10 Universities With the Highest Undergrad Enrollment
The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or graduate school search.
Some college students learn best in small classes, on small campuses, with a small peer group. Others, however, thrive on campuses that are comparable to midsize towns and in entry-level courses that seat 500.
Larger schools, which can have well over 25,000 students, often come with many benefits, such as hundreds of extracurricular activities, as well as a variety of campus housing options and local eateries.
Prospective college students who believe bigger is better have several schools to choose from. The University of Central Florida, for example, had 52,532 undergraduates enrolled during fall 2014. It had the highest undergraduate enrollment among 1,276 ranked institutions that submitted data to U.S. News.
[Learn how to make a large school feel like home.]
The University of Central Florida also topped the list for highest undergraduate enrollment for fall 2013, albeit with a slightly smaller student body: 51,269 undergrads.
Every school on the fall 2013 list also made the 2014 list, including one for-profit school: DeVry University. During fall 2014, it had 42,382 students.
Among the 10 schools with the highest undergraduate enrollment, the average number of students was 43,628 -- about seven times more than the average for all ranked institutions of 6,191.
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American Jewish University in California, with an undergraduate enrollment of 102 students in fall 2014, had the lowest number of undergrads among all schools.
Below are the 10 schools with the highest undergraduate student enrollment in fall 2014. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
School name (state) | Fall 2014 undergraduate enrollment | U.S. News rank and category |
|---|---|---|
52,532 | 168 (tie), National Universities | |
49,744 | 80 (tie), Regional Universities (South) | |
47,093 | 70 (tie), National Universities | |
44,741 | 52 (tie), National Universities | |
42,382 | RNP*, Regional Universities (Midwest) | |
40,974 | RNP, National Universities | |
40,541 | 47 (tie), National Universities | |
39,968 | 129 (tie), National Universities | |
39,523 | 52 (tie), National Universities | |
38,786 | 75 (tie), National Universities |
* RNP schools fall in the bottom one-fourth of their ranking category. U.S. News calculates numerical ranks for these schools, but does not publish them.
Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find enrollment 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 nearly 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2015 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 enrollment data above are correct as of Sept. 29, 2015.
Delece Smith-Barrow is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering graduate schools. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dsmithbarrow@usnews.com.
