Here are some of the best questions for a high school senior student survey about AP and IB course workload, plus a few tips on building great surveys. We’ve worked with hundreds of these—Specific can help you create your own, in seconds, for richer feedback.
Best open-ended questions to ask students about AP and IB course workload
Open-ended questions let you capture students’ real experiences, frustrations, and wins in their own words. They shine when you want nuance, rich stories, or lessons you’d miss with only checkboxes. Here’s our top 10 for high school senior students facing AP and IB workloads:
How would you describe your overall academic workload balancing AP and/or IB courses?
Which aspects of your AP or IB courses are most challenging for you, and why?
Can you share an example of a week when your course load felt especially overwhelming?
How do you typically organize your time to keep up with deadlines for AP/IB assignments and projects?
What strategies have helped you manage stress related to academic demands this year?
Are there specific resources (teachers, peers, online tools) that make a big difference, or that you wish were available?
How do AP or IB requirements like Extended Essay, Theory of Knowledge, or CAS shape your daily schedule?
What advice would you give to juniors starting AP or IB courses next year?
Is there anything about your AP/IB experience you’d change if you could, and why?
Have you noticed any impact on your social life, sleep schedule, or well-being because of your course workload?
Open-ended questions like these help uncover the reality behind numbers. After all, studies have shown that about 50% of juniors and seniors now enroll in at least one AP or IB course, with many pursuing multiple advanced courses at once—so understanding the “how” behind the “what” is essential. [1][2]
Best single-select multiple-choice questions to quantify workload and experience
Single-select multiple-choice questions are your go-to when you need data you can chart—like, "How many AP classes?" or "How hard is this really?" They’re easy to answer (and scale), and you can always dig deeper afterward with follow-up questions.
Question: How many AP or IB courses are you currently enrolled in?
1
2
3
4 or more
Question: Which part of your AP or IB program feels most demanding?
Coursework and assignments
Exams and preparation
Projects (e.g., Extended Essay, CAS)
Other
Question: How would you rate your overall stress level related to AP/IB workloads?
Very low
Low
Moderate
High
Very high
When to follow up with “why?” It’s smart to ask “why?” after a student selects (for example) “Projects” as the most demanding. A simple “What makes projects challenging for you?” uncovers insights you’d miss otherwise. It keeps your results from being surface level and opens up the conversation for details that might drive student support policies in the future.
When and why to add the “Other” choice? Add “Other” when students may have an answer not covered by your set list—like if there’s a unique school program or workload factor. Follow-up questions then reveal unexpected trends or outlier experiences. Sometimes the best ideas come from answers you didn’t anticipate!
NPS-style question: Does it fit?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) measures loyalty—how likely is someone to recommend something? It absolutely fits for AP/IB workload surveys with high school seniors, since you’re trying to identify not just stress or struggle, but whether students would advise friends to pursue these paths. It’s a simple, insightful signal about experience and satisfaction. Want to try a question like this? Generate an NPS survey for high school seniors about AP and IB workload and see.
The power of follow-up questions
If you want real, actionable insights, follow-up questions are what make survey analysis more than just counting checkboxes. Automated followups—with something like Specific’s AI follow-up questions—probe deeper: they clarify, dig, and surface context in real time, just like a thoughtful interviewer. This is where the value comes, since a structured multiple-choice alone doesn’t always explain why students are overwhelmed, or which support systems help.
High school senior student: "I spend a lot of time on CAS activities each week."
AI follow-up: "What kind of CAS activities are the most time-consuming for you, and how does this affect your other coursework?"
If you don’t ask that clarifying follow-up, you might have no clue whether the time crunch comes from sports, volunteering, or managing multiple projects. And that’s how real student pain points get overlooked.
How many followups to ask? We’ve found that 2-3 smart follow-ups are usually enough for deeper understanding—any more, and students may get fatigued. Specific lets you set when to skip to the next topic if you’ve already got the answers you need, so things stay concise and comfortable.
This makes it a conversational survey: You’re not just firing questions—you’re having a real conversation, which feels more natural (and engaging) for high school seniors.
Easy AI analysis: Even with lots of open-ended responses, you can analyze results painlessly using AI survey response analysis. Don’t worry about unstructured answers; AI analysis features make it simple to summarize and extract trends fast.
These automated followups are a new way to gather feedback—try generating a survey with this approach and see how much your insight quality improves!
How to write prompts for ChatGPT to generate AP and IB workload survey questions
If you want ChatGPT (or other GPT AI) to write great survey questions, start with a clear prompt:
Ask ChatGPT:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for High School Senior Student survey about AP and IB Course Workload.
You'll get better results if you include more detail about your situation, your role (teacher, counselor, or student organization), and what you want to learn. For instance:
As a school counselor aiming to support high school seniors handling multiple AP and IB classes, suggest 10 open-ended questions to understand their challenges, workload management, and well-being.
To organize your questions, try:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Finally, to dive deeper into specific themes:
Generate 10 questions for categories "Time management" and "Well-being impacts".
The more context you give the AI, the more useful and targeted your questions will be!
What makes a survey conversational—and why AI changes the game
Conversational surveys feel like a real chat, not a dry form. You get to ask, listen, clarify, and dig for detail—just like a great interviewer would with a high school senior navigating AP or IB course pressure.
With AI survey creation—especially with an AI survey generator—it’s nearly instant to:
Draft strong, varied questions (both open and multiple-choice)
Set up dynamic follow-ups (so answers never go unexplored)
Summarize and analyze feedback conversationally
Manual survey tools are slow, limit the depth you can reach, and force you to analyze responses by hand. Here’s a quick comparison:
Manual Survey Creation | AI Survey Generation (e.g., Specific) |
|---|---|
Requires brainstorming and writing individual questions | AI drafts expert questions instantly, from your context or prompt |
Static survey—no real-time follow-ups | Dynamic, contextual follow-ups for every answer |
Manual, painstaking data review | AI summarizes and highlights themes in seconds |
Why use AI for high school senior student surveys? High school seniors taking AP/IB are busy—AI-generated conversational surveys are efficient, natural, and designed for mobile. They boost participation, quickly clarify confusion or pain points, and surface findings you’d otherwise miss.
If you want to try this flow, check out our step-by-step guide: how to create a high school senior student survey about AP and IB workload. Specific’s conversational AI survey platform takes care of logic, follow-ups, and analysis, making the process smooth for both survey creators and respondents. For even more inspiration, see live AI survey examples.
See this AP and IB course workload survey example now
Give your school new insight—see how easily you can start impactful conversations about AP and IB course workloads, and generate deeper, actionable feedback in just a few clicks with AI-driven surveys built specifically for your needs.