Questions to Ask a New School as a Student
Twenty questions a student can ask while visiting a new school, aimed at current students as much as staff. Covers workload, unwritten rules, getting help in a class, clubs, and how new arrivals get treated.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is the first thing I should know that nobody puts in the brochure?
Why ask it
Any question that invites the brochure answer will get one. This one asks for the gap between the brochure and the building, and even a pause before answering tells you there is a gap.
Where do people actually sit at lunch, and is it hard to join a table?
Why ask it
Lunch is the least supervised part of the day and therefore the most honest picture of how the social world is organized. If the person has to think hard about whether a newcomer could sit down, that hesitation is the answer.
How much homework do you usually have on a weeknight?
Why ask it
Ask two or three students separately and keep the range rather than the average. Answers running from one hour to four mean the load depends heavily on which track you get placed in, which is worth knowing before you pick classes.
Which teachers do people say are worth having, and why?
Why ask it
Students name teachers freely, and the reasons are the useful part. Praise for someone who explains a thing twice is a different signal from praise for someone who never collects the homework.
If I fall behind in a class, is there help I can just walk into?
Why ask it
The key word is walk into. Drop-in tutoring at a fixed time in a known room is a real answer. A named support program with no schedule attached usually means a referral, a wait, and a parent email first.
How do people find their group here, through clubs, sports, or something else?
Why ask it
Schools distribute belonging differently and some route nearly all of it through sports teams. If clubs are the answer, ask how many actually meet, because club lists are reliably longer than club calendars.
What is the unwritten dress code, as opposed to the written one?
Why ask it
Written codes get published; unwritten ones get enforced. Getting this wrong in your first week is a small thing that feels enormous, and current students are the only people who can tell you what it is.
How strictly does the school enforce phones, lateness and attendance?
Why ask it
Enforcement rather than policy is what you will live with. The distance between the handbook and the hallway is worth measuring before you find it by accident.
If I wanted to start a club or team that does not exist yet, what would that take?
Why ask it
This measures how much room students have to make something happen. A concrete route, meaning a form and a staff sponsor, means yes. A warm statement that the school loves student initiative usually means no.
What is the workload like in the weeks around exams?
Why ask it
Exam periods concentrate everything, and a school that stacks major assessments into one fortnight is a different experience from one that spreads them. Students know that calendar even when nobody publishes it.
How do teachers here react when you ask for an extension or say you are struggling?
Why ask it
The question that will matter most on your worst week of the year. Push for a specific instance rather than a general assurance, because the general assurance is identical at every school you will visit.
Which classes are hard to get into, and how are the places decided?
Why ask it
Selective classes create an inner track. What matters is whether criteria are published or left to discretion, since discretionary places tend to reach the students whose families already know how to ask for them.
What do people here do after they graduate, and who helps you work that out?
Why ask it
Two parts, and the second is the real one. Every school can list destinations. Fewer can name the person who sits down with you and say how many students that person is responsible for.
What is the counselor or advisor actually like to talk to?
Why ask it
Counselors range from an adult who knows your name to an office that processes four hundred schedules. Students will tell you which, and the answer decides whether you have anyone to go to when something goes wrong.
Is there something students complain about that the school has not fixed?
Why ask it
Standing complaints show what the school is willing to leave broken. The specific example matters more than the topic, and hearing the same one from three separate people is the strongest signal you will get on a visit.
How do people here treat someone who arrives partway through the year?
Why ask it
Not a small question if you are transferring in. Listen for whether they can describe an actual new student and what happened to them, or whether the answer stays hypothetical and kind.
What happens when there is a fight, or when someone is being harassed?
Why ask it
Ask students rather than staff, because the two accounts often differ. Where they differ is exactly the thing worth knowing, and it usually concerns what gets reported versus what gets handled quietly.
What is something you would change about this place if you could?
Why ask it
Invites honesty once the conversation has warmed up. Answers that name something structural, a rule, the schedule, a shortage of something, are far more useful than complaints about the food.
What kind of student is happy here, and what kind of student is not?
Why ask it
Asked near the end, this is the closest thing to a direct read on fit. Someone who can describe both types has been paying attention and is worth trusting on everything else they told you.
Looking back, is there anything you wish you had asked before you came here?
Why ask it
Turns the person into an advisor rather than a source, and it tends to produce the question you would never have thought of. Whatever comes back, write it down and ask it at the next school.
Getting Straight Answers on a School Visit
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Who to ask what
Students and staff know different things
Ask students about workload, social life, unwritten rules and how strictly things are enforced. Ask teachers about the specific classes you would take and how help is arranged. Save the office for genuinely administrative questions like transport and schedules.
Get one conversation away from your guide
A student guide was chosen and briefed, and is usually someone thriving there. If you can, put the same question to someone in a hallway or a classroom and see whether the two answers match.
Ask the same question twice
Two students asked separately give you a range instead of a number. How wide that range is often tells you more than either answer on its own, especially about homework and how teachers respond to difficulty.
What to notice while you are there
- Whether students talk to each other between classes or move through the halls in silence.
- Whether the noticeboards are current, including club sign-ups and event dates that have not already passed.
- How teachers speak to students who are not paying attention.
- Whether the spaces students use unsupervised, the cafeteria, library and bathrooms, look looked after.
- Whether anyone offered to answer your questions before you asked.
Common pitfalls
Asking questions with an obvious right answer
Asking whether the teachers care gets a yes at every school on earth. Ask something that a defender of the school would have to answer with specifics, and you learn whether the specifics exist.
Weighing the buildings over the schedule
New facilities are easy to notice and rarely change your day. The class schedule, the length of lunch and how many electives you can actually fit will shape every week you spend there.
Treating one enthusiastic student as the school
The person showing you around is real, and is also a filtered sample of one. Their experience is evidence about what is possible there, not about what is typical.
Not writing anything down
By the third school the visits blur into one. Note two or three specifics on the same day, while you can still remember which school said what.
How to run the visit
- 1Before you go, read the course catalog and pick two classes you would genuinely want. Most of your good questions come out of that.
- 2Ask staff about those two classes specifically, and ask students about everything else.
- 3Find one stretch away from the tour, lunch if possible, and watch rather than ask.
- 4Put the fit question to at least two students near the end of the day.
- 5Write down what you learned before you leave the parking lot, not that evening.