1 NJ school makes top-50 list of colleges where applications are on fire

The COVID-19 emergency created just a little pause in a yearly trend of increasingly more college applications being filed in the U.S.

Today, applications are still flying in to colleges and universities across the country, and the learning platform Numerade has created a list of the higher-ed schools where applications are growing the fastest.

The top-50 list includes one New Jersey school. The Northeast doesn't have much of a presence on the list.

To be eligible for the list, a school had to offer a four-year degree and receive at least 2,000 applications in the 2022-2023 school year.

Numerade used data from the National Center for Education Statistics to come up with the list. The rankings are based on a percentage increase in applications from 2019-2020 to 2022-2023 (the latest data available).

According to the analysis, prospective college students submitted more than 13 million applications to U.S. colleges and universities for an undergraduate education in fall 2022. In 2014, that number was around 9.6 million.

The No. 1 spot belongs to Stainbridge University, in Irvine, California. According to the analysis, the number of applicants in 2022-2023 represented an increase of more than 1,000% from 2019.

Unity College, in New Gloucester, Maine, took the No. 2 position. The school received 6,312 applications in the 2022-2023 academic year — a 542% jump from 2019.

NJ school makes the list

You'll find the lone New Jersey institution on the list at No. 41.

Caldwell University, a private institution, handled more than 6,600 applications in the 2022-2023 school year, according to Numerade's anaylsis. That's a 153% spike from 2012, and an increase of 88.5% from 2019.

The school in Essex County admitted more than 4,400 students for 2022-2023, the analysis shows. That's an increase of about 34% from a few years ago.

No schools in Pennsylvania made Numerade's list. Colgate University, in Hamilton (No. 28), and D'Youville University, in Buffalo (No. 27), are the two New York schools to make the list.

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