Abstract

Choosing a college program is a crucial decision as it sets the foundation for their future academic and professional paths. Multiple factors such as guidance, personal interest, job prospects, financial resources, school reputation, and peer and family influences have been found to be influential in recent studies. Students are also faced with dilemmas that affect their decisions, often regretting their decision later on in their academic journey. Building on that, high school students are often unprepared for the transition to college and may not have a clear understanding of the factors that should influence their program preferences. This quantitative study explores and the immediate factors influencing the college program preferences of Grade 12 students of Holy Family Academy. A simple-random sampling technique was used in identifying the participants for the study which were given a survey-questionnaire to gather data on their immediate factors for choosing a college program. To statistically analyze the data, descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, and weighted mean were used. Through the adapted questionnaire by Ouano et al. (2019), it was found that the most influential factor in the research setting was Future Job Opportunities, followed by Interest and Socio-Economic Considerations. However, findings in this research do not support that family influence has a significant impact on college program preferences. In spite of that, it is crucial to consider that one factor cannot universally determine the college program preferences of all students; therefore, other factors should also be taken to account.