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Today's college applicants are using a broad set of Web tools to aid their search, starting to look for schools earlier in high school and applying to more institutions than their counterparts of just a few years ago, a new study has found.

In a poll of nearly 11,000 high school juniors and seniors, the education consultancy Eduventures developed a profile of a highly sophisticated--and choosy--college applicant, with direct implications for the recruitment strategies for higher education institutions.

"Given the increasingly competitive nature of the search environment and the declining number of high school graduates, colleges and universities need to be focused on recruiting and yield strategies that convey and reflect their unique value proposition to an increasingly sophisticated student," Kim Reid, program director and senior analyst at Eduventures' Enrollment Management Learning Collaborative, said in a statement.

The report found that students have been casting a wider net with their searches. For instance, high school seniors are now each applying to 7.3 colleges and universities on average, up 16 percent from 2008, when students applied to an average of 6.3 schools. Nearly 20 percent are applying to 10 or more schools.

Students who were leaning toward in-state public schools, somewhat predictably, said they were applying to slightly fewer institutions than those who were looking to attend out-of-state public schools. Students who planned to attend private colleges and universities on average applied to the most schools.

Along ethnic lines, the survey found that Asian, black and Hispanic students tended to apply to more colleges than they said they had actively considered, while white students reported the opposite tendency, applying to fewer colleges than they said they had considered.

YouTube for school: an earlier, more tech-savvy search process

Eduventures found that 42 percent of high school students are now starting their college search by their sophomore year or earlier. A roughly equivalent number began their search in their junior year, while about 16 percent didn't begin scouting for schools until their senior year. Eduventures reported that students who were actively searching for out-of-state public schools were slightly more likely to start looking earlier, while those interested in in-state public schools tended to begin their search slightly later.

Not surprisingly, students across the board said that technology plays a major role in their college search, though traditional print materials remain in favor, as well. High school students, typically juniors, who are in the earlier stages of their search tended to rely more heavily on printed literature. By contrast, seniors reported that they look more closely at the school's official website.

Then too, in a sign of the times, third-party and social networking websites are playing a more prominent role in high school students' college searches. Respondents to the Eduventures survey said that Google and CollegeBoard were their favorite and most commonly used third-party sites. Among seniors, the next most popular online tools were ACT and the Princeton Review. On the social side, a large minority of 44 percent of the respondents said they looked to video hub YouTube in their college search, while 41 percent reported that they used Facebook to research schools.

Once in college, large majorities (70 percent in-state public schools, 69 percent out-of-state public, 70 percent private) said they expect to take summer courses. Between 30 percent and 36 percent, depending on the type of institution, said they intend to transfer to another school. Significant minorities ranging from 15 percent to 19 percent said they plan to complete some courses entirely online at their school, with the heaviest interest in online instruction coming from those attending in-state public schools.

The value proposition, in college and beyond

Asking about students' plans beyond college, Eduventures found that a striking majority of respondents said they intended to pursue degrees beyond the bachelor's level, regardless of what discipline they expected to study. Among students planning to take their degrees in the arts, humanities or social sciences, 38 percent of respondents said they planned to pursue a master's degree, while 24 percent planned to go on to earn a Ph.D. For students pursuing a degree in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects, 33 percent are planning to take a master's degree, and 32 percent have their sights set on a Ph.D.

Perhaps in light of that heightened interest in post-secondary education, students identified advanced academic opportunities as a primary element of what they look for in an undergraduate institution, giving weight to how well the institution can prepare them for graduate or professional school, opportunities for undergraduate research, the availability of an honors program, and the percentage of undergraduates who go on to graduate school.

Additionally, students said they evaluated potential schools in terms of their core academic offerings in their expected area of study, the academic environment as defined by metrics, such as student-to-faculty ratio, and the diversity of academic opportunities.

Those criteria came on top of what Eduventures describes as the four core priorities with which students approach the college selection process, namely affordability, career opportunities after graduation and the social and physical environments the school offers.

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• Forbes ranks top 650 colleges and universities