Academic Coaching Intake Form for Graduate Students

Streamline Your Graduate Student Coaching Practice with Paperform

Academic coaching for graduate students requires understanding the unique pressures of dissertation writing, advisor relationships, research roadblocks, and the marathon toward degree completion. This Academic Coaching Intake Form for Graduate Students helps you gather essential information before your first session—so you can hit the ground running with personalized support.

Why Academic Coaches Choose This Template

Graduate students face challenges that undergraduate students rarely encounter: complex research projects spanning years, high-stakes advisor relationships, imposter syndrome, writing paralysis, and the pressure to publish while finishing a thesis. This intake form is designed specifically for coaches who work with master's and doctoral candidates, collecting the context you need to tailor your coaching approach.

The form walks students through their current research stage, relationship with their advisor and committee, specific writing and productivity blocks, time management struggles, and concrete completion goals. You'll understand not just where they are academically, but what emotional and practical barriers stand between them and graduation.

Built for Academic Coaching Workflows

Whether you're an independent academic coach, part of a university student success program, or running a coaching practice that specializes in graduate student support, this template gives you everything you need:

• Research progress assessment to understand dissertation/thesis stage and timeline
• Advisor relationship questions to identify communication issues or misalignment
• Writing block identification to pinpoint procrastination, perfectionism, or structural challenges
• Time management evaluation to reveal competing priorities and scheduling obstacles
• Goal setting framework to establish clear milestones and accountability measures

The form uses conditional logic to adapt based on student responses—if someone indicates they're struggling with their advisor, follow-up questions appear to gather more context. If writing blocks are the primary concern, you'll collect specific details about when and why they get stuck.

Automate Your Coaching Onboarding

Once a student submits their intake form, Paperform can automatically:

• Send a personalized welcome email with next steps and your coaching agreement
• Schedule their first session using the built-in appointment booking field
• Deliver their responses to your preferred tools—whether that's Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, or your CRM
• Trigger a Stepper workflow (stepper.io) to send pre-session worksheets, add them to your coaching calendar, and create a client folder in your file system

This means less administrative work for you and a more professional, responsive experience for students who are often overwhelmed and seeking structure.

Flexible, On-Brand, and Secure

Paperform's document-style editor lets you customize every question, add your coaching philosophy or video introduction, and match your brand with custom fonts, colors, and imagery. Embed the form on your coaching website, share it via a clean link, or add it to your email signature.

For coaches working with university programs or institutions, Paperform is SOC 2 Type II compliant and offers data residency controls, ensuring student information is handled with the security and privacy standards higher education requires.

Take Payments and Manage Scheduling in One Place

If you charge for your coaching services, you can add Stripe, PayPal, or Square payment fields directly into your intake form. Students can pay their intake fee or first session cost as part of the onboarding process, eliminating the need for separate invoicing.

The appointment booking field syncs with your calendar, so students can choose an available time for their first coaching call right after completing their intake—no back-and-forth emails required.

Perfect for Academic and Educational Professionals

This template is ideal for:

• Academic coaches specializing in graduate student success
• Writing coaches who help with dissertation and thesis completion
• University student success centers offering coaching services
• Independent coaches working with PhD candidates and master's students
• Career coaches who support graduate students transitioning to academia or industry

Graduate students are navigating one of the most challenging periods of their academic journey. With this intake form, you can offer them the structured, personalized support they need—while running a more efficient, scalable coaching practice. Paperform gives you the tools to show up as the professional, organized coach they're looking for, right from first contact.