College Admissions and Facebook

April 12, 2011

Colleges obviously use Facebook as a forum to recruit students to apply to their school and to recruit students to attend once they’ve been accepted. But what colleges are doing this the most successfully? Let’s take a look at a “US News & World Report” chart by Ryan Lytle as published in “Colleges Bring Campuses to Facebook” in which they analyze the Facebook fans of the universities they ranked as the ten most prestigious universities in America.

School Name	Facebook Fans (as of 4/5/11)	U.S. NewsRanking
Harvard University	316,644	1
Princeton University	36,057	2
Yale University	19,191	3
Columbia University	18,490	4
Stanford University	133,915	5
University of Pennsylvania	18,523	5
California Institute of Technology	5,388	7
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	27,883	7
Dartmouth College	7,996	9
Duke University	72,765	9
University of Chicago	40,266	9

^{Lytle, Ryan. “Colleges Bring Campuses to Facebook.” US News & World Report. 7 April 2011. Web. 12 April 2011.}

And what about the universities with the most Facebook fans overall (not just the colleges that comprise “US News & World Report’s” Top 10? According to Ryan Lytle of “US News & World Report,” here they are (Harvard tops the list again):

School Name	Facebook Fans (as of 4/5/11)	U.S. NewsRanking
Harvard University	316,644	1
University of Michigan	267,858	29
Ohio State University	265,657	56
Texas A&M University	263,027	63
University of Texas	238,387	45
University of Florida	208,237	53
Pennsylvania State University	188,880	47
University of Alabama	171,036	79
Auburn University	155,219	85
Michigan State University	134,586	85