• Sunday, February 19, 2012
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NYU Remains Applicants' 'Dream College,' Survey Finds

While college-sports fans wonder if the University of Florida men’s basketball team will repeat as national champion, New York University has already pulled off a “three-peat” as college applicants’ “dream college,” according to a report released today by the Princeton Review, the test-prep company.

Students’ parents, however, may be telling them to keep dreaming. Most parents want their kids to go to Stanford University, the report says. Princeton University was parents’ second choice, and Harvard University was students’.

The Princeton Review polled about 4,600 college applicants and 1,300 parents from across the United States in a survey that was conducted partly online and partly on paper over a six-month period. So there may be some methodological gaps. The respondents were asked about their “hopes and worries,” including how students will decide where to enroll, how their families will pay the bills, and how stressed out about it they all are.

Nearly two-thirds of both groups said their stress levels were high or very high. —Sara Lipka