What Families Ask About College Admissions, by Grade (Internal Study)

Nov 8

The Ivy Institute | College Admissions Research | November 2026

Executive summary

What do families ask when they have an admissions adviser’s attention? In a review of thirteen families, the subject that reached the most families was when and in what order to act. Eight families asked about timing, sequencing or application rounds. The subject that generated the most questions was the choice of a major or undergraduate program. Five families raised that topic, but it accounted for 32 of the 127 eligible question turns. A service designed around the number of questions alone would give those subjects a different priority from one designed around how many families face a decision.

Writing was a third distinct concern. Six families asked about essays or written answers, accounting for seventeen turns. Five families asked about courses, grades or credit, accounting for nine. These figures refer to questions that a student or a family member voiced. An adviser could introduce a subject and invite a family to ask about it. Advice delivered without an identifiable question from the family did not enter the count. The frequency of a topic is therefore evidence about exchanges that occurred, not a measure of the private worries that families brought to the meeting.

We reviewed one autumn advising encounter per selected family. Eight of the thirteen cases had sufficient evidence to assign the student’s high school grade at the time. Five could contribute to the pooled findings only. The strongest publishable grade-specific result concerned seniors: at least five senior families asked about some aspect of preparing or submitting an application, a category combining writing, application requirements and timing. The evidence did not support separate public rankings for grades nine through eleven or a statistical comparison between grades. The guide later in this paper gives families at all four stages questions worth considering. Those suggestions are identified separately from empirical results.

A simple check illustrates why volume deserves careful interpretation. Counting every eligible turn puts majors first. Counting only the first five eligible turns per family leaves 52 turns. Essays then account for ten and timing for eight. Majors no longer lead. The underlying conversations are identical. The difference arises because sustained follow-up on one problem carries more weight when every turn counts. A family choosing the agenda for a meeting may care about the first uncertainty it needs to resolve. An adviser planning enough time for follow-up may care more about how often one decision opens another.

The study was conducted by The Ivy Institute, which provides paid admissions advising and is preparing the report for its own website. The sample was selected from available advising experience in fall 2026. It cannot establish how all Ivy clients, all families in a grade, or applicants without paid advising distribute their concerns. It also does not test whether a given answer, meeting or service changed an admissions result. The practical value is narrower: it identifies decisions that multiple families actually brought into the conversation and shows how a family can arrive with the information needed to resolve them. Internal source: The Ivy Institute, internal materials, data, and information.

Contents

What counts as a family question?

A calendar can tell an adviser that financial aid, college lists, testing and essays should all be discussed. It cannot say which of those subjects a family would raise on its own, which it would pursue once introduced, or which would turn out to need several rounds of clarification. The distinction matters for families who have limited time with a school counselor or independent adviser. Covering four headings in a meeting is quite different from resolving four decisions. The research question concerns the decisions the family asked about, even when the initial invitation came from the counselor.

Imagine a counselor who mentions that a scholarship requires a school nomination. The student asks whether the nomination must come from a teacher, then asks what information the teacher needs. These are family questions about a counselor-introduced subject. Now imagine a counselor giving the same explanation while the student listens and moves on. Scholarship planning occurred in both meetings. Only the first exchange establishes that the family asked about it. This is an invented example to explain the method. No student's or parent’s private words are reproduced in the paper.

A second distinction separates the family’s concern from the answer it happened to receive. A student can ask whether a particular application round prevents another application. The adviser might discuss deadlines, selection practices and financial aid in response. Coding every subject mentioned in the answer would credit the family with questions about all three. We assigned the turn to the decision the family actually sought to make. If a later family turn asked about another issue, that turn received its own classification. This keeps an expansive answer from creating apparent demand for several topics.

Finally, a question can be consequential without being a grammatical question. A parent may describe uncertainty about how to compare aid offers and never ask a sentence ending with a question mark. A student may express discomfort with an essay topic through hesitation. Those are valid starting points for counseling. This study used recognizable, attributable question turns because a reader can understand and audit that definition. The findings are necessarily an incomplete view of everything families needed. Silence about a subject cannot safely be described as satisfaction, lack of interest or lack of need.

Three research questions follow. Which admissions decisions were raised by the largest number of distinct families? Which accounted for the largest number of separate question turns? For which topics and grades can the sample support a public statement while protecting students? A final, practical question guides the interpretation: given a recurring decision, what could a family bring to its next conversation to make the answer more useful?

Population, sample and methods

The population of interest was families engaged in college planning with The Ivy Institute. The accessible search covered internal materials available from August through early November 2026, with additional earlier company information consulted where it could clarify a student’s stage. The main analysis uses thirteen selected autumn encounters, one for each distinguishable family. The evidence for those encounters was available from September 8 through November 5, 2026, Eastern time. These are availability dates. The study makes no claim about the number of days between a family asking a question and taking action.

We reviewed the available material to distinguish repeated accounts of the same interaction from different encounters and to identify cases in which the family side could be recognized. We selected a recent encounter for each of thirteen clearly linkable families for close reading. If the same family appeared repeatedly, it entered the principal analysis only once. Material spanning multiple families, material where a participant could not be assigned confidently, and conversations outside admissions advising did not supply new cases. This was a purposive sample. It is neither a random draw from all customers nor an estimate of the total number of families the company served.

Family was the primary counting unit. A student and parent participating together counted as one family. Multiple people speaking on the same side of a conversation did not become multiple independent observations. Where the evidence identified the family side more reliably than it identified a particular household member, we did not try to divide turns between parent and student. We also retained families whose selected encounter produced no eligible substantive question. Excluding quiet encounters would inflate the apparent proportion of families asking about every topic.

A question turn was a continuous contribution from the family side, attributable to the same speaker designation, containing a recognizable question. We read the surrounding exchange to establish what the question referred to. A single turn could contain several restatements of the same point. It counted once, using the primary admissions decision as its topic. A family could return to that decision after the adviser spoke, producing another turn. A count of 32 turns about one subject does not mean there were 32 distinct issues, or 32 distinct sentences, or that 32 families needed help.

The review considered 211 candidate family turns in the thirteen encounters. We retained 127 substantive turns for classification. The difference includes greetings, sound checks, ordinary meeting scheduling, questions about navigating the conversation, items read aloud from an application without a substantive request, and exchanges where the intended question was too unclear. We included questions about an actual application deadline or the order of application work. We excluded routine arrangements for the next call. That distinction prevents a family that spent time arranging calendars from looking unusually concerned about college deadlines.

We used ten categories. Courses included academic preparation, grades, credit and the handling of current studies. Testing concerned entrance tests and preparation. Activities included planning or developing extracurricular work. Summer plans had their own category when deciding what to do over the summer was the main question. College lists covered the choice of institutions, visits or the composition of a list. Majors covered undergraduate divisions, intended fields of study and program-entry choices. Essays covered writing and interpretation of prompts. Application requirements covered how or where to report information. Timing included application rounds, due dates and the order of work. Costs included scholarships and financing. Context determined the primary category when the same word could refer to more than one decision.

The categories distinguish the purpose of a question from its vocabulary. A question about whether a dual-enrollment course earns credit belongs under courses. A question about how to identify a required entry on an application can instead belong under reporting. A question about writing for a scholarship may concern whether the opportunity is worth pursuing or what a particular essay should say. We treated those as different decisions. We used a single primary topic to make the turn totals additive. A reader interested in the full mix of concepts in each conversation could reasonably use a different method.

Grade required separate evidence of the student’s academic stage during the relevant term. We accepted an unambiguous statement of present standing or a description connecting the student's present courses or schedule to a named grade. An intended application year, an ambition to take the SAT, an essay in progress or a reference to future junior-year plans was insufficient by itself. Students can take tests early, write for summer programs, graduate late, or prepare application ideas well before senior year. An uncertain grade remained unknown. The question itself could still be coded if authorship and subject were clear.

For each topic we counted families with at least one eligible turn and divided by all thirteen families. Separately, we counted all turns on that topic and divided by 127 for its share of the conversation. Families can appear in several topic rows; their percentages need not add to one hundred. Each individual turn has one primary topic. We also grouped writing, reporting and timing under application preparation for one deliberately broad grade-stage analysis. A family's presence in multiple component topics still counted once in that group.

The public tables use a minimum of five contributing families before releasing a positive, topic-specific count. We also withhold related cells when publication could expose a small group by subtraction. A number that is safe to share across the pooled sample can be inappropriate to share within a grade. We distinguish a threshold result from an exact percentage in the grade table. We do not reconstruct a grade from a school name, publish private words or identify a distinctive combination of grade, activity and intended institution. Source for the analysis and its tables: The Ivy Institute, internal materials, data, and information.

How the answer changes with the denominator

Table 1. Questions across thirteen families and 127 eligible turns
Topic	Families asking	Share of families	Question turns	Share of turns
Timing and application rounds	8	61.5%	20	15.7%
Essays and written responses	6	46.2%	17	13.4%
Majors and programs	5	38.5%	32	25.2%
Courses, grades and credit	5	38.5%	9	7.1%
Other topics combined	Withheld	—	49	38.6%

Timing, sequencing and application rounds had the widest reach. Eight of thirteen families raised at least one such question, approximately 62 percent. Their questions accounted for twenty turns, approximately 16 percent of the 127 eligible turns. The topic includes deciding what must precede what. Knowing a college’s deadline does not settle whether the student should finish one application before working on another, which early plans can be combined, or whether a separate piece must be ready before the family acts. A calendar date provides one input to a decision that can have several dependencies.

Writing reached six families, approximately 46 percent, and accounted for seventeen turns, approximately 13 percent. A question about writing can arise even when a student has a draft. The remaining decision may concern how to interpret a prompt, which material belongs in a short answer, or how to adapt an idea across institutions. This category measures instances where a family asked. It does not count the volume of essays available, the minutes spent discussing them, or every instance in which a counselor offered unsolicited feedback. Those would be different studies.

Majors and undergraduate programs reached five families, approximately 38 percent, and accounted for 32 turns, approximately 25 percent. Courses, grades and credit also reached five families, but generated nine turns, approximately 7 percent. The same number of families can thus correspond to markedly different volumes of conversation. One plausible explanation is that an answer about a program opens another decision about entry routes or switching fields. The counts are compatible with that explanation. The study did not measure how many options each family considered or how much confusion they experienced.

The average among families who asked is another way to see the difference. Across the five families raising majors, 32 divided by five gives 6.4 turns per participating family. The corresponding figure for courses is 1.8, for timing it is 2.5, and for essays it is about 2.8. These are descriptive ratios, not expected numbers of questions in a meeting. The distribution can be uneven, and the means cannot be used to determine how much time an individual family needs. A single long answer can resolve several issues without producing a second question.

Other registered topics included activities and projects, testing, summer plans, application reporting, college lists and costs. We do not publish family-by-topic counts for small groups. It would be particularly misleading to infer from the absence of a published count that families do not care about affordability or summer opportunities. Sometimes a subject is discussed extensively because the adviser raised it; sometimes it was resolved in an earlier conversation. We did not inspect each household’s entire advising history to determine what had already been addressed. The unit is a selected encounter.

Figure 1. Families raising each publishable topic, out of 13

Timing and application rounds: 8 of 13

Essays and written responses: 6 of 13

Majors and programs: 5 of 13

Courses, grades and credit: 5 of 13

In this small sample one family changes an all-family rate by approximately 7.7 percentage points. The difference between six families asking about essays and five asking about majors is therefore one family, not a precise estimate of a persistent ordering in the wider population. The contrast between breadth and volume is more informative. Timing was the broadest topic, while majors had the greatest number of turns. These are different properties of the same conversations. They lead to different choices about what to cover routinely and where to leave room for deeper discussion.

What the grade comparison can support

Table 2. What the available evidence supports by grade
Grade	Courses, testing, activities and summer	Lists, majors and cost	Writing, requirements and timing
9	Insufficient evidence	Insufficient evidence	Insufficient evidence
10	Insufficient public sample	Insufficient public sample	Insufficient public sample
11	Insufficient public sample	Insufficient public sample	Insufficient public sample
12	Individual topic counts withheld	Individual topic counts withheld	At least 5 families raised one or more of these topics
Unverified	Contributes to pooled findings only	Contributes to pooled findings only	Contributes to pooled findings only

The grade table answers a narrower question than many families might expect. It tests whether the reviewed evidence supports a protected public observation at each stage. It cannot produce a reliable top-ten list for each grade. Separate family counts were too sparse to publish for individual topics within grades. For grade twelve, the broader group of application-preparation questions met the five-family threshold. This is evidence that writing, reporting or sequencing was raised by multiple verified senior families. It does not identify a single leading concern among seniors, and it provides no valid estimate of a difference between senior and junior families.

Eight of thirteen families had verifiable grade information. The other five are present in pooled results but absent from grade comparisons. Keeping them in the pooled analysis respects what the evidence establishes. Assigning those five to a grade based on the subject of their questions would be particularly problematic here. If every family that asked an essay question were assumed to have a senior, and the resulting table showed that seniors asked about essays, the conclusion would be partly created by the classification rule. The separation between verifying a stage and coding a question protects against this circularity.

The coverage is also concentrated in autumn. Fall encourages discussion of course adjustments, test plans and fast-approaching applications. A senior in October may have very different priorities from a senior comparing offers in April. A junior in spring may face course registration and summer arrangements that were not urgent several months earlier. The study cannot isolate the effect of grade from the effect of the calendar. A fair test would follow families through multiple seasons or compare similarly timed meetings across grades with adequate samples in each group.

Families in different grades can also bring the same sentence to an adviser for different reasons. Asking whether there is enough time can refer to changing a course, registering for a test, preparing a research project, getting a recommendation or meeting a scholarship deadline. A useful response begins by identifying the decision that will expire. Telling a tenth grader that there are years until college applications may be true but beside the point if a course enrollment window closes tomorrow. Telling a senior to hurry may be equally unhelpful when the missing information is a program rule that the university can clarify.

For these reasons, the practical guides for grades nine through twelve below draw on two things: the decisions observed across families and externally published planning guidance. They do not purport to describe the most common Ivy question within every grade. A school counselor can use them to start a conversation even in grades that have no releasable research estimate. A journalist citing this study should report the pooled figures with their denominator and the limited senior finding separately. The study does not establish a developmental progression from one dominant concern to another.

Repeated questions and the sensitivity check

Table 3. Turn counts when follow-up opportunities are limited
Topic	All 127 turns	First five per family, 52 turns
Essays and written responses	17	10
Timing, sequence and application rounds	20	8
Majors and undergraduate programs	32	Withheld in capped analysis
Courses, grades and credit	9	Withheld in capped analysis

A family with a complicated decision can reasonably ask several follow-ups. If the goal is to describe the conversation an adviser encounters, those turns belong in the data. If the goal is to understand how many families face a decision, repeated turns should not increase that family's representation. We therefore recalculated selected results after limiting each family to its first five substantive turns. Families contributing fewer than five kept all their eligible turns. Families with no eligible turn remained part of the underlying sample. The cap was a sensitivity test, not a statement about how many questions a family ought to ask.

The cap reduced 127 turns to 52. Writing then accounted for ten turns, about 19 percent of the retained total. Timing accounted for eight, about 15 percent. The exact capped counts for majors and courses are withheld because fewer families contributed to those topics after the limit was applied. In the full analysis majors had accounted for one quarter of all turns. These results show that the ordering of topics by volume depends on how much influence extended discussions are allowed to have. They do not imply that the later turns were unnecessary or that a counselor should stop a family after its fifth question.

The capped analysis has its own bias. The beginning of a meeting may include a timely update or a question carried over from an earlier encounter. A topic raised later may be more important to the family than the first issue mentioned. If a counselor structures the agenda, the topics discussed early may reflect the counselor's routine. Capping turns therefore changes which part of the meeting is observed. It is helpful precisely because it makes this choice visible. We cannot say that the first five turns are a less biased measure of need.

Another possible denominator is the number of families who asked at least one eligible question. We deliberately kept all thirteen families in the main proportions because a quiet meeting was an observable part of the study. A team interested only in the distribution of questions among active questioners would obtain different percentages. Likewise, a team studying counselor workload would want the duration and difficulty of the replies, the amount of research required, and the subsequent action items. The present measures should not be repurposed to estimate staffing time or assign value to a service package.

The strongest empirical statement survives these choices: reach and repetition are different. A topic that repeatedly appears across families may justify making a simple answer easy to find. Another topic may need space for individual follow-up even if it occurs in fewer households. A college adviser can use those distinctions when preparing a meeting. The internal findings do not establish that a handout, longer meeting or particular counseling model would improve application readiness. Those are interventions that need to be defined and tested separately.

Why timing reaches so many kinds of decisions

A deadline is often the visible end of a sequence. The family needs to decide whether to apply, determine the program, check the relevant requirements, secure anything another person must provide, review the student's own work, and confirm how the institution records receipt. Depending on the route, some of those steps can happen in parallel and some cannot. When a family asks what to do first, reciting the published due date may leave the decision unresolved. The adviser can begin by asking what is missing, who can supply it, and whether a different requirement becomes due sooner.

