Best questions for college graduate student survey about stipend and financial support

Here are some of the best questions for a college graduate student survey about stipend and financial support, along with actionable tips for shaping your own. If you want to quickly build a conversation-based survey from scratch, you can generate one in seconds with Specific’s AI survey builder.

Best open-ended questions for college graduate student surveys about stipend and financial support

Open-ended questions are powerful for understanding true experiences—especially when you want honest stories, nuanced challenges, or ideas for change. They let graduate students share details you may never have predicted. This is crucial, given that around 74% of graduate students receive some form of financial aid, and challenges can be as diverse as each student’s story. [1] Use open-ended questions when you want authentic, qualitative feedback to guide policies, budgeting, or support programs.

1. Can you describe your main sources of financial support during your graduate studies?

2. What does your monthly budget typically look like, and how well does your stipend or financial aid meet your expenses?

3. Have you faced unexpected financial challenges since starting graduate school? Please share examples.

4. How do you feel about the current stipend amounts or financial aid packages you receive?

5. In what ways does your stipend or financial support impact your academic performance or stress levels?

6. If you have taken out loans, what factors contributed to that decision?

7. What kind of additional support (financial or otherwise) do you wish was offered by the program or university?

8. How easy or difficult is it to find information about financial support, grants, or assistantships at your institution?

9. If you participate in an assistantship, how does the workload balance with your academic commitments?

10. What advice would you give to incoming graduate students about managing finances?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for college graduate student surveys about stipend and financial support

Single-select multiple-choice questions are useful when you need to quantify opinions or situations—helping you spot trends or compare groups. These are perfect to quickly start a conversation, as not everyone finds it easy to type a thoughtful answer right away. In context of graduate stipends, these questions help benchmark experiences. For example, about 12% of college graduate students participate in assistantships, which can shape the financial picture in different ways. [1]

Question: Which of the following best describes your primary source of financial support as a graduate student?

• Graduate assistantship stipend

• Scholarships or grants

• Personal savings

• Student loans

• Family support

• Other

Question: How adequate do you find your current stipend or financial support for covering your living expenses?

• More than adequate

• Mostly adequate

• Barely adequate

• Not adequate at all

Question: Did you take out any loans during graduate school?

• Yes, for living expenses

• Yes, for tuition and fees

• No, I did not take out any loans

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" It makes sense to follow up with a “why?” whenever a response hints at dissatisfaction, surprise, or a nuanced choice. For example, if a student selects “Barely adequate” to a question about stipend adequacy, a follow-up like “Can you share why the support is barely adequate and what expenses tend to stretch your budget?” opens the door for rich detail and actionable feedback.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Including “Other” lets you learn about less common funding sources or hybrid situations. When you follow up, you might discover students securing outside grants, crowdfunding, or unique part-time jobs—insights that structured choices alone can miss.

NPS-style question for financial support surveys

NPS (Net Promoter Score) boils down complex opinions into a simple number: “How likely are you to recommend our stipend and financial support programs to other prospective graduate students?” This is surprisingly effective even for topics like financial aid, where overall sentiment and advocacy tell you if your approach is working. For institutions tracking improvement over time, NPS offers a metric that is easy to benchmark, especially in light of competitive stipend hikes (like Cornell’s recent 8% increase to $43,326/year [2]). To try it out, use Specific’s NPS survey for graduate student stipend support and see how it fits your goals.

The power of follow-up questions

The real magic of conversational surveys lies in automated follow-up questions. We’ve spent time exploring how to deepen every answer and get to the heart of what matters. Specific’s AI probes for details, examples, or motivations, just like a thoughtful human interviewer—making the survey smarter, not longer.

• Graduate student: “My stipend covers tuition but not living expenses.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you describe which living expenses are hardest to manage, and what strategies you use to cover the gap?”

How many followups to ask? In practice, 2-3 smart follow-ups are enough to gain clarity and depth without dragging the conversation. Specific lets you define an exact threshold and skip to the next question when you’ve got what you need—effortless for both creator and respondent.

This makes it a conversational survey—the back-and-forth keeps graduate students engaged, leading to fuller, more thoughtful responses (and far fewer half-baked answers).

AI survey response analysis, unstructured text, chat with AI: Don’t fear a mountain of qualitative responses—Specific uses AI to synthesize complex data. You can chat with the AI about the survey data, spot common pain points, or instantly see a summary of key takeaways.

These new automated follow-up capabilities are genuinely transformative—give it a try and see how quickly you can uncover deep insights by generating your survey with a few clicks.

How to prompt ChatGPT or another GPT to generate great questions

Prompting AI is an art. Start simple: you might ask,

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for college graduate student survey about stipend and financial support.

But for better results, always provide extra context. For example, “We want to understand both satisfaction and gaps, and ensure the questions help us uncover ideas for future improvement…” Then ask:

Our department wants to understand both satisfaction and unmet needs for college graduate student stipends and financial support. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that reveal both challenges and positive experiences.

Next, organize the ideas—use:

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

Zero in on what matters to you. For example, if you care about “Life Balance” and “Unexpected Costs,” prompt:

Generate 10 questions for categories Life Balance and Unexpected Costs.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey uses AI to simulate a supportive, two-way chat—not a static form. You ask questions, but the survey responds, adapts, and nudges for clarity, like a live interviewer. Specific’s AI survey generator builds these automatically, with branching logic, smart follow-ups, and friendly tone.

Why use AI for college graduate student surveys? With so many students juggling unique challenges—stipend sufficiency, assistantships, loans, family help—a conversational survey adapts to each story. You get back higher quality data, richer stories, and instant analysis. Try an AI survey example or conversational survey for this audience and see how Specific makes feedback feel natural for students and researchers alike.

Our step-by-step guide on how to create a survey covers more tips for fine-tuning your survey flow and maximizing response quality.

See this stipend and financial support survey example now

Get actionable, insightful feedback from graduate students with an AI-powered conversational survey—specific, engaging, and built for the questions that matter most. See the difference for yourself: try an example and uncover clearer, deeper insights.