National study reports huge increase in use of Internet by high school students and doom for the traditional paper college application   BALTIMORE, MD (BUSINESS WIRE) - The findings released May 7, from a national study conducted on the use of computer-based communications technologies by college-bound high school students with above-average academic ability reveal a near-revolutionary increase in the number who use the Internet to obtain information about colleges. The proportion accessing college web sites has jumped from only 4 percent little more than a year ago to 58 percent today. The study also suggests that the traditional paper college application is doomed. A year ago, 73 percent of students said they preferred filing a traditional paper college application. Today only half of the students surveyed prefer using a traditional application, while half prefer filing their college application on-line or by floppy disk. There is also bad news for commercial on-line services such as America On-Line and CompuServe, as well as commercial on-line, college-information providers such as Peterson's Guides. The study found that a rapidly growing number of high schools students are bypassing them in favor of direct access to the Internet and individual college home pages. These and other findings will be published in an upcoming issue of StudentPoll, a subscription-based, quarterly research report on the attitudes and behaviors of college-bound high school students and their parents. StudentPoll is published by Art & Science Group Inc., a national institutional marketing and research firm headquartered in Baltimore. The study consisted of telephone interviews with 400 college-bound high school seniors nationwide. Students eligible to participate in the study had combined SAT scores of 1050 or above - the top 50 percent of SAT takers. "The findings of this study confirm that the Internet and computer technologies are rapidly becoming a major factor in college choice," said Richard Hesel, publisher of StudentPoll and a principal of Art & Science Group. "The magnitude of the change is unprecedented in so short a period of time." According to Hesel, the findings from a benchmark technology study conducted about one year ago revealed that only a fraction of this population was taking advantage of new communications technologies, and a lack of computer expertise and sufficient hardware presented major barriers to access. By comparison, this year's study reveals that an overwhelming majority of students own or use computers with the hardware needed to access on-line communications, nearly half rate themselves experienced or highly proficient in the use of computers, and market access to and use of the Internet and World Wide Web has soared with 72 percent of students reporting access to the Internet.