This summer, high school students worldwide will begin researching the colleges that best suit their ambitions for the future, sending millions of applications to their top schools by the fall.

Numerade recently analyzed National Center for Education Statistics data to rank the 50 colleges where applications are growing the fastest. To be included, colleges and universities had to receive at least 2,000 applications in the 2022-2023 school year and offer four-year degrees. They are ranked by the percent increase in applications from the 2019-2020 school year to the 2022-2023 school year, the latest data available.

Among the 50 colleges, the nine Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) included were Grambling State University (#5), Paul Quinn College (#6), Edward Waters University (#13), South Carolina State University (#15), Morehouse College (#16), Fisk University (#19), Morgan State University (#30), Fort Valley State University (#31), Bethune-Cookman University (#50).

College application volumes have grown steadily over the past decade, plateauing in 2020 and rising again the following year. The COVID-19 pandemic presented a blow to the college experience, altering it completely and pushing enrollees into online courses they didn’t intend to take. Applications have seen growth, but by 2022, around 1.5 million fewer students were enrolled in college than before the pandemic.

Some schools have continued to grow their applications by more than 100% from 2019-2022 despite survey data suggesting that the overall enrollment decline is primarily due to the belief that a college degree holds less value today than in previous decades.

That’s despite evidence of a growing earnings gap between young people with college degrees and those without. The typical college degree recipient can earn $20,000 more annually when entering the workforce than their peers without a degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.