Eagan, K., Lozano, J. B., Hurtado, S., & Case, M. H. (2013). The American freshman: National norms. Fall 2013. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.

“Financial considerations are exerting an ever-greater influence on incoming freshman in the U.S., with college costs and financial aid playing an increasingly decisive role in their school-selection process, according to the CIRP Freshman Survey, UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s entering students at four-year colleges and universities. The survey, part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), is administered nationally by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Although more than three-quarters (75.5 percent) of those surveyed were admitted to their first-choice campus in 2013, the number of those who actually enrolled at their first-choice school hit an all-time low, as cost and financial aid incentives swayed decisions.”