Quad
Trends by state

Trends by state

Colorado

21 colleges on the site: 12 public, 5 private nonprofit, 4 for-profit. Their undergraduates grew 19% in total since fall 2014, to 163,966 today (20 of 21 Colorado colleges in the panel).

Explore Colorado's colleges

How Colorado's colleges changed

The median Colorado college, fall 2014 to fall 2024, against the national median (dashed) over the same .

Undergraduates

-3%

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Applicants

+72%

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Acceptance rate

+2.1 pts

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Average total cost

-4%

over 10 years, median college

  • This state
  • National median

Public and private

State stories are often public-system stories: a state's publics shrinking while its privates hold, or the reverse.

Public

12 colleges
Undergrads
-11%
Applicants
+86%
Acceptance rate
+2.3 pts
Average cost
-2%

Private nonprofit

5 colleges

Where Colorado's first-years come from

Top sending states

  1. Colorado (in-state)60%
  2. CA7%
  3. TX5%
  4. IL2%
  5. WA2%
  6. AZ1%
  7. FL1%
  8. NM1%

Public:

26% → 29% (12 colleges)

Private nonprofit:

60% → 67% (5 colleges)

First-years crossing state lines, fall 2024

Inflow
9,426
Outflow
10,677
Net
-1,251

Colorado's colleges enroll 0.9 first-years from other states for every Colorado resident who starts college in another state, among four-year colleges on this site.

Colleges taking the most of the inflow

  1. University of Colorado Boulder35%
  2. Colorado State University-Fort Collins18%
  3. United States Air Force Academy11%
  4. University of Denver9%
  5. Colorado School of Mines8%

One fall, over campus-based colleges only: not that fall, not for-profit, and not a campus that merged or split.

Biggest movers in Colorado

The same as the national lists, restricted to Colorado's colleges.

Applications surged

, fall 2014 to fall 2024

Median college: +72.2% (13 colleges ranked)

  1. 1Regis University+136.3%2,422 → 5,722
  2. 2University of Colorado Boulder+133.2%28,852 → 67,286
  3. 3Colorado State University-Fort Collins+131.0%16,655 → 38,465
  4. 4University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus+106.8%7,220 → 14,931
  5. 5Fort Lewis College+104.4%2,439 → 4,986
  6. 6Metropolitan State University of Denver+86.2%6,242 → 11,622
  7. 7University of Colorado Colorado Springs+72.2%7,636 → 13,147
  8. 8University of Northern Colorado+42.1%7,831 → 11,127
  9. 9University of Denver+37.4%13,670 → 18,786
  10. 10United States Air Force Academy+12.6%9,050 → 10,187

Sources:IPEDS Admissions survey, Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Fall Enrollment survey (distance education), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024About the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)

Top 10 and how it's ranked

Grew the most

, fall 2014 to fall 2024

Median college: −6.6% (15 colleges ranked)

  1. 1Colorado School of Mines+40.4%4,383 → 6,155
  2. 2University of Colorado Boulder+23.5%25,873 → 31,939
  3. 3Colorado State University-Fort Collins+14.1%22,373 → 25,538
  4. 4University of Denver+7.0%5,629 → 6,025
  5. 5United States Air Force Academy+4.1%3,952 → 4,114

Sources:College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Fall Enrollment survey (distance education), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024About the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)

Top 5 and how it's ranked

Students pay much less

(in 2023–24 dollars), 2013–14 to 2023–24

Median college: −4.2% (14 colleges ranked)

  1. 1Colorado State University Pueblo−24.0%$23,346 → $17,739
  2. 2Regis University−21.3%$38,094 → $29,971
  3. 3Western Colorado University−10.5%$24,271 → $21,730
  4. 4University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus−9.0%$30,112 → $27,394
  5. 5University of Denver−6.1%$50,133 → $47,077
  6. 6University of Colorado Colorado Springs−5.8%$26,052 → $24,546
  7. 7Colorado Christian University−4.5%$32,449 → $31,003
  8. 8University of Colorado Boulder−3.9%$45,465 → $43,699
  9. 9Adams State University−0.3%$18,597 → $18,540

Sources:IPEDS Institutional Characteristics survey, 2013–14 to 2023–24;IPEDS Student Financial Aid survey, 2013–14 to 2023–24;College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2013 to Fall 2024;inflation: BLS CPI-U, school-year averagesAbout the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)

Top 9 and how it's ranked

Public research universities

Colorado's public R1 and R2 universities (Carnegie 2025), with their undergraduate change over the same window. No classification in the data means "flagship," so this is simply the state's public research universities.

How this was measured

  • Which colleges. Colleges with 300 or more undergraduates in both fall 2014 and fall 2024: 20 of 21 Colorado colleges. It's a , so colleges entering or leaving the data don't look like change.
  • Average total cost is an academic-year figure, one year behind fall: 2013–14 to 2023–24, after inflation.
  • Out-of-state shares are collected in even-numbered falls only; odd years are gaps, not zeros.
  • Totals and medians both appear because they can diverge: a state's total can fall more (or less) than its median college when its biggest colleges move differently.
  • No policy attribution. This page shows what changed, not why; a state's mix of public, private, and for-profit colleges, and its system policies, aren't broken out as causes.
  • First-years crossing state lines is a single snapshot, fall 2024, over campus-based colleges only: colleges that fall, for-profit colleges, and campuses that merged or split are left out. It's the newest fall the site's per-college home-state tables cover, not this page's ten-year window.

Sources:College Scorecard (enrollment), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Admissions survey, Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;IPEDS Institutional Characteristics survey, 2014–15 to 2023–24;IPEDS Student Financial Aid survey, 2014–15 to 2023–24;IPEDS Fall Enrollment survey (part C, residence of first-time students), Fall 2014 to Fall 2024;inflation: BLS CPI-U, school-year averagesAbout the data(built 2026-10-12; CPI retrieved 2026-10-12)