Top 10 Colleges in Applications Received

Although many may believe that the universities that are on the top of our list and of those such U.S News would receive the most applications, this is completely untrue. More than 8.2 million applications were sent to colleges across the U.S by prospective freshman in 2011. Of these 8.2 million applications, many were sent to colleges based in California.

In fact with technology and population both growing, many students are allowed to apply to more than 400 schools at one time via the Common Application, which ultimately lead to some student applying to more than 10 colleges.

UCLA got the highest amount of applicants with 61,564 for the fall of 2011, which is not only the largest amount reported from 1,333 colleges in a U.S News survey, but it is also way higher than the general per college average of 6,170 applications. Additionally, other California colleges account for half a million in freshman applications with seven of the top ten being in California. These include University of California- San Diego, University of California- Berkeley and California State University- Long Beach with about 50,000 applications each.

However, this is not to say that top universities do not receive a large amount of applications. It's just that colleges based in California may receive large amount of applicants due to Californian colleges having warm weather and the typical college lifestyle that many teenagers would want college to be like. To get a better idea on other colleges that receive a large pool of applicants, check the chart below from U.S News: