An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Students' College-Choice Behavior And College-Choice Satisfaction

This dissertation addresses the relationship between students' college-choice behavior and their self-reported satisfaction rate, in the hope that it may test the rationality of such a behavior. Featured as a decision-making process, the college-choice behavior refers to a multi-dimensional vector modeling two phases of the behavior - the preparation period and the decision-making period. A survey instrument was developed based on the model and was administered to students with more than one-year stay upon their enrollment into East China Normal University. Survey data were analyzed by using a variety of descriptive and inferential statistics, including principal component analysis and correlation analysis. Major findings in this research show: (1) that six major factors (financial demand, cultural demand, academic demand, location-related demand, employment demand and belonging-sensed demand) reveal that influence students' college-choice behavior; (2) the level of self-knowledge and the amount of gathered information about the college attended are both positively correlated with students' satisfaction with their college choice; and (3) that the factors of academic demand, location-related demand and employment demand are positively correlated with students' satisfaction with their college choice, whereas that of cultural demand negatively correlated. With an unproven external validity, the author suggests a cautious application of this research when translated to the general field of college-choice behavior. The survey developed in this research, however, provides college admission authorities with a blueprint on which an institutional study for marketing purposes is based.