A hypothetical example illustrates the distinction. Consider a student comparing two programs with the same general admissions date. One requires a school nomination for a related opportunity; the other has a supplemental form available only after an earlier part of the process. The family encounters two different upstream decisions even when the calendar shows the same final date. An adviser can help identify which dependency needs immediate attention. The institution and the school remain the authorities on their own procedures. This is a constructed illustration, not a description of a family in the sample.

A second timing question concerns compatibility between application plans. A family may use early action, early decision and restrictive early action loosely in conversation. The important issue is which commitments or restrictions actually attach to the college's plan in the relevant year. The applicant can review the college's policy, track other institutions under consideration and raise any conflict before acting. Different plans can have different terms, and broad definitions alone are insufficient to resolve a specific pair of applications. Common App directs families to individual college requirements for information such as deadlines, writing and testing. [2]

Scheduling also involves decisions that a school cannot make for its applicants. A student balancing coursework, employment, family care or an extended project needs discretionary space to do the work. An internal goal may sensibly precede the public deadline, but it should be introduced as the family’s chosen goal. A student who misses that goal still needs an accurate account of the remaining official options. Conversely, a student who meets a family deadline may still have to confirm receipt of externally submitted material. Keeping the two dates distinct makes it easier to recover from a disruption.

One useful closing exercise is to ask the student to name the next action that can actually be taken. “Finish all applications” is too broad to own. “Decide whether I want the program, then check the required supplement with the college” identifies a sequence. A parent can identify a separate action, such as reviewing affordability assumptions or asking the school when it can provide a necessary item. An adviser can distinguish a question they can answer now from one that requires checking an institution's policy. This is a practical interpretation of the timing finding. The study did not assess compliance with such a plan.

Why a conversation about majors can grow

Choosing a field of study sounds like a single decision until a student compares the way different universities organize admission. At one institution the application may ask about interests while allowing students to enter undeclared. At another, entering an undergraduate college or direct-entry program may have specific consequences. The family may then want to know whether an alternative route is possible, what prerequisites apply, and whether a change later is guaranteed, competitive or unavailable. The number of follow-up questions can grow even when the student's interests themselves are stable.

Yale provides one concrete institutional example. Its admissions office explains that students enter Yale College undeclared and generally have until the end of sophomore year to choose a major. This clarifies what an intended field signifies at that institution. It cannot settle what happens at a different university or within a selective division elsewhere. A careful family asks the same set of factual questions anew for each place where the choice could matter. That approach helps avoid turning an accurate statement about one college into an assumption about another. [6]

A family can separate three questions before an advising appointment. What interests the student enough to study further? What does the application require the student to indicate now? What opportunities will actually be available after enrollment? These can yield different answers. A student may be intellectually undecided while fully able to select several areas of interest for a nonbinding question. Another student may have a clear long-term aspiration but face a genuinely uncertain choice about an undergraduate program. Labeling both students “undecided” gives the adviser too little information to help.

The evidence that can resolve these questions also differs. A sample syllabus or conversation about a typical assignment may help a student decide whether a field appeals to them. The admissions office can clarify which application is required. A department or registrar may be the better source for change-of-major rules once enrolled. An adviser can help the family frame its questions and identify where an authoritative answer should come from. The adviser cannot turn an institution's uncertain future decision into a guarantee. A question that remains unanswered should stay visible in the family's decision process.

An example that families can adapt is the student deciding between an academic discipline and a related professional field. Rather than asking which sounds more impressive, the student can identify an actual problem they enjoyed working on and ask how each program would approach it. Would the student prefer building a model, interpreting evidence, making something, or working directly with people? The resulting answer may inform a college search, an essay or a course decision. It need not produce a lifelong commitment. This is an illustrative method, independent of the choices of any family in the study.

The internal finding about majors can therefore be used without assuming that students who ask many questions are indecisive. Multiple turns may reflect a complicated institutional structure, a natural attempt to test the consequences of an answer, or a sustained conversation made possible by the adviser. We did not rate student decisiveness or code private motives. A precise description is that majors occupied 32 eligible turns among five families in the sample. The explanation of why that may happen belongs to interpretation and to future work on the structure of particular decisions.

What essay and course questions reveal

When an applicant asks if a piece of writing is “right,” the adviser first needs to identify what is in doubt. Is the student uncertain about what the prompt asks, whether the chosen experience answers it, whether an important detail belongs elsewhere, or whether the voice still sounds like the student? Those are different tasks. A grammar edit may do little for a response that addresses the wrong question. A discussion about voice may be premature if the student is unsure which undergraduate program they are applying to and its writing question depends on that selection.

Families can bring the current prompt, its limit and one sentence explaining what the student wants the reader to learn. They can also identify the one decision on which feedback would help most. If the student is deciding between two experiences, the adviser can discuss which evidence each would allow. If the student has a near-final draft, the appropriate question might be whether the answer addresses every part of the prompt. Common App's guidance provides a starting place for finding college-specific writing requirements. The institution's current instructions govern the actual submission. [2]

The six-family writing figure cannot establish anything about essay quality. We did not compare submitted drafts, rate the contribution of an adviser, or test whether students who asked more questions became stronger writers. A student with a clear question about one sentence could have an excellent essay. Another might need substantial support while asking very little. Interpreting the frequency of questions as a measure of writing ability would assign a trait to a student on evidence that supports only an observation about a conversation.

Courses raise a different set of distinctions. A family may ask about the value of a rigorous course, the effect of a particular grade, the feasibility of taking two subjects together, or whether a college will recognize credit. The authority for each answer differs. A high school can explain scheduling and prerequisites. A college states its admissions guidance. A receiving institution sets its own credit rules. An adviser can help the student work out which question they are really asking before offering an opinion about the overall plan.

Yale’s course guidance illustrates why a discussion of rigor needs a school context. The university discusses a balanced and challenging academic program and says that schools vary considerably in their courses and grading practices. This supports asking what is available to the student and what fits together responsibly. It does not create a universal number of advanced classes or imply that every institution evaluates a particular choice identically. A family with competing course options could bring its school’s offerings and describe what would be displaced by each option. [5]

Consider a constructed example of a student weighing an advanced science course against a writing-intensive elective. Choosing the science course may preserve one sequence while closing off a valued class for that year. The school counselor can clarify whether the elective is offered again, whether the science course is a prerequisite, and whether either conflicts with a required class. The student can explain what interests them and what workload is realistic. These details turn a broad question about which class “looks better” into a decision the student can understand and live with.

Grade nine: building a starting point

The first question for a ninth grader can be disarmingly ordinary: what is going well in the school day, and what is getting in the way? A response about enjoying class discussions but struggling to keep up with reading can lead to a concrete conversation about school resources and habits. A student who likes the subject but cannot take a later course without a prerequisite has a different problem. A four-year planning conversation works best when it begins with circumstances the student can describe firsthand. College Board’s planning materials publish a separate checklist for each grade, including ninth. [1]

For course planning, ask what the high school requires for graduation and how the next course in an area becomes available. That question can uncover a placement decision, an elective offered only in certain years, or a choice that would be easy to reverse. It does not require the student to name a college or future profession. The family can decide which choices need action this semester and which can wait until the student has more experience. School personnel can answer the institution-specific parts of that question more reliably than generic admissions advice.

For activities, ask what the student wants to return to when attendance is optional. A sustained interest can begin as a hobby, work at home, a local group, paid work or an ordinary school activity. A student can also try something briefly and learn that it is a poor fit. A parent can help identify constraints such as transportation, equipment costs or family obligations without deciding which interest the student should pursue. The guide's purpose here is to make exploration manageable. The study cannot establish an ideal number of pursuits, and its grade-nine evidence does not support a ranking of activity concerns.

For academic interests, ask which assignment recently made the student curious enough to do more than was required. The answer may reveal an approach to learning, such as building, debating or investigating, before it reveals a named subject. An adviser can suggest a way to test the interest locally and inexpensively. A family that immediately turns a classroom interest into a college major may remove the very freedom that allows interests to develop. On the other hand, a student who already has a firm interest can use it to find an appropriate next class without closing other options.

Cost belongs in early conversation when it affects the choices a family can make. A parent might privately consider what types of travel, activities or future college costs are feasible, then discuss options with the student in terms appropriate to the family. The United States Department of Education provides a directory of institutional net price calculators. These can help a family explore estimates when college choices become more concrete. A result is an estimate based on inputs and the institution's tool. An adviser should distinguish that estimate from an actual aid offer. [4]

A useful end to a ninth-grade conversation might be agreement on one question for a teacher, one activity to explore and one point during the semester to revisit the plan. There is no need to turn those decisions into a prediction of where the student will be admitted. If the family primarily needs help navigating its school, a school counselor can be the first point of contact. If an opportunity is inaccessible or unexpectedly expensive, that fact should change the advice. This section offers questions for ninth-grade families. It does not claim that ninth graders in Ivy's sample raised these issues at any particular frequency.

Grade ten: choosing among opportunities

A sophomore is often deciding what to continue, change or try more seriously. One useful opening question is which commitments the student would keep even if they did not appear on a college application. Another is which opportunities have become more demanding or meaningful since the previous year. The answers can help a family recognize depth without requiring the student to keep doing something solely because it was started in ninth grade. A practical plan should accommodate a student who wants to explore a new field as well as one who wants more responsibility in a familiar setting.

When discussing courses, bring the actual options for the coming registration period. Ask whether a choice affects eligibility for something the student hopes to take later. Ask what level of challenge is reasonable alongside the student's current commitments. If the school does not offer a desired subject, the family can ask whether there is an accessible alternative and whether pursuing it serves an educational goal. External coursework has financial, scheduling and credit implications that need to be checked locally. It should not be treated as an automatic obligation to recreate another high school's offerings. [5]

Testing questions at this stage benefit from identifying the purpose of the test. The family might be trying to gain familiarity, decide which exam suits the student, meet a particular opportunity's eligibility condition or plan around the next year's workload. Those purposes do not all call for the same amount of preparation. A school counselor can explain school-day arrangements, while an exam provider supplies current registration and format information. A college's policy for the student's own application year may change. Recording which fact needs to be checked later avoids treating today's rule as permanent. [2] [1]

For a possible summer activity, start with the desired experience. A student might want to learn a laboratory method, earn money, help at home, play a sport, make art or simply have time to read and recover. The family can then ask which available options fit the goal, whether the student can realistically attend and what the application entails. A local commitment the student can actually sustain may fit better than a distant program. This is a decision framework, not a finding that a particular choice creates an admissions advantage.

A sophomore considering a project can ask what a first version would look like and who would use it. That question helps distinguish a manageable undertaking from an attractive name. The student might design a small experiment, create a resource for a known audience, or join an existing effort that already understands the need. Before seeking outside expertise, identify the specific problem on which a mentor's input would help. The family can then tell whether a paid course, a teacher conversation or independent work meets the same need more simply.

If an adviser proposes a long sequence of steps, the student can ask which assumptions would change the plan. Suppose an intended class is no longer available, a work schedule changes or a student discovers an unexpected interest. A plan that states its assumptions is easier to revise than one presented as the only correct path. The family should leave with a clear sense of which choice is due soon and which is still open. Grade-ten recommendations in this paper are planning prompts. The internal evidence is too sparse to estimate how widely sophomore families asked each one.

