<p>On the positive side, the survey quoted in the article found that more than two thirds of the students surveyed (college freshmen) WERE attending their first choice college. That's higher than I might have guessed, and it's good news overall.</p>
<p>I don't know if it's legitimate to extrapolate the math in this manner, but one might conclude only 17% or so were prevented from attending their first choice school by finance concerns. Considering the cost of college these days, that number doesn't seem big at all.</p>
<p>Egads. Amazing how they can take a study that shows that most students end up attending their first choice college, and that only about 17% were accepted to their top choice but chose not to attend (for various reasons including financial), and then gin up a headline like:</p>
<p>"Costs keep students from first-choice colleges"</p>
<p>The headline isn't supported by the study, best I can tell from the article. A more accurate headline might be:</p>
<p>"Most students attend first-choice college, despite rising costs."</p>
<p>Exactly. The article is looking at what are the reasons why students do not attend their first choice school. While one would assume nonattendance is due to not being accepted, the article clearly states that a majority (52.6%) of those who do not go to their first choice, it's because they got in, but decided not to go.</p>
<p>For a significant number of those who choose to say no, it's because of money.</p>
<p>Actually, for those who didn't attend their first choice, cost was the reason slightly more than half the time.</p>
<p>I agree with the sentiment that this is really a "glass half empty" headline. The fact that more than two thirds ended up at their first choice college is great news, as is that about half who chose not to attend their first choice didn't make that decision based on finances.</p>
<p>In fact, I can't change the USA Today headline, but I'll try to make OUR headline better reflect the actual content of the story. :)</p>
<p>In defense of the Ms. Marklein, headlines are usually written by an editor, not the reporter, sometimes with inaccurate or biased results.</p>
<p>One other statistical issue - it looks like the survey was conducted among college freshmen, which would leave out students who weren't able to attend college at all (for cost or other reasons).</p>
<p>poor math - (check out the parent's forum): </p>
<p>~32% did not attend their first choice college. BUT, less than half of them were accepted, so we really have ~16% of total Frosh choosing to go elsewhere. But, wait: less than a third of those, or ~5% of the total Frosh class, chose to go elsewhere due to financial reasons. Only FIVE % of the total frosh class chose to go elsewhere for financial reasons.</p>
<p>Roger: I don't see that the survey supports this statement at all: "Actually, for those who didn't attend their first choice, cost was the reason slightly more than half the time."</p>
<p>The article reports:</p>
<p>"More than two-thirds (67.3%) are attending their No. 1 choice, the survey says. Of those who are not, 52.6% said they were accepted and opted not to go."</p>
<p>But it doesn't say that they opted not to go for financial reasons. And as the next couple paragraphs makes clear, most of the time when a student chose their second, third, or fourth choice college, affordability was usually NOT the reason.</p>
<p>Now-- the better argument might be that many students are precluded from even applying to expensive colleges because of their cost. But the survey (best we can tell) didn't ask that question.</p>
<p>I'm having difficulty making the math in the article work.</p>
<p>"More than two-thirds (67.3%) are attending their No. 1 choice, the survey says. Of those who are not, 52.6% said they were accepted and opted not to go." Therefore, about 16% of the total were rejected, and 17% were accepted but chose not to attend.</p>
<p>"One in five attending their second choice said they 'could not afford my first choice.' That's 20%, or more than the total who CHOSE not to attend (17%). Did they poll the rejected students, too? And third or fourth-choice attendees reported cost problems at even higher percentages.</p>
<p>The other possibility is that the author meant to say, "One in five attending their second choice by their own decision said they 'could not afford..." That would make the numbers work, and it looks like that's what bluebayou is assuming. I think that's a reasonable assumption, as the numbers don't make sense if you read the statement literally. If you estimate a composite of 25% or a bit less (based on the range of 20 - 28% for second, third, and fourth choice attendees) for the "accepted but declined for cost reasons", then about 4% of the total population of students declined their first choice school for cost reasons.</p>
<p>Feel free to poke holes in that calculation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>many students are precluded from even applying to expensive colleges because of their cost</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>That's a good point - if you combine that group with the group that didn't attend college at all for cost reasons, the numbers might be quite different.</p>
<p>Absolutely! My D didn't even look at an entire group of colleges --- the elites with no merit aid. We know what we can do financially, and we concentrated only on those schools. There is no point setting yourself up for a disappointment --- so we kept it real. Her first choice school might not really be her first choice school!</p>
<p>I don't argue that financial cost isn't a huge consideration for most college students and their parents. That's obvious.</p>
<p>My beef is with the way that editors craft headlines and articles to fit their own world view, often at the expense of the facts. In this case, the data appear to indicate that college costs are not the primary reason that students don't attend their first choice of college, and further that most students (arguably) end up attending their first choice of colleges. But that data doesn't fit the headliner's view, so they write something entirely different. Sometimes they try to justify it by emphasizing a single minority data point.</p>
<p>yea this is lame, money will keep me from even applying to a place I would like to go to.</p>
<p>as of now, I have no first choice because I was deferred ED, but I would still love to go to the school that deferred me (its just that I have a 12% chance of getting in).</p>
<p>anyway, I want to go to WFU, but that might be hard to afford considering around 43,000 a year.</p>
<p>Money has definitely been a factor in my college application process. I can't afford to pay more than 10k for a college (we don't qualify for aid, though), so I have been forced to look at schools were merit scholarships are a possibility (Washington and Lee, Rhodes, Emory, Vanderbilt, Oberlin, etc...). While these are strong schools, they would not have been my top choice or my "dream school" if money was not a significant issue for my family and I (top choices would have been Dartmouth and UChicago).</p>