Description
Admissions conversations with Gen Z students can sometimes feel like pulling teeth, as most college admissions counselors would agree.
They’re bright, thoughtful, and creative — but often hesitant to open up when sitting across from someone they don’t know well, much less feeling comfortable with long, in-depth conversations over the phone or on Zoom or Facetime. Add in parents who want to support while not dominating the process, and you’ve got a lot of unique dynamics happening all at once.
And most of those dynamics make your job harder as an admissions professional on your campus who is tasked with matriculating as many prospects as possible into applications and incoming admitted students.
That’s where the right questions can make all the difference. Not just surface-level ones, but conversational prompts that help students (and even their parents) feel comfortable, seen, and genuinely listened to.
We’ve created this guide to give you some initial tools to get the job done with your next class or prospective students you have started to create relationships with at your college or university. These aren’t the only questions you can ask, of course, but they’ll help change things up when you just can’t come up with anything original or thought-provoking to come up with. Think of this as your Q& A idea playbook for conversations with a generation of students who aren’t always that easy to get to open up.
This quick guide we’ve created is broken up into two parts:
- 275 questions for prospective students across 11 themed sections (including one to help you understand their process and timeline as they go through the decision making process).
- 50 bonus questions for parents to draw them into the conversation as true partners in this process, and to help set you apart from admissions counselors who fail to connect with these important partners in their son’s or daughter’s college decision journey.
The goal isn’t to ask every question of every recruit. It’s to have a toolkit of conversation-starters you can draw from, so every student and parent feels like their story matters. When they walk away from talking with you, they should feel not just informed about your college, but connected to it, as well. And, asking these questions aren’t designed to just generate bland yes-or-no questions; rather, they should result in in-depth, meandering, insightful comments which give you a look into their mindset as they undertake this very challenging part of their young life.
