Princeton Review's 2010 'College Hopes & Worries Survey'

NEW YORK, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Some call it " the other March madness."  It's nail-biting season now through April as college acceptance/rejection and financial aid letters land in family mailboxes.

According to a Princeton Review survey of 9,132 college applicants and 3,042 parents of applicants, stress levels are up and college costs are a major concern this year: 86% of respondents say financial aid will be "very necessary" to pay for college, and 68% report the economic downturn has impacted their college decisions.

However, if cost was not an issue and acceptance a given, the "dream college" students and parents most wish the kids were heading to this fall is Stanford.

The Princeton Review, an education services company, has conducted its "College Hopes & Worries Survey" since 2003.  Findings this year are based on 12,174 surveys completed on paper or online by students and parents from all 50 states and DC.  The 15-question survey ran in The Princeton Review book, "Best 371 Colleges" (Random House, July 2009) and on www.PrincetonReview.com from late January to mid-March. All but one question was multiple-choice.

Top 10 Dream Colleges

For the survey's only fill-in-the-blank question, "What 'dream college' do you wish you (your child) could attend if acceptance or cost weren't issues?" respondents wrote in the names of more than 600 institutions from Adrian College to Yale University.  

The schools most named by students as their "Dream Colleges" were:

1. Stanford University
2. Harvard College
3. New York University
4. Princeton University
5. Brown University
6. Yale University
7. University of California--Los Angeles
8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
9. University of Southern California
10. Cornell University

The schools most named by parents as their "Dream Colleges" were:

1. Stanford University
2. Princeton University
3. Harvard College
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5. Yale University
6. University of California--Los Angeles
7. University of Notre Dame
8. Brown University
9. University of Southern California
10. New York University

Other Key Findings

Among respondents overall, responding to questions with multiple-choice answers, when asked about: