A new survey shows that the rising costs in a post-recession economy are significantly impacting  the college choices for incoming freshmen.

Allie Grasgreen of “Inside Higher Ed” has these details.

The 2013-14 academic year marks a half-decade since the economic recession hit, but concerns about the costs of attending college are influencing incoming freshmen more than ever, a new survey shows.

While more than three-quarters of this year’s freshmen were admitted to their first-choice institution, an all-time low of 56.9 percent chose to attend it. Nearly 46 and 48 percent — both all-time highs — said price and financial aid, respectively, were “very important” in their decision about which institution to attend.

Among students who were accepted but did not enroll at their first-choice institution, about a quarter said lack of financial aid from that college was a very important factor in their decision, and 60 percent said the same of being offered financial aid from the institution they chose to attend.

The record-setting numbers are not an anomaly. Last year’s survey found that financial concerns increasingly affected students’ decision-making in ways both educational (where to attend college and what to study) and personal (why to attend and whether to live on campus).

So it appears the impact of the 2008 economic recession has only gotten stronger from year to year.

“As state economies have recovered, we haven’t really seen all of those dollars come back into higher education, and it’s concerning that they may be gone for good,” said Kevin Eagan, interim director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, which publishes the report annually.