Princeton Review releases Dream Schools list of 2016 and we’re on it
Where does your school rank, and why?
The Princeton Review has released its Top 10 Dream Schools ranking as part of the annual Hope and Worries survey – and we’re in the top five.
Stanford and Harvard topped both parents’ and applicants’ charts, as they have for the past three years – Princeton is at number three for parents’ choice.
According to the site, this year’s survey polled 8,347 college applicants and 2,087 parents of applicants from across the states plus more than 20 countries abroad.
Overall, only five Ivies appeared on either list this year. Princeton moved up from eighth place on the students’ list in 2015 to fifth in 2016, while remaining the third most popular choice of parents. Neither Cornell, Dartmouth, nor Brown made it.
Yes, Princeton is excellent
In a drastic change, Yale, which ranked as the fourth most popular dream school among parents in 2015, did not rank at all for parents this year. On the students’ list, the university dropped from sixth to ninth.
While more than half of the Ivies did appear somewhere on the lists, parents and students seem to increasing favor public universities, like UC Berkley, USC, and the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, over an Ivy League label.
Perceived affordability may explain this trend. In 2006, college-bound families worried more about rejection from their first choice school than about anything else. But in 2007, the same year Americans experienced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, families’ began to worry more about student debt and college affordability.
Certain universities with huge per-capita endowments, like Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, do offer loans-free financial aid. But even in these schools, partial aid is often distributed on a pay scale according to a family’s annual income, leaving some middle-class students in a sticky situation. They are too rich to receive larger aid packages, but not rich enough to pay it all without loans.
For low-income students, financial aid packages may include mandatory on-campus jobs. These jobs can eat up a significant portion of an already-packed schedule, cutting into valuable study time, internship opportunities, and sleep.
Still, for many Americans, the possibility of a higher income in future outweighs the current costs. Let’s be realistic: A high school degree alone just does not cut it in today’s job market.
Take a look below to learn more about young America’s dreams and fears.
Source: The Princeton Review.