Best questions for college graduate student survey about professional development

Here are some of the best questions for a college graduate student survey about professional development, plus key tips on creating good ones. If you want to build an effective, conversational survey in seconds, you can use Specific’s AI survey generator to create your own tailored survey instantly.

Best open-ended questions for college graduate student surveys about professional development

If you want depth and honest feedback, open-ended questions are essential. They spark authentic responses and often uncover trends you won’t spot by only using fixed answers. Open text works best when you want to explore new ideas or understand motivations—perfect for a college graduate audience reflecting on their professional growth.

1. What do you feel are the biggest challenges you’re facing in your professional development journey right now?

2. Can you describe a recent experience that significantly influenced your career decisions or ambitions?

3. How do you define “professional success” after graduation?

4. In what ways has your college education prepared you (or not) for your current career?

5. What skills do you believe are most important for your desired career path, and how are you working to develop them?

6. Which professional development resources have helped you the most? Why?

7. What kinds of support—including mentorship, networking, or training—would make the biggest difference to you right now?

8. Have you faced any barriers (personal, institutional, or otherwise) to accessing professional development opportunities? Can you explain?

9. What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve received since graduating?

10. Looking ahead, what are your top priorities for ongoing professional development?

Open-ended questions like these create space for stories and authentic feedback, surfacing patterns you can analyze for better decision-making about alumni programs and services. According to a recent GoodFirms study, 86.5% of employees now embrace AI tools in the workplace [1], showing how rapidly recent grads and the workforce are evolving their definitions of “professional development.”

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for college graduate student surveys

Single-select multiple-choice questions make it easy to collect structured responses and quantify key trends at a glance. They’re perfect for spotting patterns across cohorts or benchmarking progress—especially helpful if you need clear data fast or want to start a conversation with a simple anchor question.

Question: Which professional skill do you want to develop most over the next year?

• Leadership/Management

• Technical proficiency

• Networking/Communication

• Adaptability/Problem-solving

• Other

Question: How do you prefer to engage in professional development activities?

• Online courses or certifications

• Workshops or training events

• Mentorship or coaching

• Self-guided learning (books, podcasts, etc.)

Question: What is your main motivation for seeking professional development opportunities?

• Career advancement

• Skill improvement

• Job security

• Personal growth

When to follow up with "why?" Always probe deeper when you want to learn the reasoning behind a student’s choice. For example, if someone selects “Leadership/Management” as their focus skill, a follow-up like “Why is leadership most important to you right now?” unlocks the story, motivations, or gaps they’re experiencing. This uncovers insights plain choices miss.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? "Other" lets students surface needs or ideas you hadn’t considered, which can shape future programming. When you follow up on "Other," always ask for specifics—this is how the unexpected insights surface that can transform services or content for your grads.

NPS-style question for college graduate student professional development surveys

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question helps you measure sentiment and loyalty at a glance. For college graduate student professional development, it’s the perfect, quick way to benchmark satisfaction or advocacy: “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our professional development resources to other recent graduates?” This single data point tracks changes over time and lets you segment feedback by promoters, passives, and detractors. You can use Specific to generate an NPS survey fast or layer it alongside open and multiple-choice questions.

NPS-style questions make analysis straightforward and support targeted follow-up questions that dig into why someone might (or might not) recommend your programs.

The power of follow-up questions

Too often, feedback gets lost in vague or incomplete answers. The power of asking smart, automated follow-up questions—like Specific does—is unlocking the “why” and surfacing context that turns short responses into gold. You can read more in our guide on automated follow-up questions for surveys.

Specific’s AI generates dynamic follow-up probes instantly, like an expert interviewer. If a college graduate writes “I want more hands-on experience,” the system can immediately clarify—“Can you share what kind of projects or settings would be most valuable for you?” This all runs in real time, saving hours you’d spend chasing students down for clarification and making the survey feel like a natural conversation, not a stiff form.

• College graduate student: “I mostly learn from podcasts.”

• AI follow-up: “Which podcasts have you found most helpful, and what topics do you wish more podcasts would cover?”

How many followups to ask? Aim for 2–3 smart follow-ups per open-ended response. That’s usually enough to get depth without overburdening your graduates—plus, with Specific, you can set response limits and let participants skip to the next question once you have the context you need. It’s flexible, human, and respectful of their time.

This makes it a conversational survey, where each student’s experience feels heard, not just boxed into rigid categories.

Easy AI survey analysis: Even with pages of open text answers, AI tools like Specific simplify response analysis so you can spot themes, pain points, or ideas in minutes—not weeks. Learn how simple it is to analyze professional development survey responses with AI and summarize results.

Smart follow-ups are a new concept—try generating your own survey and experience just how much richer, smarter feedback you collect when you keep the conversation going.

How to prompt ChatGPT or other GPTs to generate perfect questions

To have AI draft great survey questions for a college graduate student professional development survey, start with a direct prompt like:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for college graduate student survey about professional development.

The more context you give (“We want to learn how grads approach networking, online learning, and upskilling for tech careers. Please focus on actionable, real-world questions.”), the better and more relevant the questions:

We run a career center for STEM majors. Suggest 10 open-ended questions to understand how our recent graduates approach networking, online learning, and upskilling for roles in technology or research. Make sure they’re practical and actionable.

Next, to organize ideas:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Drill in further by selecting key categories:

Generate 10 questions for categories “online learning” and “networking.”

This workflow quickly produces deep, tailored questions—especially when combined with AI survey tools like Specific’s AI survey creator or the preset college grad professional development survey builder.

What is a conversational survey—and how is AI survey generation different?

Conversational surveys use dynamic, AI-powered chats rather than static forms. Instead of a one-way list of questions, you’re engaging graduates in an adaptive, real-time dialogue—collecting richer, more authentic insights in less time. AI-built surveys, like those made with Specific, offer human-like interactions, uncovering depth and nuance manual forms miss.

Using an AI survey generator, you can offload the mental work of survey design and enjoy flexible editing—just describe what you want to change, and the AI delivers it, which you can try out with the survey editor feature. Build a survey from scratch using the AI survey builder, or see how to create a professional development survey step by step.

Why use AI for college graduate student surveys? Your grads deserve a modern, engaging way to share their perspectives, while you get rich, usable insights at scale. With AI survey examples and hassle-free analysis, Specific’s conversational survey UX makes it seamless for both survey creators and respondents to engage and learn.

See this professional development survey example now

Get deeper feedback from your graduates and start smarter conversations with an AI-powered, conversational survey—see what a modern professional development survey looks like and generate unique insights in minutes with Specific.