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College Student Retention Risk and Belonging Survey

Measures students' intent to re-enroll, sense of belonging, and satisfaction with academic, financial, and mental-health support, then uses an AI follow-up interview to surface the real story behind low re-enrollment intent or a student weighing whether to leave. Built for student affairs, advising, and retention teams who need to spot risk before it becomes attrition.

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Sample questions

A preview of what’s in the template. Every question is editable before you launch.

12 questions · ~7 min
Q01
Message

Thanks for taking a few minutes to share how your college experience is going. There are no right or wrong answers, and everything you share is kept confidential and used to help support students better. About 5-6 minutes.

Q02
Multiple ChoiceRequired

What is your current class standing?

  • First-year
  • Sophomore
  • Junior
  • Senior
  • Graduate/professional student
Q03
Opinion ScaleRequired

How likely are you to be enrolled at this institution one year from now?

Scale: 0 – 10
Min:Definitely will not returnMax:Definitely will return
Q04
Multiple ChoiceRequired

In the past 12 months, have you seriously considered withdrawing, transferring, or taking a leave of absence?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Not seriously, but I've thought about it
Q05
Slider MatrixRequired

Rate your experience with each of the following at this institution.

6 rows, one slider each
  • Academic advising
  • Financial aid clarity and support
  • Sense of belonging on campus
  • Faculty accessibility outside class
  • Career guidance and planning
  • +1 more
Slider 0–10Min:PoorMax:Excellent
Q06
Best–Worst Trade-off (MaxDiff)Required

Which of these factors would matter most in a decision to stay enrolled versus leave?

  • Cost of tuition and fees
  • Academic workload and difficulty
  • Sense of belonging and friendships
  • Relevance of coursework to career goals
  • Access to mental health support
  • Family or personal obligations
  • Campus safety and environment
Pick best & worst per setBest:Matters mostWorst:Matters least
Q07
Rating ScaleRequired

Overall, how satisfied are you with your college experience so far?

Range: 1 – 5
Min:Very dissatisfiedMax:Very satisfied
Q08
AI InterviewRequired

Explore the story behind the respondent's likelihood-to-return rating and their answer about considering withdrawal: identify the specific event or ongoing frustration driving it, whether the root cause is financial, academic, social, or personal, and what — if anything — would change their mind. If they rated likelihood to return high and haven't considered leaving, ask what has made the experience work well enough to keep them here and whether any part of it still feels fragile.

Q09
Multiple Choice

What is your current enrollment status?

  • Full-time
  • Part-time
  • Prefer not to say
Q10
Multiple Choice

Are you the first in your immediate family to attend college?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Not sure
  • Prefer not to say
Q11
Multiple Choice

Which age range best describes you?

  • 18-19
  • 20-21
  • 22-24
  • 25-34
  • 35 and older
  • Prefer not to say
Q12
Message

Thank you for your honesty — your responses, kept confidential, help our student success team identify support gaps before students consider leaving.

What’s included

  • AI follow-ups

    Adaptive probes on open-ended answers that pull out detail a static form would miss.

  • Attention checks

    Built-in safeguards against rushed answers and low-quality respondents.

  • AI-drafted copy

    Wording, ordering, and branching written by the AI — tuned to your research goal.

  • Auto report

    Themes, quotes, and a plain-English summary write themselves once responses come in.

How it compares

We reviewed the closest templates from other survey tools. Here’s what they do well — and where this template goes further.

Why this template

  • Goes beyond static ratings by using an AI follow-up interview to explore the story behind a student's likelihood-to-return score and their belonging/support experience
  • Covers the full risk picture in one flow: re-enrollment intent, past withdrawal/transfer consideration, a slider matrix rating academic, financial, and mental-health support, and a max-diff on what would actually keep a student enrolled
  • Captures context (class standing, enrollment status, first-gen status, age range) so retention teams can segment risk rather than just averaging satisfaction scores
  • Opens and closes with plain-language chat messages that set expectations and reassure students their responses are confidential, which supports honest disclosure on a sensitive topic

QuestionPro

18 College Student Survey Questions + Survey Template

This is a listicle-style template page built around 18 sample questions for college student surveys, framed generically rather than as a single fielding-ready retention risk instrument. It's a reasonable starting point for question ideas but reads more like guidance content than a packaged survey flow. There's no indication of any adaptive follow-up or scoring layer beyond standard question types.

What it does well

  • Broad question bank covering multiple aspects of student experience
  • Backed by an established survey platform with standard question-type support
  • Useful as a reference/checklist for building a custom survey

Where it falls short

  • Presented as a question list/guide rather than a single ready-to-field retention survey
  • No adaptive AI follow-up to probe why a student's intent-to-return is low — just static questions
  • No published methodology on how responses would be scored for risk

Jotform

Student Retention Survey Form Template

This is a ready-to-use form template focused on student retention, which makes it a direct comparison point. It's built as a static form (with Jotform's usual drag-and-drop customization) rather than an interview-style instrument, so it collects structured answers without exploring the reasoning behind them. Good for quick deployment, less suited to surfacing nuanced at-risk narratives.

What it does well

  • Ready-to-deploy form template, easy to customize via drag-and-drop builder
  • Simple structure appropriate for quick, low-friction distribution
  • Familiar Jotform ecosystem for form logic and basic reporting

Where it falls short

  • Static question-and-answer form with no adaptive AI follow-up to dig into a student's reasoning
  • No voice interview or screen-share guided task option for richer qualitative context
  • No automated per-response quality scoring; reporting is limited to standard form analytics

Ready to launch?

Open this template in the editor. Every part is yours to change before the first respondent sees it.

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