10 Colleges That Receive the Most Applications

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Between application essays, letters of recommendation and the SAT or ACT, applying to college can seem daunting. But applicants are usually far from alone in the process.

Of the 1,254 ranked schools that submitted these data to U.S. News in an annual survey, the eight that received the highest number of applications for fall 2015 were public universities located in the Golden State. The University of California--Los Angeles had the most applicants for the third consecutive year.

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Boston University was once again among the 10 schools that received the most applications, and New York University is the only school that's new to the list, replacing the University of Southern California, which received 51,924 applications.

Among the 10 schools on the list, the average number of applicants was 68,325 -- significantly higher than the average among all the ranked colleges that submitted these data at 7,432.

Though the applicant pools at these colleges are large, none of them are among the top 10 colleges with the lowest acceptance rates or highest undergraduate enrollment for fall 2015, U.S. News data show.

[Explore college admissions trends at top National Universities in four graphs.]

Among the schools falling on the opposite end of the spectrum is Welch College in Tennessee, which received just 115 applications last fall.

Below are the 10 schools with the highest number of applicants for fall 2015. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find application data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed more than 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2016 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Colleges rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The application data above are correct as of Sept. 27, 2016.

Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.