduling and reminders
Reach escalates
- Crisis language or signs of distress
- Life-event barriers requiring judgment
- Situations that don't resolve in the thread
- Anything where the student asks for a human
- Anything a navigator should hear firsthand
The handoff
Reach sits between detection and the people on your team.
Evidence
Early results from a pilot community college partner.
~41%
reduction in summer melt compared to the control group, measured in a quasi-experimental design at a pilot partner institution.
Preliminary and in progress
These are preliminary results from an ongoing quasi-experimental study. The sample is a single institution. The study has not been peer-reviewed. We're sharing it because institutional buyers deserve to see the evidence as it stands, not after it's polished. Full methodology is available on request.
Matthew West
Founder · school psychologist, 14 years
I spent fourteen years as a school psychologist on under-resourced campuses in Los Angeles. I watched students disappear. Not drop out — disappear. They'd stop logging in, stop responding, stop showing up. By the time anyone noticed, they were gone. The signs were always there, weeks earlier.
Boom is the detection system I wished existed. It watches the signals. It reaches students over SMS before the drop. And it gives the people on your team the time to do what only humans can do.
Bring us a semester of your data.
We'll show you the conversations you were missing.
No commitment. We'll show you what Reach would have sent, and to whom.