The Main Factors that Influence the Decision in Choosing a Path in Tertiary Education

Abstract Choosing a college may be a difficult and sometimes an unpredictable process, but it is mainly seen from one perspective. We can find a lot of articles that give advice on how to make the best decision, but we do not know exactly the final result: what made a person choose a college over another one. So, a college can also be seen as a product. It is important to know the candidate's expectation and to determine his / her motivation. Many would say that the main influence is the passion for a particular field, but there are few who know exactly what they want to become when they graduate High cchool which lead us into thinking that there are other significant motives. Therefore the purpose of this study is to determine the most important characteristics which take part in the process of the decision. In order to understand how people make choices between universities, a survey was conducted (collecting the quantitative information from young Romanian citizens) from which we extracted the ideal profile of a college and the satisfaction concerning the choices made by students. The results give a general view on what the candidates / students expect from the universities.