Top 10 Highest College Application Fees

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Students who are searching for their future college home are generally advised by high school counselors to apply to multiple schools in order to broaden chances for admissions. In fact, the College Board states that students should apply to five to eight institutions, including a range of options from safety schools—colleges and universities students are positive they'll get into—to reach schools, at which admissions to the school may be more of a stretch for some students.

[Discover the top schools in the 2012 Best Colleges rankings.]

But applying to so many schools can get expensive. The average application fee across all schools for the 2010-2011 academic year was $37.64, according to data reported by 1,457 schools in an annual survey to U.S. News. (At 44 of the schools that reported data, there is no application fee.) If a student applied to eight schools, then, and paid the national average for each application, he or she would spend about $300. Keep in mind, though, there are many schools that will waive the fee for students with financial need, while others offer a waiver to students who apply online.

Still, that sum is a far cry from what students who applied to schools with the most expensive application fees would have paid. Among the colleges with the 10 highest application fees, the average cost was $77.38. National Universities, which are typically larger schools with bigger enrollments, were among the most represented on the list.

But it was George Mason University, a National University near Washington, D.C., that topped the likes of Stanford University and Columbia University with an application fee of $100. Two schools—Villanova University and Columbia—charged applicants $80, while 16 schools charged $75. (Due to these ties, there are more than 10 schools on the list below.)

[See colleges and universities that offer the best value.]

Schools that were designated by U.S. News as Unranked were not considered for this report. U.S. News did not calculate a numerical ranking for Unranked programs because the program did not meet certain criteria that U.S. News requires to be numerically ranked.

Here are the schools that have the highest application fees for undergraduates, all which are at least double the national average cost. Schools are listed from highest fee to lowest and are listed alphabetically if they have the same fee:

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

U.S. News surveyed more than 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2011 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported a myriad of data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News's data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While the data comes from the schools themselves, these lists have no influence over U.S. News's rankings of Best Colleges or Best Graduate Schools.