10 'Dream' Colleges (And The Worries That Go With Them)

Applying to College
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"Applying to college is an adventure fraught with mixed emotions. On one hand there’s the excitement of choosing a new environment in which to work and play while moving toward a career and adulthood. On the other, the stress of the application process, probable debt and the uncertainty of whether any of it will really be worth it in the long run. …

To find out more about how students – and their parents – approach the college search, we looked to a recent survey … Among other data, the survey discovered the 10 schools students most often noted as their “dream” school. … When asked which schools they would choose for their children, parents selected the following schools more than all others—a similar but not identical list:" …

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2017/03/29/10-dream-colleges-and-the-worries-that-go-with-them/#1baebac143cb

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Here is the link to the original Princeton Review survey:

https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/college-hopes-worries

It is interesting to note the differences between the two lists.

1 - Students show a strong preference for California public schools compared to their parents.
2 - NYU made both lists while Columbia did not.
3 - The only schools on both lists were Stanford, Harvard, MIT, NYU, and Princeton.

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You forgot Penn in point 3 :stuck_out_tongue:

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Further note:

4 - No LAC’s mentioned in the two lists, leading me to think that such list of “Dream Colleges” is made up by not so discerning audience.

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The full report is at https://www.princetonreview.com/cms-content/CoHoWo-survey-report-2017.pdf . However, note that this survey comes from respondents reading The Best 381 Colleges: 2017 Edition or http://www.princetonreview.com , so it is not necessarily a representative sample of college-bound students or their parents.

Some other survey results:

question 6, how much college is expected to cost: parents expect costs to be higher than students

question 10, distance from home: parents preferred a closer distance than students

question 11, choice of college: best program for career interests and best overall fit were far more popular answers than best academic reputation and most affordable

question 14, main benefit of attending college: 41% of students and 47% of parents see potentially better job and higher income

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The colleges most named by students as their “dream college” were:
1/ Stanford Univ., 2/ Harvard Univ., 3/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 4/ New York Univ.,
5/ Univ. of California—Los Angeles, 6/ Columbia Univ., 7/ Princeton Univ., 8/ Univ. of California—
Berkeley, 9/ Univ. of Pennsylvania, 10/ Yale Univ

The colleges most named by parents as their “dream college” for their child were:
1/ Stanford Univ., 2/ Princeton Univ., 3/ Harvard Univ., 4/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 5/
Duke Univ., 6/ Univ. of Pennsylvania, 7/ Univ. of Michigan, 8/ New York Univ., 9/ Cornell Univ., 10/
Univ. of Notre Dame.