HEDS Returning Student Survey
The HEDS Returning Student Survey is uniquely designed to be actionable. Unlike a traditional survey that provides your institution with aggregate information about your students, this survey is designed to strengthen the connection between your institution and the students who take the survey.
The survey prompts your existing students to reflect on their vision of post-college success, their reasons for staying in college, and the college experiences that have most prepared them to accomplish their goals for life. It encourages them to talk to people at your institution about these goals.
The survey works by fostering an interaction between your students and your institution. As a result:
- Your students will have a clearer picture of their goals and a better understanding of how their experiences in college are helping them achieve those goals.
- Your students will be reminded of their reasons for completing their degree.
- Your institution will have a better sense of what your students hope to achieve and which experiences have had the most impact for your students.
- Your institution will be able to better monitor and address your students’ worries and concerns.
- Your institution will build stronger connections with students by holding meaningful conversations with them about their goals and aspirations.
If you’re interested in learning more about the goals of new students starting at your institution this fall, you can administer the HEDS New Student Survey in tandem with the HEDS Returning Student Survey.
We developed the HEDS Returning Student and New Student Surveys from work we did in our HEDS student success project. We wanted to learn first-hand the ways that students think about their success, so we conducted focus groups at HEDS member institutions. We then created these surveys to expand on and continue that work. You can read an article describing the project and the development of the surveys on our Findings page.
Registration Deadline
You must register at least seven weeks (35 business days) before the day you want your survey to start. With the high demand for our surveys, this new timeline ensures we can do a good job of administering your survey for you. We urge you to download and read the survey information sheet by clicking on the “Survey Options, Policies, and Fees (PDF)” button found in the Downloads section of this webpage. This document details all the survey options available to you, as well as our expectations, practices, fees, and terms of service.
Click on the following questions to learn more.
Traditional surveys create a one-way flow of information from survey respondents to the survey administrator. While the HEDS Returning Student Survey does provide you with actionable information about your students, it can also facilitate an interaction between your students and your institution.
- The survey asks students whether they would like to have a follow-up conversation with someone at your institution about their goals for the future and ways to improve their college experience. The survey automatically sends a summary of each student’s responses to the people who’ve been designated to have follow-up conversations with students.
- When students form connections with people on campus, it increases their chances of success, and the survey provides an excellent conversational starting point. We will provide you with a conversation guide to assist your faculty and staff with ideas and prompts for having a good conversation with students.
- When they complete the survey, students receive a link that takes them to a summary of how other students at their institution responded to the survey. They may check back as often as they like to see updates.
- In our focus groups, we hear that students are often reluctant to participate in surveys because they typically don’t see data from the surveys, and they don’t feel like their responses lead to changes at their institutions. The benefit to allowing students to immediately see how their peers are responding is that it can both help them see that their experiences and feelings are normal and that their responses don’t just disappear into the void.
- Immediately after a student completes their survey, they will receive an email with a copy of their responses to the survey, so they have a record of how they responded.
**Registration Extended!**
The 2025 HEDS Returning Student Survey can be administered for a 3-6 week period between June 2 and October 17, 2025. The last day to register will be August 8, 2025.
The survey is for students who have already attended your institution and are eligible to return in the fall.
Please be aware that you must register at least seven weeks (35 business days) prior to the date on which you plan to begin administering the survey.
Live updates:
- We provide ongoing updates while your survey is open to give you a first look at select, high-level data from the survey. These updates will give you an early, overall sense of how your students are responding to parts of the survey, and they allow you to gauge your response rates so you can adjust your communication strategies if necessary.
Unit-record survey data:
- You will receive a preliminary version of your institution’s unit-record survey data in both SPSS and Microsoft Excel files within five days of your survey closing. You will receive final data files that will include any HEDS calculated variables and/or indicators with your final survey report.
Comparative reports:
- A report that compares your students to students at all other participating institutions on all survey questions and indicators.
- We cannot begin developing these reports until the survey closes at the end of September. We anticipate delivering these reports before the end of the fall semester.
YES! Here’s how:
- We insert your institution’s name at the top of each page of the survey
- You can customize parts of Question 6 – which asks students about high-impact experiences such as service learning, internships, and off-campus study programs – with the names of specific programs at your institution.
- You can select the particular people/offices at your institution that students can ask to have a conversation with
- You can customize the survey invitations and reminders
- You can add up to three custom, institution-specific questions at the end of the survey
While you can add three supplemental questions to the end, we do not modify our survey questions or response options. In order for us to offer the benefit of comparative data between participating institutions in our survey reports, the questions and response options have to be the same across all the colleges and universities using the survey.
- Survey base cost – $1,475
- Survey base cost for HEDS members – $0
These prices include up to three supplemental questions. You will find all survey options and fees in the survey information sheet. Please click on the “Survey Options, Policies, and Fees (PDF)” button in the Downloads section of this webpage.
This survey is one part of a suite of surveys and data exchanges focused on student success that are free as part of HEDS membership. To learn more about becoming a HEDS member, please visit our Join HEDS page.
If you have any questions, please email us at new_returning_surveys@hedsconsortium.org, and we will get back to you right away.
Downloads