Backgrounds and Beliefs of College Freshmen

For five decades, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have surveyed the nation’s incoming freshmen to learn more about their backgrounds, views, and expectations. Use this interactive graphic (linked here – Backgrounds and Beliefs of College Freshmen)to see how their attitudes and self-images have changed since the 1960s, as measured by UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program, part of the Higher Education Research Institute.

They posted graphs showing how students responses varied to the following questions since the first survey was taken in 1966:

Questions regarding:

Experience with diversity
Academic workload
College being attended
First-choice college
The economy
Probable field of study
College distance from home
Number of colleges applied to
College living arrangements
Political view

Some of the charts are pretty interesting. I found the Number of colleges applied to chart of interest. Decades ago most students applied to 1 or 2 schools where now they apply to many more. In 2015 more than 36% of the students that took the survey applied to 6 or more colleges.