Grade eleven: connecting the decisions

For a junior, choices that previously felt separate can begin to interact. Testing can draw on the same weekends as activities. A desired senior course may require registration before a college list is final. A scholarship may need a school nomination while the student is still exploring institutions. A useful question for a meeting is therefore which two decisions depend on one another. The family can then address the earlier decision without pretending that every college choice must already be settled. College Board and Federal Student Aid both offer planning materials organized by high school stage. [1] [3]

A family approaching college-list development can begin with what the student needs from an institution. This might include a program, location, accessibility consideration, affordability condition or a preferred way of learning. Distinguish a genuine requirement from something worth exploring. A student who values undergraduate research, for instance, can ask how first-year students obtain access to it rather than assuming that a university's research reputation guarantees participation. A broad preference becomes useful once the family knows what evidence would satisfy it.

Financial questions are especially valuable when raised early enough to affect the list. A useful discussion separates estimated cost, guaranteed resources, uncertain scholarships and what the family is willing to contribute. Families can use the federal directory to locate an institution's net price calculator and keep enough information about the assumptions to interpret the result later. A scholarship with a competitive selection process should not silently be treated as money already available. If a particular school is affordable only under one uncertain condition, state that condition plainly before making a commitment. [4] [3]

For testing, ask which decision the next score would change. Would it affect whether the student takes another exam, sends a result where allowed, becomes eligible for a program, or adjusts the balance of a list? If the answer is unknown because policies differ by institution, check the prospective colleges’ current instructions. The student can then choose whether the potential information is worth the time. This approach makes room for both students who want another testing opportunity and those with other priorities. The study provides no score threshold or evidence for an optimal testing schedule. [2]

For essays and activities, a junior can gather material without committing to a finished personal statement. The student may want to note experiences they remember clearly, projects that changed direction, work responsibilities or an assignment they found unusually rewarding. A family member can help recall an event while leaving the student's own interpretation open. If the student does later write about an experience, preserving the distinction between what happened and what it meant can make the writing more precise. Collecting ideas does not obligate the student to use any of them.

For recommendations, the useful first question is whom the high school permits or expects a student to ask and when those requests are normally made. The requirements of a particular university may differ from the school's routine, so both need to be checked. The student can think about which teacher has seen the relevant work and ask respectfully whether that person would be comfortable writing. A family can prepare for this without assuming that every teacher relationship needs to be developed for a letter. Current college requirements and the student's actual educational relationships are the starting points. [2]

Before a junior leaves a planning meeting, it can help to name one decision that was resolved and one that should stay open. A suitable test date might be settled while the decision to retest remains open. A preliminary college list might be useful while program access or affordability still needs verification. A summer opportunity might be desirable but subject to cost or transportation. Naming what remains uncertain protects the family from treating a tentative choice as a commitment. The instructions here are advisory; the internal study did not establish a junior-specific ordering of topics.

Grade twelve: resolving what stands between a student and submission

A senior's first useful question may be which decision is preventing an otherwise ready application from moving forward. It could concern the right academic division, a supplement linked to the selected program, whether a recommender has been invited, or a deadline the family has misunderstood. The broad application-preparation group was the one grade-specific observation that met the study’s public reporting threshold. That result supports making space for practical questions in senior meetings. It cannot tell an adviser which particular obstacle an individual family will face.

Read the requirements in the student's actual route. A question attached to a particular degree may differ from the general university question. A request for a portfolio or supplementary material may belong to a separate procedure. An optional context field is a decision the applicant can make based on relevance. Families can reduce ambiguity by bringing the exact wording of the requirement and identifying the choice that activated it. The adviser can help interpret what is being requested and identify when the institution itself needs to answer. [2]

When several applications are open, ask what writing can be shared and what each institution still wants separately. A student's central experience can sometimes inform more than one response, although a question about personal growth differs from one about what the student would contribute to a particular community. Checking the prompt before reusing material is more informative than asking whether essay reuse is generally allowed. A student can make use of their own prior thinking while retaining responsibility for truthful and institution-specific answers. The internal research examined family questions, not the proportion of students who reused language.

For an early plan, ask the family to read the institution's terms together and identify any unresolved costs or restrictions before choosing it. The student can ask what they would do if admitted under that plan. The parent can identify whether the family has checked affordability using the information currently available. If the terms are unclear, ask the institution before relying on a general answer given for a different university. A desire to submit early does not resolve the financial or contractual meaning of that choice. This paper does not offer legal interpretation of any agreement. [2] [4]

Timing continues after pressing submit. A family may want to know how to confirm that separate materials arrived, when a portal becomes available, or which outstanding item is the responsibility of a counselor or testing organization. The recipient institution’s instructions should guide the next step. Families can check a student portal or a confirmation message where available and keep their own account of what remains to be verified. A college application can be sent while a separate requirement is still outstanding. Vocabulary such as “sent,” “received” and “complete” is worth clarifying in conversation.

For a student considering a late addition, ask what genuinely changes in the plan. Is there a new program to research, a new form to complete, an essay requiring a different example or a financial condition that has yet to be checked? Then ask what existing commitment might have to move. An adviser can describe the work and help the family check the rules. The choice about whether the opportunity warrants that effort belongs to the student and family. The frequency of timing questions in this study cannot decide the right number of applications for anyone.

