The Princeton Review Reports Its 2026 College Hopes & Worries Survey Findings

Editorial Staff

Now through April is an exciting but nerve-racking time for high school seniors and their parents receiving decisions from colleges about admission and financial aid applications.

According to a February 1 report from Common App—an organization that has 1,000+ colleges among its members—1.4 million high school seniors have submitted more than 9.2 million applications to schools for admission in the 2026–2027 academic year. This is a 5% increase over the number of applications that were submitted by this time in February 2025. Applications to public colleges are up 6%. Applications to private colleges are up 5%.

What is also up this year—according to The Princeton Review^‘s 24th annual College Hopes & Worries Survey of college applicants and their parents—is stress about applications, concerns about college costs, and hopes for financial aid.

The survey which the education services company has conducted online from January through late February since 2003 has 20 questions, most of which have been asked annually. A few questions on trending topics are added to the survey each year.

The 2026 survey polled 9,446 people: 7,179 (76%) were applicants to colleges; 2,267 (24%) were parents of applicants. They hailed from all 50 U.S. states as well as Canada and several countries abroad.

“Dream Colleges”

The first question on the survey, “What would be your ‘dream college’—the school you would most like to attend (or see your child attend)—if acceptance was a certainty and cost not an issue?” invites a fill-in-the-blank answer. Respondents entered in the names of more than 150 institutions as their “dream colleges.” Among them were highly selective schools (including most of the Ivies and many well-known private colleges), flagship state universities, technology schools, nursing schools, and community colleges. Some schools were named by hundreds of respondents as their “dream college.”

The 10 schools most named by student respondents as their “dream college” were: