Questions to Ask Alumni
Questions for a student, applicant or recent graduate talking to alumni of a school: housing, classes, money, finding friends, what they only understood after leaving, and how they got from there to the work they do now. Most work in a coffee chat or a first email. The later groups cover alumni networking when you are looking for work, questions to ask an alumni panel from the audience, a few for graduate school alumni, and some fun ones for a reunion table.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
At school
What did you study, and what are you doing now?
Why ask it
A low-effort opener that also sets your expectations. If the two have little to do with each other, that is worth knowing before you agonize over choosing a major.
What do you miss about being here?
Why ask it
People answer this warmly and specifically, usually naming a place or a routine rather than an achievement. Those details are the ones you can actually go and find.
Where did you spend most of your time on campus?
Why ask it
The honest answer is often a library floor, a rehearsal room, or a lab bench. It tells you where the school's real center of gravity was for someone like them.
What was your housing situation, and what would you change about it?
Why ask it
Housing decides who you meet in your first year. Graduates tend to have strong views about which dorms or neighborhoods were worth it, and nobody publishes that.
Which class was worth the workload, and which was not?
Why ask it
Forcing a comparison gets you past polite praise. The class they resent is as useful to know about as the one they loved, since requirements often make it unavoidable.
How did you find your people in the first few months?
Why ask it
Listen for the mechanism: a floor, a team, a job, a class group. Friendships at college are mostly a product of repeated proximity, and knowing where theirs came from is practical.
What did you get involved with outside class, and how did you find it?
Why ask it
The how matters more than the what. Many students never learn that the good groups recruit through word of mouth rather than the activities fair.
How did you handle money as a student?
Why ask it
Answers cover campus jobs, term-time hours, and which costs they underestimated. This is easier to ask a graduate than a financial aid office and often more candid.
Was there a professor who made a difference, and how did that relationship start?
Why ask it
The starting point is the part you can copy: a question after class, a bad draft brought to office hours, a summer research email. The relationship rarely begins with anything dramatic.
What was your hardest semester, and what made it hard?
Why ask it
It separates academic difficulty from everything else, illness, money, homesickness, a bad living situation, and shows what support they could actually get when it happened.
What did you do the summer after your second year?
Why ask it
That summer is usually the pivot point in a college career. Hearing how they filled it, including if they filled it badly, tells you what to plan for now.
Did you use the career center, and was it any use?
Why ask it
Quality varies by department and by year. A graduate will tell you plainly whether the office was a resume-formatting service or a genuine route to interviews.
What did you not know to ask for while you were a student?
Why ask it
Schools rarely advertise their discretionary help: emergency funds, travel grants, deadline extensions, equipment loans. Alumni often find out about them only afterwards.
Which of the things you worried about turned out not to matter?
Why ask it
Usually grades in one course, a rejected application, or a club they did not get into. It is a rare question that lowers a student's anxiety with specifics rather than reassurance.
What advice do students here get that you think is wrong?
Why ask it
This invites disagreement with the official line, which is where the interesting answers are: about internships, majors, or how early you are told to specialize.
If you were a student here again, what would you do differently with your time?
Why ask it
Time is the one resource you still control. Answers usually name a specific trade they would make, more seminars and fewer clubs, or the reverse, which you can act on this term.
What did you do while you were a student that turned out to matter?
Why ask it
Alumni almost never name their grades here. When they name a society, a part-time job or one specific project, that tells you where to spend your own time.
Career
How did you decide what to do after graduation?
Why ask it
Look for how much of the decision was deliberate. Many people follow whichever door opened first, and that is worth hearing without the retrospective tidiness.
What did your first year after leaving actually look like?
Why ask it
The gap between graduation and a settled job is the part alumni panels skip. A candid answer resets expectations about how quickly things are meant to come together.
What was your first job after graduating, and how did you get it?
Why ask it
The mechanism matters more than the employer: a careers fair, a professor's referral, a cold email, a temp role that turned permanent. If they cannot remember how it happened, it was probably a connection rather than an application.
How did you get from that first job to this one?
Why ask it
Career paths look linear on a profile page and rarely are. Listen for the sideways move or the year out, because that is the part nobody puts in writing.
What does an ordinary Tuesday look like for you?
Why ask it
Naming a specific day stops them describing their job in aspirational terms. If the answer is mostly meetings and email, you have learned something the recruiting material will not tell you.
What part of the job would put someone off if they knew about it in advance?
Why ask it
Phrasing it as a warning to others makes it easier to answer honestly than 'what do you dislike'. Common answers involve travel, on-call weeks, billing targets or clients.
What skills do people in your field assume you already have?
Why ask it
Unwritten baselines vary by industry, spreadsheets, reading a contract, writing a clean email, basic statistics. Their answer gives you a concrete list to work on before you apply.
How has the entry route into your field changed since you started?
Why ask it
Requirements shift: portfolios replacing degrees, certifications appearing, internships becoming mandatory. Someone five years ahead of you can tell you which door is currently open.
What would make you say yes to a candidate with no experience?
Why ask it
This reframes them as the person doing the hiring, which produces specifics: a piece of work to show, evidence of finishing things, a reason for wanting this field and not a neighbouring one.
How do people in your field find out about openings before they are advertised?
Why ask it
Every industry has its channel: a Slack group, a mailing list, a specific recruiter, one conference. This is the single most actionable question on the list.
What do you know now about pay and negotiation that you wish you had known then?
Why ask it
Money questions land better when framed as hindsight rather than a request for their salary. Many alumni will happily name a range for the role even when they will not name their own.
Networking
Has the alumni network done anything concrete for you?
Why ask it
Ask for an event rather than an impression. If nothing specific comes back, treat the school's claims about its network as marketing rather than evidence.
What made you answer my message when you could have ignored it?
Why ask it
Whatever they name, a shared club, a short ask, a line about their work, is the part of your outreach that did the job. Keep it in the next note you send to a graduate of the same school.
What do students who contact you through the alumni directory usually get wrong?
Why ask it
Most graduates have a quick answer: a job request in the first line, a wall of text, silence after the call. It is a polite way to learn how you are coming across without asking them to grade you.
Who else should I be talking to, and would you be willing to introduce me?
Why ask it
Asking for a name is a smaller favour than asking for a job and usually gets a yes. If they hesitate, do not push, it often means they are new enough to be protecting their own standing.
Would you be open to staying in touch, and what is the best way to reach you?
Why ask it
Asking directly avoids the awkward guess later. If the answer is warm, follow up once with what you did about their advice rather than with a general thank-you.
Alumni panel
Where do you disagree with each other about what students here should be doing?
Why ask it
A panel tends to drift into agreement, and the first speaker's answer becomes everyone's. Asking for the disagreement gives each panelist permission to say something different, and the split often follows the fields they work in.
Who on the panel uses their degree every day, and who almost never does?
Why ask it
It sorts the speakers quickly, so you know whose path is closest to the one you are considering. The panelist who rarely touches the subject often has the clearest view of what the degree was good for.
What did each of you believe on graduation day that you no longer believe?
Why ask it
Works best when the panelists left in different years. Side by side, the answers show which worries belonged to one year's job market and which come round for every class.
What question do you wish students would ask at events like this?
Why ask it
Save it for the moment the moderator runs out of raised hands. Panelists tend to answer with the thing they came hoping to say, which is usually blunter than what the prepared questions drew out.
Graduate school
How was your degree funded, and what happened when the funding ran out or fell short?
Why ask it
Stipends, teaching loads and fee waivers differ by program, department and country, and they can change from one cohort to the next. Treat their account as a list of things to ask the program about how it works there now, not as a forecast of your own offer.
How did you end up with your advisor, and would you choose the same way again?
Why ask it
On a research degree that one relationship can shape the years as much as the university's name does. A graduate can say what a current student may not feel free to: how often they met, and who really read the drafts.
Where did the rest of your cohort end up?
Why ask it
The graduate who agreed to talk to you is likely to be one for whom it went well. The spread across a whole cohort, academia, industry, something unrelated, is closer to what the program leads to.
Fun
What was the best cheap meal near campus, and is the place still there?
Why ask it
Nearly every graduate has an answer and a strong opinion to go with it. If the place has closed you get the story of what replaced it, and the conversation moves on to how the neighborhood has changed.
Which campus legend did you believe as a first-year that turned out to be nonsense?
Why ask it
Schools hand their new students a few stories about tunnels, ghosts or a statue you must never walk past. Finding out which ones are still going round is an easy thing to laugh about across a thirty-year gap in class years.
What song takes you straight back to your years here?
Why ask it
Music dates a person more gently than asking for their class year. The answer tends to arrive with a place attached: a hall party, a long drive home, a radio left on in the lab.
Finding and Talking to Alumni
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to Find Someone to Talk To
- 1Search LinkedIn by school and filter by employer or city rather than by job title.
- 2Ask the alumni office whether there is a mentoring scheme already running.
- 3Ask your department administrator, who often knows which graduates answer email.
- 4Go to alumni panels and speak to the panelists afterwards, not during the questions.
- 5Ask a professor for one introduction rather than a general list of contacts.
Writing the First Message
- Keep it to four sentences: who you are, the connection, what you want to ask about, and how long you need.
- Name one specific thing from their background so it is clear the note is not a template.
- Ask for fifteen or twenty minutes and offer two concrete time windows.
- Say plainly that you are looking for advice, not a job, if that is true.
- If there is no reply, send one short follow-up after two weeks and then let it go.
In the Conversation
Ask about decisions, not achievements
Their list of accomplishments is usually public. What you cannot look up is why they chose one option over another and what they gave up doing it.
Let silences sit
The most useful answers often arrive after a pause. Resist filling the gap with another question and you will get the second, more honest half.
Close the loop
Report back once you have acted on something they said. That single message is what turns a one-off chat into someone who will vouch for you later.
At an alumni panel
From the audience you usually get one question, so pick one that each panelist will answer differently. Keep anything about your own situation for the minutes afterwards, when panelists often stay to talk one to one.
At an alumni networking event
Go in with one thing you want to find out, not a pitch about yourself. Two proper conversations and a short message the next day will do more for you than a stack of names you never write to.