Good Questions to Ask College Students
Questions for talking with a college student, whether you are a relative catching up over a break or a prospective student trying to learn what a campus is really like. They move from easy ground to the things students rarely volunteer.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What's been the most surprising thing about college so far?
A wide opener that lets them pick their own topic, which tells you what is on their mind. First-years usually name the amount of unstructured time; juniors more often name how small the school started to feel.
- 2
What class are you actually enjoying this semester?
The word actually gives them permission to skip the one they are supposed to like. Enthusiasm about a required course usually traces back to the instructor, which is worth following up on.
- 3
Who's the best professor you've had, and what makes them good?
Students describe good teaching in concrete terms: returns work fast, answers email, will sit with you. Those specifics tell a prospective student more about a department than any ranking does.
- 4
What's your housing situation like this year?
Housing drives more of a student's daily mood than coursework does. A shrug here often covers a bad roommate match or a long commute they have decided not to complain about.
- 5
What do you do with a free Saturday?
This gets at whether the campus empties out on weekends and whether they have found anything to do that is not drinking or homework. An honest blank is useful information about the school and about them.
- 6
How did you end up finding your people here?
Almost nobody meets their eventual friends at orientation. Hearing that it came from a club, a lab section, or a job tells a younger student where to actually look.
- 7
What's the study spot everyone fights over?
A small, easy question that gets students talking like insiders. Campuses with too few good places to work reveal themselves fast in the answer.
- 8
How do you pick your classes each term?
Listen for whether an adviser is involved at all. Students who build schedules purely from friends' recommendations and rate-my-professor pages often discover a missing requirement in their final year.
- 9
What does your worst week of the semester look like?
Asking about a specific week gets a real answer where asking about stress in general gets a stock one. You learn whether the load is spread out or stacked into two brutal stretches.
- 10
What has living with roommates taught you?
Most students arrive having never negotiated shared space. The answer usually reveals whether they can raise a problem directly or whether they wait, resent, and move out.
- 11
Where does your money actually go?
Tuition is the number families discuss; food delivery, textbooks, and travel home are what quietly drain a student. Naming the leak is often the first time they have looked at it.
- 12
Have you worked or interned during school, and how did you find it?
The how matters more than the what. Answers that trace back to a professor, an alumnus, or a campus job show the student has learned to ask people for things, which is the skill that carries after graduation.
- 13
What do you wish someone had told you before your first year?
This produces the most quotable advice in the set, and it is hindsight rather than theory. Common answers involve office hours, dropping a class without shame, and how little anyone notices what you wear.
- 14
If you were starting over, would you pick the same major?
A yes with reasons is reassuring; a yes with no reasons often means they have not questioned an early decision. Hesitation here is worth sitting with rather than talking them out of.
- 15
When something goes badly, who do you go to?
This is the question that matters most and it takes four seconds. If the answer is nobody, or only a parent hundreds of miles away, they have no support on the ground yet.
- 16
What do you miss about home that you didn't expect to miss?
It is easier to admit missing a dog or a car than to admit being lonely, and the small answer usually opens the larger one. Relatives get a warmer conversation from this than from asking directly whether they are homesick.
- 17
What's your school worst at?
Students are blunt about advising, dining hours, financial aid offices, and mental health wait times. For anyone considering the school, this single question is worth an entire campus tour.
- 18
What's something you believed a year ago that you don't anymore?
College changes people faster than they narrate it. Asking about a specific reversal gets a real story instead of a general claim about growing as a person.
- 19
What are you hoping is different about you by graduation?
Forward-looking and low-pressure, since it asks about the person rather than the resume. Vague answers are fine here; the point is whether they have thought about it at all.
- 20
What do you think you'll do after this, and how sure are you?
The second half is what makes this bearable to answer, because it lets them say not very. Students asked only the first half tend to recite whatever they told a relative last time.
Talking With a College Student
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
How to Keep It From Feeling Like an Interview
How to Keep It From Feeling Like an Interview
Ask about this week, not about college
Broad questions get press releases. A student who cannot answer how is school going will happily tell you about the professor who cancelled class twice, the group project that fell apart, or the walk to the far parking lot.
Skip grades and graduation plans for the first ten minutes
Those two topics are what every adult opens with, so the student has a rehearsed answer and a small amount of dread ready. Get to them later, once the conversation is already going.
Let a complaint stay a complaint
When they say the dining hall closes at seven or their adviser never replies, the useful response is a follow-up question, not a solution. Fixing it too quickly teaches them not to mention the next thing.
If you are a prospective student, ask two students the same question
One student's opinion of a department is one data point shaped by one bad semester. Two or three answers to the same question is where the pattern shows up.
Short Sequences
Short Sequences
Catching up with a relative home for a break
- 1What's been the most surprising thing about college so far?
- 2What class are you actually enjoying this semester?
- 3What do you miss about home that you didn't expect to miss?
- 4When something goes badly, who do you go to?
Sizing up a school you might attend
- 1Who's the best professor you've had, and what makes them good?
- 2How did you end up finding your people here?
- 3What's your school worst at?
- 4If you were starting over, would you pick the same major?
What Goes Wrong
What Goes Wrong
Comparing their college to yours
Tuition, housing markets, and job hunting have all changed since almost anyone reading this was enrolled. Stories that begin with when I was in school usually end the conversation.
Treating a change of direction as a crisis
Switching majors, dropping a course, or taking a lighter term is routine and often smart. Reacting with alarm the first time guarantees you hear about the second time much later.
Asking about the future three times in one conversation
What are you going to do with that degree lands differently coming from the fourth relative that day. One version of the question is plenty.
Filling every pause
The best answers in this set come after a few seconds of silence, because the honest version takes longer to find than the polite one.