Late in senior year, a different set of questions can become more relevant: how to compare aid offers, understand a program's entry conditions after admission, evaluate fit, or choose among affordable options. Those decisions are largely outside the autumn evidence studied here. They remain part of a useful senior-year guide because a family can anticipate the information it will later need. For example, a family might retain a net price estimate, the method used to calculate it and questions to ask when an actual offer arrives. The later comparison should use the offer itself. [3] [4]

What outside research contributes

Public planning resources and academic studies answer different questions from the internal analysis. College Board publishes grade-specific checklists, and Federal Student Aid provides preparation resources for students and parents. These demonstrate that it is possible to organize guidance by stage and distribute responsibilities across family members. They do not report which topics Ivy families asked about, nor do they establish that a family following a checklist will experience a particular admissions outcome. We used them to inform the practical guide and make clear where a public resource can answer a family’s next question. [1] [3]

The Common App guide explains where a first-year applicant can find college-specific requirements, including writing, testing and deadlines. This helps interpret why a family can have a timing question even when an application platform offers a common structure. The shared platform makes some information easier to locate while leaving important institutional differences to be checked. The guidance supports the practical step of reviewing each applicable institution's requirements. It does not verify how often the families in the study encountered differences or whether advice prevented mistakes. [2]

Research by Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner studied an intervention providing high-achieving, low-income students with tailored information about college options, applications and costs. Its relevance here lies in the specificity of the information and the defined population. A family may already know that college costs vary while still lacking a useful comparison for its own choices. The intervention addresses that gap in a setting very different from a selected sample of families speaking with a paid adviser. We did not adopt its effect estimates as a measure of Ivy's work. [7]

Research by Eric Bettinger, Bridget Terry Long, Philip Oreopoulos and Lisa Sanbonmatsu distinguished information about aid eligibility from assistance actually completing the FAFSA in a randomized field experiment. The authors found improved outcomes for the combined assistance and information intervention in their setting. This is a reason to distinguish learning a rule from carrying out a task when interpreting a family’s question. It is not evidence that a college-list meeting or an essay consultation has comparable effects. The population, intervention and measured outcomes differ. [8]

The distinction can be put into practice without assuming a causal result. After answering a factual question, the adviser can ask whether the student has what they need to act. An explanation of a scholarship requirement may still leave the student unsure who can nominate them. A discussion of net price may still leave a parent uncertain which estimate to compare. A student may understand what a prompt asks yet still need to choose an experience. These examples show why several turns on the same topic can serve different purposes. The study did not evaluate whether a particular follow-up improved completion.

In external studies researchers can sometimes observe a subsequent application, enrollment or aid decision. This internal study deliberately stops earlier, with an attributable question in a conversation. That outcome is meaningful for understanding what families raise, but it is several steps removed from college enrollment. We cannot infer that a frequently asked question was either easy or difficult to resolve. Nor can we infer that an infrequently asked question was unimportant. A valuable next study would identify a decision, record what information was provided, and verify whether the family could take its intended next step.

Interpreting an adviser's contribution

A family question and a counselor-initiated subject can coexist in the same exchange. An adviser may introduce a deadline or scholarship that the family had never heard of. A student or parent may then ask a substantive follow-up about eligibility or effort. In this study the follow-up counts because a family member asked it. The initial recommendation does not count as a family question. A meeting in which a family asked no eligible question could nevertheless contain extensive and appropriate advising. The data therefore cannot be used to infer that an agenda came entirely from the family or entirely from the adviser.

One practical response is to ask the student what they most want to resolve before presenting the prepared agenda. The adviser can then explain which scheduled items are urgent and which can move. Another is to leave time near the end for a question that became apparent only after the family learned more. These practices address different needs. The opening gives a family space to set priorities; the closing recognizes that the family cannot be expected to ask about an unfamiliar procedure in advance. Neither practice was tested as an intervention in this research.

It also helps to identify who has authority over the answer. The high school determines its own graduation and nomination procedures. The testing organization controls its registration rules. A college states the terms of its application plans and programs. A family sets its budget and decides what obligations it is prepared to accept. An adviser can help obtain and interpret information, but some questions require a decision from the student or a confirmation from the relevant institution. Naming that boundary is often more helpful than offering an overly confident opinion.

An example is a family asking whether to send a particular test result. An adviser may need to establish the college, cycle, program, current policy and purpose of sending the score. A family asking whether to pay for a possible college-credit course may need the actual fee, the high school's arrangement and information about how a future institution evaluates credit. Neither question can be answered solely by knowing the student's grade. Stage helps frame the conversation, while the institution and the student's actual circumstances often determine the answer.

Another example concerns family disagreement. A parent can reasonably want to understand the long-term consequences of a choice while a student wants first to explore a subject. These are different aims within one household. Counting them as one family protects the independence of the observations but hides internal differences that can matter during counseling. A skilled adviser can ask each person what would make the meeting useful and return the final educational choice to the student where appropriate. Our evidence did not support reliable, privacy-preserving comparisons between parent and student question frequencies.

The relationship also shapes what is observable. Families that purchase advising have already selected a resource and may bring issues they expect the adviser to handle. They may discuss affordability somewhere else, consult a teacher about courses, or direct a technical question to an institution. Families without a paid adviser may encounter the same choice but voice it in a different setting or have no opportunity to ask at all. That is one reason the observed question mix cannot stand in for the distribution of educational need in a school, a region or the United States.

A meeting guide for families

Table 4. Suggested agenda by stage, offered as advice
Grade	Opening question	Bring to the conversation	Decision to leave with
9	Which course or activity do I want to explore next?	Available school options and any scheduling constraints	A manageable next step
10	Which choice now affects my options next year?	Course sequences, project ideas and practical limits	What to try, continue or leave open
11	Which decisions about testing, cost and colleges depend on one another?	Preliminary list, budget assumptions and relevant dates	A plan for checking facts before making commitments
12	What is the next unresolved decision in my actual application?	Selected program, current instructions and remaining tasks	An owner, a next action and a date to check back

Before the meeting, write down one decision that needs to be made and why it has become a decision now. A student might need to select courses before registration, choose a program before the prompt becomes clear, or establish which early plans are compatible before submitting anything. Naming the decision helps the family bring the relevant facts. A general agenda item such as “talk about college” leaves the adviser to guess whether the student needs information, emotional support, feedback on work or a recommendation about next steps.

Next, list what is already known. For an application requirement that may include the current instructions, the intended program and the deadline displayed for the chosen route. For a course choice it may include the graduation requirement, the available classes and any schedule conflict. If the question is financial, the family can identify what budget range or uncertainty it is comfortable discussing. The aim is to avoid using limited meeting time to reconstruct facts that the family already has. It is equally useful to identify facts that are not yet known.

Ask the student and parent to name their questions separately when that is useful. A student may be concerned about choosing a field they will enjoy. A parent may be concerned that the same field is housed in a different undergraduate college with different costs or access rules. Both are legitimate questions. Hearing each clearly gives the family a better chance of resolving the actual decision than asking the adviser to rate a school or major in the abstract. The study combined family members for counting; effective discussion can still recognize their different roles.

During the meeting, use follow-up questions to test an answer's boundaries. Does this advice apply to the institution and entry cycle in question? Would a different choice of degree change the rule? Is a suggested date the actual deadline or a planning goal? What should we do if the institution has not yet published the information? These questions are useful because they expose assumptions. They also give the adviser permission to say that a fact needs checking rather than offering a premature answer to keep the conversation moving.

At the end, agree on who will do what and what will count as resolution. The next step might be checking a university policy, choosing a topic, asking a school about a nomination or deciding whether the cost of an opportunity is manageable. “Research this” is less helpful than naming the question that the research must answer. A student returning to the next meeting can then explain what changed and which decision remains. This is a practical tool derived from the differences among the questions. No reduction in the time required to apply was measured.

If a family has very limited time, one good closing question is what would change the advice. If the answer depends on a scholarship outcome, a grade, the publication of a policy or continued interest in a field, name that condition. The family can then stop revisiting the issue until new information arrives, unless the student's preferences change. If the advice depends on how the student feels about a course or community, name that too. Some decisions benefit from a factual check; others benefit from giving the student time to experience an option.

Limitations and implications for future research

The selection of thirteen families reduces the influence of frequent meetings while narrowing the evidence to a small number of encounters. The study did not survey every family, include all interactions for a fixed roster, or recruit families without advising. It used the available company experience that could be interpreted responsibly. Readers should be cautious about turning a frequency in this small sample into a claim about “what parents want” or a promise about what a particular meeting will accomplish. The families themselves did not rate how important the topics were.

The question-turn definition favors explicitly voiced concerns. Hesitation, indirect requests and substantial declarations of uncertainty can fall outside it. Conversely, a short question confirming something already understood can enter the analysis. An adviser’s speaking style can influence how often a student responds and whether the conversation moves through several brief turns. A quieter student may have equally important questions that were never stated. These limitations affect both the absolute counts and comparisons between families. They are particularly important for readers who might otherwise interpret a high number of questions as a measure of anxiety.

The classification was performed in one review without independent double coding. Adjacent categories can reasonably overlap. Credit and coursework, an essay and its deadline, or selection of a major and selection of an undergraduate college are examples. Assigning one primary topic allowed us to sum turns without duplication. It also required judgment about the decision at issue. The broader application-preparation grouping helps readers see where several narrow categories address one practical undertaking. It cannot remove the uncertainty in individual classifications.

Grade missingness may be systematic. It is easier to verify a grade when a student discusses present academic standing explicitly. Families focused on a project, a specific essay or an immediate decision might say little about grade because everyone in the room already knows it. Excluding those cases from the grade analysis can change the mix of topics. Including them under guessed grades would introduce a different error. We therefore report the extent of missingness, retain the cases for pooled findings and limit the grade claims to what the evidence permits.

A stronger comparison would enroll enough families in each grade, sample meetings in similar months and define the observation period before reviewing questions. It would record who first introduced a topic, who asked the follow-up and whether the question was answered or left open. A second reviewer could classify a subset independently and compare decisions. Maintaining the distinction between classroom requirements, institution-specific rules and personal preferences would allow the study to examine which type of uncertainty is most likely to recur. No part of that design requires publishing private dialogue.

Another improvement would be to ask families, with appropriate consent, which decision mattered most to them before and after the meeting. That measure could be compared with conversational frequency. A topic producing many turns may still rank below a single question that determines whether the family can afford a college. Conversely, an adviser might identify an issue that had not been on the family's agenda and that the family later considers important. Such evidence could distinguish recurrence, salience and usefulness rather than assuming they move together.

The Ivy Institute conducted the research using its own materials and is the intended publisher. Its commercial interest in admissions advising is relevant to how readers interpret the findings. The reported outcomes are questions raised, not verified answers, improvements in readiness or admission decisions. External resources provide context and guidance. They do not validate the private counts or demonstrate the value of purchasing an advising service. The public tables and separate restricted calculation record allow appropriately different levels of review while protecting participating families.

Conclusion

In thirteen selected family encounters, timing reached eight families, writing reached six, and majors and courses each reached five. Majors generated the largest number of question turns. Families’ questions therefore have at least two dimensions: how widely a decision occurs and how much follow-up it draws. The study provides a limited senior-stage finding and a useful pooled picture. It does not support a separate ranking of concerns for each high school grade.

A family preparing for a meeting can start with a decision in its own words, bring the relevant information and ask what would change the answer. A counselor can begin by hearing that decision before moving through an agenda. Both can leave with a clearer distinction between what has been decided, what is still uncertain and who has the authority to resolve it.

References

The Ivy Institute, internal materials, data, and information.

The Ivy Institute https://www.theivyinst.org