10 Colleges That Attract the Most Transfer Students

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 graduate school search.

Not everyone finds their ideal college the first time around. For some students, transferring to another institution might be the best bet.

More than a third of the 3.6 million students who entered college for the first time in fall 2008 ended up transferring to another institution at least once in the next six years, according to a 2015 report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Almost half of those students transferred more than once.

[Learn 10 things prospective college transfer students need to know.]

Data submitted to U.S. News by more than 1,170 schools show that colleges and universities had an average of 479 transfer students enroll in fall 2014. In that semester, a total of more than 563,000 students transferred to new schools.

All 10 of the institutions that had the most transfer students in fall 2014 were located in Texas, California or Florida.

The University of Central Florida topped the list of schools with the most transfer students, welcoming 6,299 in fall 2014. The University of Texas--Arlington -- which came in third in terms of total students who transferred in fall 2014 -- had the highest acceptance rate for transfer students among the 10 schools at 85.3 percent.

[Consider how transferring schools can affect student loans.]

In contrast, California State University--Long Beach accepted just 33.3 percent of the transfers who applied. That institution had the highest number of transfer applicants for fall 2014 at 26,464, with 3,833 ultimately enrolling.

Below is a list of the 10 schools with the greatest numbers of enrolled transfer students in fall 2014. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

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

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find transfer student data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.

U.S. News surveyed nearly 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2015 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 data on transfer students above are correct as of Feb. 16, 2016.

Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.