Best questions for high school freshman student survey about college and career readiness

Here are some of the best questions for a high school freshman student survey about college and career readiness, plus tips on how to create effective ones. With Specific, you can quickly generate engaging surveys that capture deeper insights.

Best open-ended questions for college and career readiness surveys

Open-ended questions spark honest conversation and help students express thoughts you may not predict. They’re perfect for uncovering nuanced feelings, surfacing new issues, and learning what students struggle with most—a crucial step, given that 75% of high school graduates feel "moderately, slightly, or not at all prepared" for college and career decisions [3].

Here are ten open-ended questions for your high school freshman college and career readiness survey:

1. What does "being ready for college or a career" mean to you?

2. Can you share any worries you have about life after high school?

3. What type of support would help you feel more confident about your college or career path?

4. Who has influenced your choices about your future, and how?

5. Describe a dream job or college experience you hope to have after graduation.

6. Is there a skill you wish school would focus on more? Why?

7. What resources, programs, or information do you wish you had access to right now?

8. Can you talk about a challenge that makes you unsure about your college or career goals?

9. How do you like to learn about potential careers or college options?

10. What would make you feel more excited about planning your future?

Open-ended questions like these help students open up—and with smart follow-up probing (more on that soon), you can go even deeper.

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for this survey

Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you want to quantify common answers, break the ice, or help students who might be hesitant to fill out open fields. Often, starting with a manageable list encourages participation, and you can always dive deeper with follow-up prompts.

Question: How confident do you feel about your college or career plans right now?

• Very confident

• Somewhat confident

• Not confident

• Unsure

Question: Which area do you feel you need the most support with?

• Choosing a career path

• Learning about colleges

• Study skills or academics

• Financial planning

• Other

Question: Who do you most rely on for advice about your future?

• Family

• Teachers or counselors

• Friends

• Online resources

When to follow up with "why?" Whenever you sense there’s more beneath the surface, or a surprising choice is made, following up with “why?” prompts richer responses. For instance, if a student selects "Not confident" about future plans, asking "Can you tell me why you feel this way?" gently invites them to share details that you’d never get from a checklist alone.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Anytime your options might not fully cover all real-life answers, or you want to spot new trends, include "Other." The resulting follow-up lets students elaborate—sometimes bringing to light needs or perspectives no one on your team considered.

Should you use an NPS question for these students?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for customer feedback; it’s a powerful way to gauge overall sentiment in education contexts, too. For college and career readiness, asking students “On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend your school’s support for planning your future to others?” gives you a simple metric—plus deep qualitative follow-ups for anyone who feels unsupported.

This approach works especially well considering that only 60% of Texas students are deemed college- or career-ready despite a 90% graduation rate, showing how high-level metrics often mask underlying struggles [1]. If you want to try using NPS with follow-up logic, Specific’s NPS survey builder is tailored for this setting.

The power of follow-up questions

Automated follow-up questions transform ordinary surveys into active interviews—surfacing crucial context, uncovering why students answer the way they do, and ensuring that feedback is never shallow. We dive deeper into this in our guide to automatic AI follow-up questions.

Specific uses AI to ask intelligent, real-time follow-ups based on each student’s reply and the conversation’s context—just like an expert interviewer. These follow-ups can clarify unclear answers, nudge for specifics, and explore new territory on the fly. This is a huge advantage, especially if you want to avoid the hassle of chasing answers over email or missing out on what students really mean.

• Student: "I feel okay about my future, I guess."

• AI follow-up: "What would help you feel more certain or excited about your future plans?"

• Student: "Financial stuff confuses me."

• AI follow-up: "Are there specific financial topics or questions you’d like more information about?"

How many followups to ask? Usually, 2–3 follow-ups per topic are enough to get to root causes or actionable detail. In Specific, you can customize the number and let students skip follow-ups if they’ve already given you what you need.

This makes it a conversational survey: The real-time back-and-forth turns surveys into conversations, which students find more engaging than static forms. They’re more likely to share, explore, and reflect.

AI makes open text easy to analyze. Even if each response is long or unstructured, our AI survey response analysis feature means you can chat with the data, summarize themes, and never feel overwhelmed.

Trying automated follow-ups is the best way to experience just how conversational AI surveys change the game. Generate your own college and career readiness survey fast and see how it feels.

How to prompt ChatGPT or other AI to draft great survey questions

If you want GPT to help you brainstorm survey questions for high school freshmen on college and career readiness, start with a simple prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Freshman Student survey about College And Career Readiness.

Always give plenty of context in your prompt—AI is sharper with detail about you, your audience, and your goals. Try elaborating like:

We’re educators creating a survey for 9th grade students. The goal is to understand students' concerns about college and future jobs, spot knowledge gaps, and find ways we can better support them. They have different backgrounds and many have never discussed college at home. Suggest 10 open-ended questions.

To organize the output, ask GPT:

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

Review the categories (for example: “Career Awareness,” “Support Needs,” “Personal Goals”) and use a focused prompt for further depth:

Generate 10 questions for the "Support Needs" and "Personal Goals" categories.

Working in this iterative way gives you breadth and depth—and you can always refine with the AI survey editor.

What is a conversational survey?

Conversational surveys don’t feel like tests—they’re friendly interviews, shaped by the answers people give. With AI, your survey evolves as the conversation unfolds, probing for context, clarity, or personal stories. Traditional manual surveys, on the other hand, force everyone into the same box (and are much slower to create and analyze).

Why use AI for high school freshman student surveys? AI survey generators create deeper, more authentic feedback experiences. For topics like college and career readiness—where students might not open up on their own—AI can ask, prompt, and adapt, producing insight-rich responses without endless editing or manual probing. See the difference for yourself by using the AI survey generator or reading our how-to guide for survey creation.

The result: a conversational survey experience where both creators and students engage naturally. Specific leads the way in making these mobile-friendly surveys effortless and insightful.

See this college and career readiness survey example now

Start a survey that actually gets students talking—discover actionable insights in one step, collect richer stories, and make smarter decisions with the power of conversational AI surveys.