Report: Aggies Defy National College Enrollment Trend

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (Nov. 4, 2019) – North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is among the nation’s 100 colleges and universities where applications have increased the most – bucking the national trend of declining enrollment – so says a 24/7 Wall Street report.

24/7 Wall Street placed North Carolina A&T State University at No. 68, with a 62.2% acceptance rate and 59.3% increase in applications from the 2012-13 academic year to the 2017-18 academic year, when the university received 10,661 applications and had total undergraduate enrollment of 12,142 students.

N.C. A&T’s student body has expanded to more than 12,500, the largest in the university’s history. The university set another record by drawing nearly 25,000 applications for admission this school year, a 6,000-application increase from last year.

This year’s enrollment also makes N.C. A&T the nation’s largest four-year historically black university for a sixth consecutive year.

Boosting enrollment to 14,000 students by 2023 is one of the key components of the university’s strategic plan, “A&T Preeminence: Taking the Momentum to 2023.” The plan is designed to build upon the success of its previous incarnation, which saw undergraduate enrollment surge past the 2020 goal of 10,000 three years ahead of schedule.

The 24/7 Wall Street list included only two other public HBCUs: Central State University in Ohio and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Shaw University and Wingate University join N.C.A&T as the only North Carolina institutions on the list.

Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 24/7 Wall Street calculated acceptance rates and reviewed five-year changes in the number of applications submitted to nearly 600 four-year post-secondary institutions to identify the 100 where applications climbed the most. Only colleges and universities with at least 4,000 applicants in 2012 were considered.

NCES also provided the annual price of the institutions, which represents the cost of attendance including in-district tuition and fees, books and supplies, on-campus room and board, and other campus expenses for fulltime first-time degree-seeking undergraduate students living on campus.

N.C. A&T had the lowest annual price – $18,136 – among all colleges and universities on the 24/7 Wall Street list, which is the latest report to highlight the value of obtaining an education from the university.

In October, job-finding website Zippia.com named N.C. A&T one of the top 10 best colleges for jobs in North Carolina.

Earlier this fall, Money magazine’s “Best Colleges for Your Money 2019” ranked N.C. A&T the most affordable campus among the 22 North Carolina colleges and universities it surveyed. It also has the third-lowest cost to attend among all 744 colleges and universities in the magazine’s list.

In addition, N.C. A&T moved up in the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges 2020” rankings, earning recognition as the nation’s No. 1 public HBCU and breaking into the numeral rankings among national universities for the first time.