I love your questions!
I think the “what would you change” question can be very very telling!
It’s one my D asked every school she visited.
My D also flat out asked if students in her major were truly collaborative or if it was competitive. Students were very honest about that!
I’m a class of 2026 parent, but have been lurking here to see how everyone’s getting along with admissions this year. Pardon the intrusion!
But, the question I always like to ask students (actually, my D26 now asks), which is similar to your number 5 but a little different, is “What do you wish you knew or what surprised you about this school or program before you got here?” We always try to ask it neutrally so you might get a positive surprise or a negative one, but it’s been useful to hear about what kids weren’t expecting.
I think you should email this to them word for word. Do us all a favor.
Sorry you’re going through this though.
That is a good one. I should make a list for D25 using your and @OctoberKate’s suggestions. She never knows what to ask when really she’s trying to get a sense of the ‘vibe.’ There also might be academic questions that look different from the student’s side of things. How hard it is to get the classes you want? What are the class sizes like really? Colleges will often brag about the student to professor ratio, but that’s an average. It might vary widely between programs and between levels. And it’s not just class size, but how they’re run. Do the faculty try to get the students engaged and does it work? Maybe your son is different. But my daughter’s biggest fear is to be in mostly lecture style classes with passive classmates. So these are the questions at the top–other than what she wants to ask about the social scene.
Both my older children went to large public universities, but the issues they had the most trouble with was getting the classes they needed (or wanted) and advising. So now I am making sure my S25 asks about that
My kids always ask what fun traditions exist at the school - gives them a good idea of what students enjoy and what brings them together.
Really, I thought privatization was the solution to all woes! How could this be?? 
(Sarcasm)
Senioritis here too! Midterm grades came out and I haven’t bothered to look. He has volunteer requirements for JROTC and NHS and every time I ask if he has found something for his hrs I get a big sigh and an “I got it”. He has a pretty light load this semester.
Scary situation the other night- he was coming home from the gym at 8pm on a windy road and a car flew around the curve in his lane head on. He swerved and swiped the guardrail. In his new to him car f his dreams that he paid for. I am so happy he was not hurt but man that stinks. And even with explanation and police report(the other car never stopped), it is deemed his fault.
Still waiting to hear from USNA but he’s planning to go USMMA
I was referring to RIT. And yeah, I thought it was soon after acceptance from what other folks were saying. So, it’s odd. C25 got in EA, and still no paper tiger!
Just curious- anyone have insight into when colleges might finish committee for decisions. Do you think decisions are made right up to the end? My kid has to submit his Trimester 2 report when it comes out around the middle of the month, probably about a week before decisions. . He got a B and B+. Could affect his chances. Not much he can do about it but I was just curious how much time between decisions and notifications.
Well, S25 just came home sick. We’re supposed to fly out to Greenville on Saturday for the Duke Scholarship interview day on Monday. Starting to look a little doubtful. Sigh.
I asked Chat GPT 
here’s what it said.
Colleges typically make admissions decisions several days to a few weeks before their official announcement dates. The exact timing depends on the school and application type:
In most cases, admissions committees review applications for weeks or months, but final decisions are typically settled and reviewed shortly before official release.
oh that’s a bummer! the socks and tiger are cute.
Maybe you can ask if you go to admitted students days?
My c25 admitted RIT on 2/4 and the paper tiger/socks came the week of 2/17
Kiddo got another $2500 a year from Rose-Hulman! Not a huge amount, but it takes him to $28,000 a year in scholarships not counting the potential addition of $2000 a year for National Merit Finalist. He’ll submit his enrollment form this weekend. Hooray!
Granted, I’m still worried about how the shake up in higher ed will impact small schools like Rose, but I don’t think we can really make decisions based on this kind of uncertainty.
Chiming in from HS Class of 2024 (and I have a HS junior, too, so we’ll be going through this again next year), when we went through this with D24, D24 was always scared snotless to ask questions on tours or in info sessions, but I’d usually ask a question or 2 along the lines of:
So glad he’s ok but MAN that’s scary!
I’m laughing that you asked Chat GPT. Mostly because I never think to ask Chat GPT anything, and today I did. My older son needs a letter from a doctor to be able to bring his ADHD meds into Greece in a large enough quantity to last for his whole stay there during the term abroad. I wanted to give the doctor a model so that he wouldn’t have to do much to get this done. So I told Chat GPT what I was trying to accomplish and the information it needed to include and it wrote me a very nice draft letter that only needed a little tweaking.
Thank you everyone for suggestions on questions! I appreciate it. This will give me a good cadre to put together for S25 to choose from.
It’s great for stuff like that! My husband works in a field that is using a lot of AI now so we have access to a lot of it. I even used it to draft out a 4 year course progression at my son’s top two schools and it did a good job! And I use it to plan trips a lot.
ETA - my husband had to have an echo and EKG last week and we uploaded the scans to an AI platform and the interpretation actually gave us more information than his doctor did. Excellent tool if used carefully.