The Impact of Different Demographic Variables on Determinants of University Choice Decision: A Study on Business Administration Students of the Foundation Universities in Istanbul.

Students are now more careful and selective in choosing their universities. Nowadays, as there are many alternatives, the university choice process is highly complicated for them. It has long-term implications related to financial costs as well as psychological costs for any student. Therefore, to develop effective recruitment strategies has gained importance for university managers. They need to have a clear understanding of how and why the students select a university and the determining factors in decision-making process of students order to design their strategies. Even though understanding this process is not easy, identifying the relationship between some demographic variables and the factors influencing the process can be seen as a necessary activity. By using research results, higher education institutions can develop a better understanding of how demographic variables affect the determinants of the students' decision-making process for the universities. Understanding of this relationship has become an instrument for developing a recruitment strategy to establish a strong position against competitors.The subject of students' decision-making process for university choice has been widely examined by researchers. In the existing literature, many studies mention various criteria. Webb (1993) claimed that academic reputation, accreditation, proximity, costs, and potential marketability of the degree obtained are important factors for university choice process. Chapman (1993) proposed that the quality of the faculty and its degrees as well as overall academic reputation are significant determinants in students' decision-making process. Coccari and Javalgi (1995) indicated the following factors as influential: quality of faculty, degree programs, costs, variety of offerings, and classroom instruction. Kallio (1995) emphasized that residency, academic environment, reputation, and quality of institution, along with course diversity, institution size, and availability of financial aid are the elements that have significant importance on university choice process. Kaynama and Smith (1996) found that the opinions of others are important along with job availability for determining pre-business students' university choices. In a study conducted by Connor, Pearson, Court, and Jagger (1996) revealed that the availability of the subject of interest is the most important factor in university choice as well as tuition fees and other costs.Strasser, Ozgur, and Schroeder (2002) state that determinants of university choice process can be classified into three groups: interest of study, influence of others, and career prospects. Soutar and Turner (2002) sorted the factors of university choice process into two categories: university-related and personal factors. The university-related factors are as follows: type of course, academic reputation of the institution, campus, quality of the teaching staff, and type of university, and the personal factors are as follows: distance from home, family opinion, and university choices of friends. Mazzarol and Soutar (2002) identified six broader categories: institution characteristics, knowledge and awareness of the host country, recommendations from friends and relatives, environment, cost, social links, and geographic proximity. Belanger, Mount, and Wilson (2002) determined that campus, staff, and networking are important factors that influence students' choice for university. Donnellan (2002) emphasized the influence of personal contacts, parents, location, and social life on choice process. Hoyt and Brown (2003) listed the most important choice factors as academic reputation, quality of faculty and instruction, location, cost, scholarship offers, financial aid, and student employment opportunities. They also state that the other important factors are the size of institution, surrounding community, friendly service, availability of graduate programs, variety of courses offered, extracurricular programs, admission requirements, admission to the graduate school, affiliation, attractiveness of campus facilities, class size, and quality of social life. …