Best questions for high school senior student survey about standardized test preparation

Here are some of the best questions for a high school senior student survey about standardized test preparation, plus tips for making your own. You can build a conversational survey like this in seconds with Specific.

Best open-ended questions for high school senior student survey about standardized test preparation

Open-ended questions are a powerful tool when you’re looking to understand student experiences, expectations, and anxieties in their own words. These questions bring to light motivations, struggles, and emotional dimensions you’d miss with simple checkboxes. Use open-ended prompts when you want rich, practical feedback—especially in a space as personal as preparing for standardized tests, where over 45% of American high school students have reported feeling stressed about these exams. [1]

1. What is your biggest challenge when preparing for standardized tests like the SAT or ACT?

2. Can you describe your typical study routine for standardized tests?

3. What resources (books, online tools, tutors, etc.) have been most helpful for your test preparation, and why?

4. Tell us about any strategies that worked especially well for you during your preparation.

5. What do you wish you’d known about standardized testing before you started preparing?

6. How do you balance standardized test preparation with your other responsibilities and activities?

7. Describe a time when you felt particularly frustrated or stuck while preparing for a test. What did you do?

8. How has your perception of standardized tests changed as you’ve gone through high school?

9. What kind of support from teachers, family, or school has been most beneficial for your preparation?

10. If you could change one thing about the standardized testing process, what would it be?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for high school senior student survey about standardized test preparation

Multiple-choice questions are invaluable when you want to quantify responses or identify broad trends, and sometimes it’s easier for a student to select an option than to write a detailed answer. Use these when you need fast data or when you want to kick-start a deeper conversation later with customized follow-ups.

Question: Which standardized test are you primarily preparing for?

• SAT

• ACT

• BOTH

• Neither

Question: How many hours per week do you typically spend on test preparation?

• 0–2 hours

• 3–5 hours

• 6–10 hours

• More than 10 hours

• Other

Question: What is your preferred method of studying for standardized tests?

• Self-study (books, practice tests, online resources)

• Group study

• Working with a tutor

• Attending prep classes

When to follow up with "why?" Follow-up “why” questions are great if you want to understand the reasoning behind a choice. For example: If a student selects “Attending prep classes” as their preferred method, a follow-up could ask, “Why do you prefer prep classes over self-study or tutoring?” That extra layer can shed light on what’s working––and what’s not.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always include “Other” when your list of options might not cover every possible answer, or you want to give room for unexpected approaches. Following up with, “Can you describe your preferred method?” can unlock unique strategies that wouldn’t otherwise surface.

Should you use a net promoter score question with high school seniors?

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a classic tool to measure satisfaction and loyalty; it asks, “How likely are you to recommend X to a friend?” In standardized test prep, this can quickly gauge if students would recommend a particular study program, tool, or strategy. The results help schools or program designers rapidly spot champions and critics. If you want to experiment, try using an NPS survey builder tailored for high school senior students on test prep.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-ups are where AI and modern surveys really shine. Instead of getting stuck with vague or incomplete answers, automated AI follow-up questions from Specific dig deeper, nudge for specifics, and clarify intent—all in real time. This generates richer insights and transforms a static survey into an engaging conversation that mimics talking to a sharp interviewer. For instance, when 70% of seniors report falling short in mathematics benchmarks, [2] probing beyond the “what” into the “why” can reveal gaps in resources, motivation, or teaching style.

• High school senior: “I mainly use online videos to study.”

• AI follow-up: “What about online videos works best for you, and is there anything you find lacking?”

How many follow-ups to ask? Two or three targeted follow-up questions are usually enough to get all the context you need. With Specific, you can fine-tune this setting so the AI collects detailed info without pestering your respondent—once you have the answer, it can automatically move to the next question.

This makes it a conversational survey: The combination of these smart, adaptive follow-ups gives your survey the natural flow of a conversation, where each student feels truly listened to.

AI response analysis, summarize, and insights: Even though you're gathering lots of rich, unstructured feedback, AI survey response analysis tools make it easy to explore and summarize responses with just a few clicks. You’re free from manual data-crunching and instantly get to the heart of what matters.

These AI-powered follow-up questions are changing the game. Try generating a survey and see how deep your conversations can go.

How to prompt ChatGPT for better high school senior test prep survey questions

Your results depend on your prompt. If you want to use ChatGPT or similar AI to come up with strong questions for a high school senior survey about standardized test preparation, start with:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Senior Student survey about Standardized Test Preparation.

But you’ll get much better results if you give it more background: who you are, what you want, and why. For example:

You are helping an American high school guidance counselor gather feedback from seniors about their standardized test preparation experience. Make the questions conversational, and cover stress, time management, resource use, and improvements. Suggest 10 open-ended questions.

Once you have questions, organize them for more structure:

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

Then, if some themes are especially relevant—say, “resource challenges” or “emotional impact”—write:

Generate 10 questions for categories like resource challenges and emotional impact.

What is a conversational survey, and how does AI survey generation compare?

A conversational survey feels like a messaging app exchange, not a stale webform. Respondents answer in natural language. The AI agent picks up on their tone and details, asks relevant follow-up questions, and adapts the experience—going deep in key areas and skipping superfluous ones. You end up with a more engaged respondent and dramatically higher answer quality.

Let’s compare:

Why use AI for high school senior student surveys? Because over 90% of students will be taking at least one standardized test [3], and every data point is precious as you look to improve support, resources, or teaching methods. With AI (especially with conversational survey tools like Specific), you not only build and launch your survey in minutes but also harvest deep, nuanced insights that static surveys just miss. If you want a step-by-step workflow, check out our how-to guide on building surveys for high school seniors.

Specific’s best-in-class user experience for AI surveys makes the feedback process smooth and surprisingly engaging—both for you and your high school seniors.

See this standardized test preparation survey example now

Tap into richer insights today—see how fast and easy it is to create an AI-powered, conversational survey that helps you truly understand high school seniors’ test prep needs.