NEW YORK — The faltering economy is forcing many high school seniors who were set on attending private colleges or universities to consider less expensive public ones.

"It's great for the public colleges," says Paul Kanarek, a vice president at the Princeton Review, the test preparation service. For years, he says, private schools usually got the top students, "based on the prominence of their brands and the size of their wallets. Now, the deck has been shuffled."

Because of the financial crisis, many students say they're dropping some big-ticket schools from their list of potential colleges and adding affordable ones.

Binghamton University, the most selective campus in the State University of New York system, says applications are running 50 percent ahead of last year. The 23-campus California State University system reports a 15 percent increase, and the University of Maryland a 5 percent jump.

"The financial situation is leading more families to look at affordability," says Cheryl Brown, Binghamton's admissions director. Tuition, room, board and other fees will cost about $16,000 there next year, about half what the College Board says average private colleges charge.

The increased interest in public colleges comes as some states are being forced to cut higher-education funding amid state budget squeezes. Florida, for example, plans a $130 million, 6 percent cut in funds for its university system. The University of Florida and Florida State University plan to cut enrollment by 1,000 and 1,500 students, respectively. The University of Hawai'i is anticipating budget cuts of more than $30 million, and university president David McClain has warned that further cuts may be possible.

An online survey of more than 2,500 prospective college students released this month by MeritAid.com, an Internet service providing information on colleges and scholarships, found that 57 percent of its users are considering less-expensive colleges.

"Private colleges are very nervous," says Bill McClintick, a guidance counselor at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania and a former college admissions officer.

Eliana Goolcharan, a senior at Oyster Bay High School on Long Island, had hoped to go out of state, perhaps to University of Texas-Austin ($34,000 yearly for out-of-staters) or maybe to a private school such as Providence College ($40,000). That now seems unlikely — especially given that her mother works for AIG, the insurance giant bailed out last month by the Federal Reserve.

So Goolcharan has expanded her list of colleges to include Queens College ($4,300 for tuition and fees), a commuter school in the City University of New York system, and she'll visit the University at Buffalo ($16,000, including room and board), a state school.

Ann McDermott, director of admissions at Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., says that students aren't writing off relatively expensive colleges such as the Jesuit school. "So far it feels like a typical fall," she says. "We're as busy as ever. We're not hearing, 'I can't afford you.' "

Kanarek says the richest, most selective schools, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, will be largely unaffected — their endowments are so large that, even with lower investment returns, they can add or maintain financial aid and attract top students.