Kevin Eagan, Jennifer B. Lozano, Sylvia Hurtado & Matthew H. Case:

Analyses of the 48th annual administration of the CIRP Freshman Survey find substantive shifts in students’ college application strategies, as students increasingly apply to more than four institutions. With fewer students enrolling in their first-choice institution, the data show that college cost and financial aid issues have become even more salient in students’ college choice process. Given the proliferation of online education in recent years, students’ partici- pation in online instruction before coming to college and expectations to enroll in online courses while in college are examined. More than a year after President Barack College cost and financial aid issues have become even more salient in students’ college choice process. Obama was re-elected, we take stock of students’ attitudes about some of the most-discussed political issues in 2013, including gun control, taxes, and gay rights. We also review the changing demographics of students’ high schools and neighborhoods, and changes in the CIRP Freshman Survey made to more accurately capture students’ cognitive and interpersonal skills associated with engaging in a diverse society.
 
 Finally, we analyze the impact of changes made to the 2013 CIRP Freshman Survey that expanded and revised our set of response options for students’ and their parents’ careers. The results reported in this monograph are based upon 165,743 first-time, full-time students who entered 234 four-year U.S. colleges and universities of varying levels of selectivity and type. Weights have been applied to these data to reflect the more than 1.5 million first-time, full-time undergraduate students who began college at 1,583 four-year colleges and universi- ties across the U.S. in the fall of 2013. This means that differences of one percentage point in the results published here reflect the characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes of more than 15,000 first-year students nationally. We describe the full methodology of the CIRP Freshman Survey administration, stratification scheme, and weighting approach in Appendix A.