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Best questions for high school senior student survey about gap year interest

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Adam Sabla

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Aug 29, 2025

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Here are some of the best questions for a high school senior student survey about gap year interest, plus tips on how to create them. With Specific, you can build an engaging survey in seconds that goes beyond basic forms and delivers deep insights.

Best open-ended questions for a high school senior student survey about gap year interest

Open-ended questions are powerful when you want to dig below the surface and understand each student’s motivations, concerns, and dreams. By giving students space to express their thoughts in their own words, you’ll uncover what truly drives their interest in taking a gap year and spot trends that might surprise you.

Even though only about 2-3% of U.S. high school graduates plan to take a gap year, those who do report tremendous personal growth and higher college readiness. That’s why thoughtful, open questions matter so much if you want to explore the “why” behind their decisions and surface actionable insight for your school or organization. [1]

  1. What first got you interested in the idea of taking a gap year after graduation?

  2. If you were to take a gap year, what would you hope to achieve or experience?

  3. What are your biggest hopes or goals for a gap year?

  4. What concerns or worries do you have about taking a gap year?

  5. How do you think a gap year could affect your plans for college or career?

  6. Is there anything holding you back from considering a gap year more seriously?

  7. Are there any skills or experiences you think you’d gain during a gap year that could help you in the future?

  8. How do your family and friends feel about you potentially taking a gap year?

  9. Have you learned anything from other students who have taken gap years? What stood out to you?

  10. If you could design your dream gap year, what would it look like?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for high school senior student survey about gap year interest

Single-select multiple-choice questions are best when you want to quickly quantify opinions or behaviors across large groups, benchmark students’ preferences, or make it easy for them to respond. These questions help you spot patterns, segment by interest level, and start meaningful conversations—sometimes it’s easier to pick from a few key answers before sharing more in-depth thoughts.

Question: How interested are you in taking a gap year after high school?

  • Very interested

  • Somewhat interested

  • Not interested

Question: What’s your primary reason for considering a gap year?

  • Travel and exploration

  • Volunteering or service work

  • Work experience or internships

  • Personal growth or reflection

  • Other

Question: What is your family’s attitude toward you taking a gap year?

  • Very supportive

  • Neutral or unsure

  • Not supportive

When to follow up with “why?” Asking “why?” after a student selects an option lets you dive into the motivation or barriers behind their choice. You might ask, “Why are you somewhat interested rather than very interested?” This opens up a candid conversation and helps you make sense of the numbers.

When and why to add the “Other” choice? If you want to avoid missing unique motivations or situations, always add “Other.” The follow-up to “Other” captures unexpected insights and new angles you hadn’t thought of—which can lead to valuable topics for future exploration.

NPS-style survey question for high school seniors considering gap years

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a proven way to measure how strongly someone supports or endorses an idea—in this case, taking a gap year. You simply ask: “How likely are you to recommend taking a gap year to a friend or classmate?” on a scale from 0 to 10. This single question is powerful: for example, 81% of those who took a gap year would recommend it to their peers, so it’s highly relevant here. [2]

NPS uncovers the strength of advocacy among students and provides a quantifiable metric to track and compare over time. You can set up an NPS question directly with Specific’s automatic NPS survey builder—making it seamless to implement and analyze these results.

The power of follow-up questions

If you rely only on fixed questions and don’t dive deeper, you’ll miss critical context behind students’ answers. That’s why we love automated follow-up questions: Specific’s AI uses real-time understanding of each response to ask smart, natural-sounding follow-ups, just like an expert interviewer. Whether you want to clarify vague answers, explore emotional drivers, or pick up on emerging concerns, this feature turns every survey into a real conversation.

  • High school senior student: “I’m interested in a gap year because I want to see the world.”

  • AI follow-up: “That’s awesome! Is there a specific part of the world you’re especially interested in exploring, or something you’re hoping to learn on your travels?”

How many followups to ask? In our experience, 2–3 follow-ups per free-text answer are plenty. With Specific, you can set the maximum so the AI never feels pushy, and enable the option to skip ahead after you’ve collected what you need.

This makes it a conversational survey: Follow-ups create a back-and-forth that flows naturally—respondents feel heard and valued, not interrogated.

AI analysis, text summary, and data structuring: Even with all this rich, unstructured text, it’s easy to analyze survey responses using AI. The platform distills key points, summarizes trends, and lets you chat with the results to uncover findings on the fly.

This new approach is intuitive—see for yourself by generating a survey and experiencing real-time AI follow-ups.

How to prompt ChatGPT or GPT-4 to generate great questions

You can use AI to help generate impactful questions fast, but you’ll get way better results by providing context. Here’s an efficient process to try.

Start with this prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for high school senior student survey about gap year interest.

But you’ll get higher quality questions if you add details about your audience, your goals, and any special considerations. For example:

I am a counselor at a U.S. high school, helping seniors decide about gap years. Our students come from diverse backgrounds, and we want to understand what motivates them to consider gap years and what barriers they face. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that will help us learn about their hopes, worries, and decision criteria.

Next, have AI sort your questions into themes for easier review:

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

Finally, focus on the areas you want to explore. If “family attitudes” and “career goals” jump out, prompt:

Generate 10 questions for family attitudes and career goals related to taking a gap year.

What is a conversational survey?

A conversational survey is different from old-school forms. Instead of just collecting one-word answers, it interacts like a real conversation, asking context-aware follow-ups and adjusting tone on the fly. With Specific’s AI survey generator, you can build a fully interactive, chat-based experience—no more survey fatigue or dropped responses.

Manual Survey Creation

AI-Generated Conversational Survey

Hours of manual drafting, editing, and logic building

Created in minutes by chatting with AI (and editable in plain language!)

Rigid, static format

Dynamic: adapts to each answer and probes deeper automatically

Hard to analyze open responses

AI summarizes, categorizes, and lets you chat about results instantly

Why use AI for high school senior student surveys? It’s simple: respondents are far more likely to stay engaged with a conversational approach, and you’ll collect richer, more actionable insights. You also don’t need to become a survey expert or spend time editing question logic—just use the guided AI survey builder to get started and keep refining with AI assistance whenever you want.

When it comes to AI survey examples, conversational survey creation, and gap year interest interviewing, Specific sets the bar for user experience—everything feels like a smooth chat, on mobile or desktop, making the whole process a breeze for students and survey creators alike.

See this gap year interest survey example now

Try a gap year interest conversational survey and experience how easy it is to engage high school seniors, capture honest feedback, and automatically unlock deeper insight every time you run it.

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Sources

  1. Gap Year Solutions. Still Only 2-3% of U.S. Students Take Gap Year

  2. Globe Newswire. Triple the Number of High School Students See Gap Year as Ticket to Success

  3. Gitnux. Gap Year Statistics

Adam Sabla - Image Avatar

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.

Adam Sabla

Adam Sabla is an entrepreneur with experience building startups that serve over 1M customers, including Disney, Netflix, and BBC, with a strong passion for automation.