Factors Affecting University Choice: A Study on University Freshman Students

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that affect students’ university choice in the university/major selection period. The data was obtained via a questionnaire developed by the researchers and applied to sample of participants comprising the 630 freshman students enrolled in two different universities located in north-west part of Turkey. This study was framed within quantitative paradigm. Descriptive survey designs were used to describe the factors that affect freshman’ university preferences. The questionnaire called “Factors Affecting University Choice Scale” explained 59.58 % of total variance along with six dimensions. As a result of the study, it was found that the most important factors affecting students' preferences were ‘future expectation for career’ and ‘quality and popularity of education given by universities’ dimensions, while the least effective dimension was ‘familiarities of cities and having familiars in cities’. It was found that students who had ‘low level’ social economic status give less importance to ‘quality and popularity of education given by universities’ than any other students. Another result which is supposed to be important is that as the students’ university entrance exam scores increase, they give less importance to the dimensions that are effective in the university preferences