Survey: Fewer students go to first-choice school

NORMAL, Ill. -- An annual national survey conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles reveals smaller percentages of college freshmen are attending their first-choice schools. And even those accepted to their first choice are instead settling for their second or third choices.\nThe survey that yielded these results is The Freshman Survey, which has been administered by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA for the last 40 years. \nThis year 271,441 freshmen at 393 colleges across the nation participated in the survey. While the survey asked students a variety of questions about high-school life and college decisions, a major point of interest revealed by the survey results dealt with deciding factors that determine what school a student chooses to attend.\nJohn H. Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program and the survey's lead author, said the survey found that 67.3 percent of students polled were attending their first-choice school, which is the second lowest percentage since researchers included this question on the survey in the mid-1970s. \nThe survey also found that, among those students attending their second-choice schools, 48.9 percent were accepted by their first-choice school but decided not to attend.\nPryor said a significant reason for the decline in attendance of first choice schools is the cost.\n"What the results of the survey seem to be telling us is that financial issues is the main reason that students accepted to their first-choice schools choose not to attend," Pryor said.\nCharles A. Boudreau, director of financial aid at Illinois State University, said the fact that students and parents are not well-informed about the full cost of their school choice might be a contributing factor.\n"I try and emphasize to parents to go to the school's Web site early on and do research on overall cost, financial aid eligibility and scholarship opportunities," Boudreau said. "Then you can assess if the price of the school is workable for your family financially"