10 Colleges With the Most Undergraduates

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 grad school search.

Though some college hopefuls want to attend a small undergraduate institution with a close-knit community where virtually everybody knows everyone else, others prefer bigger schools where they can blend into a crowd.

Prospective college students may also find large undergraduate institutions appealing because these schools tend to offer a large number and variety of student clubs and sports teams. Plus, many provide an abundance of undergraduate research opportunities.

Students eager to attend one of the nation's largest colleges can consult the undergraduate enrollment statistics that 1,256 ranked schools provided to U.S. News in an annual survey.

Among these colleges and universities, the average number of undergraduates in fall 2018 was 6,365. But at the 10 schools with the most students, the average was 45,807 undergrads.

Nine of these 10 schools are National Universities, which are academic institutions that offer a variety of undergraduate, master's and doctoral programs and that also typically conduct research. The one exception is Broward College in Florida, which is designated as a Regional College, meaning that it is an undergraduate-focused institution that grants less than half of its degrees in liberal arts fields. All but one of these 10 academic institutions are public schools; the outlier is Liberty University, which is a private Christian school in Virginia.

The University of Central Florida once again had the largest enrollment by far, with 58,913 students. That enormous undergraduate cohort stands in stark contrast to the number of students enrolled at the smallest ranked school: Marlboro College, a liberal arts school in Vermont that had only 146 students.

Below is a list of the 10 colleges that enrolled the most undergraduates in fall 2018. 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 admissions and retention statistics, complete rankings and much more. Sign up for the U.S. News Extra Help: College Admissions free email newsletter to receive expert advice twice a month.

U.S. News surveyed more than 1,900 colleges and universities for our 2019 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 undergraduate enrollment data above is correct as of Oct. 1, 2019.