The students'' intentions and satisfaction with the field of study and university

Introduction: the present study aimed to find an appropriate method toinform senior high school students to correctly select their academic field ofstudy and their intentions.methods: this is a descriptive-analytic and cross-sectional study. a verifiedquestionnaire was given to a total of 2600 students selected by stratified randomsampling method (ten different colleges and entrance year from the 1st to 4thare considered as the strata). the position of the present field of study (major)among the list of the fields in the entrance exam was asked. the students’methods of familiarity with different fields of study in shiraz universityof medical sciences (sums), the reasons for their selection, the students’motivation and insistence on studying in the same field and university wereasked in the questionnaire. data were analyzed using independent two samplest-test, analysis of variance (anova) and chi-square test.results: the most significant references for university field selection were highschool teachers, the students' parents and the adjacency of university to one'sliving place. also, the results revealed the good reputation of sums in the firstyear and its downward trend during the following years. 59.4% of the 1st yearstudents were satisfied with their field of study and sums. 31.8% were satisfiedwith the university but not with their fields of study. 6.4% were dissatisfiedwith the university but not with their fields of study. 2% of the students weredissatisfied with both their fields of study and university. dissatisfaction withsums and field of study increased little by little so that the results obtainedamong the students who had entered the university earlier (in the 4th year oftheir study) showed nearly 16.3% dissatisfaction with both the university andthe study fields .conclusion: the methods for introducing the university are recommended tobe revised.