Colleges That Charge the Most for Applying

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 and The Short List: Grad School to find data that matter to you in your college or graduate school search.

There's been much talk about the typically high cost of attending college, but applying can also be an expensive process.

Stanford University in California charges a $90 application fee, according to data submitted to U.S. News in spring 2014. Just as it was last year, Stanford's application fee is the highest for undergraduate students among the 1,073 ranked institutions that submitted data.

[Find out which schools came out on top in the 2015 Best Colleges rankings.]

Seven other schools, including the University of Southern California and the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, charge application fees of $80 or more.

Many schools charge prospective undergrads nothing to apply online, but applicants will pay between $10 and $75 if they submit a traditional application. Those schools include Drexel University in Pennsylvania, Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Benedictine College in Kansas.

[See photos of the top National Universities.]

Among all 1,073 schools, the average application fee is $41.

Below is a list of colleges that charge the highest application fees, though all schools listed will waive the fee for students with financial need. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of its ranking category. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find application fee 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 2014 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 or Best Graduate Schools. The application fee data above are correct as of Sept. 16, 2014.

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.