These are the schools where parents and students dream of attending.

PR Newswire reports.

The Princeton Review’s 2015 “College Hopes & Worries Survey” Reports On 12,000 Students’ & Parents’ “Dream Colleges” And Application Viewpoints

NEW YORK, March 18, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Some call it “the other March madness.” It’s nail-biting season now through April as college acceptance / rejection and financial aid award letters land in applicants’ e-mail and snail mailboxes.

According to The Princeton Review’s 2015 “College Hopes & Worries Survey” – the company’s 12th annual poll of college applicants and parents – concerns about college costs are soaring. Ninety percent of respondents this year said financial aid will be “Very necessary” to pay for college. Within that cohort 66% said “Extremely necessary.”

Stress about college applications – which 73% respondents reported – is higher than ever. The toughest part of the process? Taking college admission exams. However, 76% said they would prefer the ACT or current SAT to the new SAT (debuting in 2016) if all three tests were options.

Views about college are upbeat: 45% consider the main benefit of the diploma to be a “Potentially better job / higher income” and 99% believe college will be “Worth it.”

For the third consecutive year, Stanford was the college that applicants and parents most named as their “Dream College.” Harvard was the second most named college. (Top 10 lists follow.)

The Princeton Review (www.princetonreview.com), one of the nation’s best known education services companies, has conducted this survey since 2003. Findings for the 2015 survey are based on responses from 12,062 people: 80% were college applicants and 20% were parents of applicants. Respondents hailed from all 50 states and DC, plus several countries abroad.

Top 10 “Dream Colleges”

Answering the survey’s only fill-in-the-blank question, “What ‘dream college’ do you wish you or your child could attend if acceptance or cost weren’t issues?” respondents wrote in names of more than 700 institutions.

The colleges students most named as their “dream college” were:

Stanford University
Harvard College
New York University
Columbia University
University of California – Los Angeles
Yale University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Princeton University
Cornell University
University of Pennsylvania
The colleges parents most named as their “dream college” for their children were:

Stanford University
Harvard College
Princeton University
Yale University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
Columbia University
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
University of Notre Dame
University of California – Los Angeles