11 Colleges That Attract the Most Older Students

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Not everyone enters college straight out of high school.

In some cases, the college experience doesn't happen until later in life. A student might transition immediately from high school into the workforce, for example, or enlist in the military, deciding years down the road that a bachelor's degree can boost his or her job prospects.

Among the 11 U.S. News-ranked schools with the highest percentage of students 25 and older in fall 2015, the average was 66 percent. The Metropolitan College of New York topped the list, where 82 percent of its 779 undergraduates fell into that category.

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But among all 1,116 ranked schools that submitted these data to U.S. News in an annual survey, the average percentage of older students was significantly lower, at just 13.7 percent.

Seven of the schools on the list are designated as Rank Not Published, or RNP, meaning that they rank in the bottom one-fourth of their ranking category. In those cases, U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Liberty University in Virginia and Cardinal Stitch University in Wisconsin are the only National Universities on the list; these schools offer programs at the undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels. The remainder are either Regional Universities -- which have a range of undergraduate programs and some master's but few doctoral programs -- or Regional Colleges, which focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than half their degrees in the liberal arts.

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Liberty University and the for-profit DeVry University also have significantly higher enrollment than the other schools on the list. That's because the two universities are designed with working adult students in mind; both have high online student enrollment, for example, and DeVry has satellite campuses across the U.S.

Other schools on the list offer special programs for older students. Jacksonville University in Florida, for instance, has its Accelerated Degree Program, designed for working adults pursuing a bachelor's degree.

Below are the 11 colleges that had the highest percentages of students 25 and older in fall 2015, including ties. 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 on this list? 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 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 enrollment data above are correct as of Jan. 3, 2017.

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