Most Popular Public Universities on About.com in 2011

2011 saw a lot of interest in public universities thanks in part to the weak economy. Only Harvard was more popular on About.com than Berkeley this past year.

Among the nearly 1,000 college profiles (and growing) on About.com, some public universities were much more popular with readers than others in 2011. Yesterday I featured the 10 most popular private universities. On the public university front, the profiles of the schools below received more visits than any others. Each of these universities has robust graduate and undergraduate programs, strong research facilities, and funding that comes in part from state taxpayers.

In order of popularity, the 10 most viewed public universities on About.com in 2011 were:

1. UC Berkeley (Berkeley, California)
2. UNC Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
3. UCLA (Los Angeles, California)
4. University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
5. Penn State (University Park, Pennsylvania)
6. University of Texas Austin (Austin, Texas)
7. University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Virginia)
8. University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
9. Texas A&M (College Station, Texas)
10. Georgia Tech (Atlanta, Georgia)

Click on the university's name to get more information, the acceptance rate, costs, test scores, and other admissions data.

The same ten schools made the list as in 2010 (see the 2010 list), but their positions changed. Berkeley, Michigan, and Georgia all moved up in the list, and Chapel Hill, UCLA, Texas, and Georgia Tech all declined in their relative popularity.