Porsha Cochran, a senior at Hyde Park Career Academy, was accepted to her first-choice college, Tennessee State University, for the fall. But due to high tuition costs and the recession, she turned down the offer, and instead will attend the more affordable University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

“If I had chosen to go to Tennessee State, I would have had to go paying full tuition, which is $30,000 per year,” said Cochran. “I couldn’t afford to go there, so I changed to Arkansas at Pine Bluff,” which is less than one-third the cost at $8,019 per year for out-of-state tuition, according to the college's Web site.

Cochran is not the only high school student having to make difficult college decisions to accommodate hard financial realities during the recession.

According to the Higher Education Research Institute, the percentage of students who attended their first-choice colleges in 2008 declined to a 34-year-low of 60.7 percent from 63.9 percent in 2007. In addition, the percentage of students who were accepted by their first-choice colleges, but decided to attend a lower-tier choice, rose to 17.1 percent in 2008, compared with 16.5 percent in 2007.

Veronica Jackson, a college counselor at Hyde Park Career Academy, said she has witnessed many a disappointment this year due to the recession.

“There are many students this year that desperately wanted to go to one school, but either the parents wouldn’t take out a loan, or it was just too much, and they just couldn’t handle it,” Jackson said.

Data also showed that the percentage of students stating that financial aid offers were “essential” in choosing which school to attend jumped to 43 percent in 2008, up from 39.7 percent in 2007, the highest level tallied since the survey began in 1973.

John Letts, the president and owner of Collegiate Financial Advisors in Downers Grove, said students and their parents must be prepared to spend about $87,000, on average, for an in-state college degree in Illinois. For out-of-state or elite private schools, the cost is much higher.

“At the elite schools, where the kids don’t qualify for any need-based aid, then [the cost is] a couple of hundred thousand dollars easily,” Letts said.

If the student takes the full allotment, $27,000, of Stafford Loans, that leaves parents with another $173,000 to cover, he added, “and if they don’t understand that [cost] until their child goes off to school, they’re going to go broke in the process.”

University officials say that in many cases this year, it’s the middle- or upper-middle-class students who are being impacted the most.

Michael Mills, the associate provost for university enrollment at Northwestern University, said the number of lower-income students who have accepted admissions offers actually increased for the coming academic year.

“Interestingly enough, we have had big increases in low-income students,” said Mills. “So I would theorize that if anybody left or didn’t come, who might have in a previous year, it would probably be middle- to upper-middle-class students for whom it would be really difficult in the absence of need-based financial aid to pay for a $200,000+ degree at Northwestern.”

Mills said that during the 2009-2010 academic year, the financial aid office expects to spend a total of $88 million in financial aid compared with last year, when the office spent $78 million. He said the $10 million increase is a sign that Northwestern will be taking in more students of needier families than it has in years.

Sarah Galer, a spokeswoman for the University of Chicago, said that more than half of the incoming class will receive financial aid, with an average annual need-based grant award of $33,573. But, she wrote in an e-mail, the recession has impacted the number of students accepting freshman positions at the U of C.

“The recession has had an effect on the admissions yield for next year at the University of Chicago, though it is still difficult to determine the extent of the effect specifically,” Galer said. “As [one] would expect in this financial climate, many families are reporting difficulties related to the economy.”

One result of students’ diminished ability to afford higher education tuition, many of those interviewed said, is likely to be increased enrollment in two-year community and online colleges, as opposed to traditional four-year colleges.

Not only does Letts think many students will begin to flock to local two-year colleges, but he also predicts many currently enrolled students may be forced to abort their four-year degrees.

“I believe many kids are going to probably fill up the community and junior colleges in their local school districts and county districts,” said Letts. “Kids who intend to enroll in an institution for four years might find they can only go for one – and I think it might be a couple of years before it makes its way through the college system.”

The Delta Cost Project on Postsecondary Education Costs similarly projects a significant increase in enrollments at public community colleges.

“In about half the states, community colleges are likely to face mid-year reductions in their appropriations,” the Delta Cost Project report stated. “The same economic crisis behind these reductions is also increasing demand on community colleges as students are pushed out of higher-priced institutions.”

In spite of the grim outlook, Letts says the advice he typically offers families of college-bound students has not changed during the recession. In fact, he said the only thing that has changed is that people may be more willing to hear it now.

“What most parents don’t do—is they don’t know what college is going to cost until they start getting the bills, so I would say that parents have to become more vigilant when it comes to assessing the expense of college,” he said.

Once that is known, Letts urges parents to compute how much of the college expenses will be covered by savings and government student loans. If there are more expenses to be covered, he advises looking at alternative lenders, such as Sallie Mae or commercial banks.

“What the recession demands of high school parents right now,” Letts concluded, “is less last-minute planning.”