<p>NJres - great comment especially in light of the above CBS evening news story:</p>
<p>"Economics major Seth Anagnostis got a quick lesson in math when it came time to go to college, CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports.</p>
<p>He got accepted at his top choice, Tufts. But he ended up at Rutgers. That made the most dollars and sense.</p>
<p>"It was frustrating getting into your No. 1 choice that you worked so hard to get into high school and then it is right there for you and it's just not a realistic possibility," Anagnostis says.</p>
<p>And he isn't alone, according to a UCLA nationwide survey of this year's college freshmen.</p>
<p>Nearly one-third of the 271,000 freshmen surveyed are attending schools that were not their first choice. That's the highest percentage since 1988.</p>
<p>Of those students who were accepted but didn't go to their first choice college, more than one-third said money was the issue: They couldn't afford it.</p>
<p>"Over the last 30 years, we've seen a precipitous increase in the number of students reporting that they have a major concern about how they're going to finance their college education," says Victor B. Saenz, with the Higher Education Research Institute.</p>
<p>The cost of a college education has soared 35 percent over the last five years, to an average of nearly $13,000 a year at public colleges, and more than $30,000 a year at private schools.</p>
<p>The survey results come as Congress is working on ways to make college more affordable. The House just passed a bill to cut student loan interest rates by half over the next five years. But it's unclear how much that will influence the choice of a school.</p>
<p>What is clear is that finding a way to pay for college is fast becoming an education in itself. "</p>