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This year's high school seniors are more confident of their ability to pay for college than last year's seniors were, but they are still worried about cost issues, according to the 2021 Niche Senior Survey.
The survey found that 52 percent of the students are confident they can afford the college that they've chosen to enroll at, a significant rise from the uncertainty of last year's 32 percent.
Paying for college remains the students' biggest concern, however.
The total published price continues to be a deterrent for students. This year, 73 percent of students eliminated colleges from consideration because of the published cost. This is despite the large number of colleges where very few students pay the published rate.
Barely half of students said they would consider applying to a college whose cost was over $30,000.
The fastest-growing challenge for students is the lack of school counseling support. In 2019, only 11 percent reported this being a challenge, and this year 20 percent of students said that lack of a counselor was a challenge they faced.
An impact of the coronavirus pandemic was clear: 60 percent of students report being unable to visit any or many campuses this year, an increase from 52 percent last year.
And despite the hype about the most competitive colleges being impossible to get into, 79 percent of students who had a first-choice college reported that they were accepted to it.
The survey was of 19,277 students from the class of 2021 who had made a decision about which college they were going to attend.
