Students opt out from their first-choice colleges due to Cost

Fewer college freshmen are attending their top choice of schools, and many appear to be doing so not because they were rejected by their first choice but for financial reasons, a national survey shows.

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.

That was "quite surprising," says John Pryor, director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, which conducted the survey, out today. "The general assumption is that if you're not going to your first choice, it's because you didn't get in."