RICHMOND, Va.  Over the last few years, the tiny College of Saint Rose in Albany has seen applications increase at least 25 percent annually, minority admissions rise and its standing in the U.S. News and World Report rankings climb more than 20 rungs.

Its secret? Lifting a page from the marketing playbook of credit card companies.

Last fall the college sent out 30,000 bright red “Exclusive Scholar Applications” to high school seniors that promised to waive the $40 application fee, invited them to skip the dreaded essay and assured a decision in three weeks. Because the application arrived with the students’ names and other information already filled in, applying required little more than a signature.

More than 100 other colleges and universities paid the same marketing company to send out variations of these fast-track applications last fall, more than a five-fold jump since 2006. Some have spent upward of $1 million on their application campaigns, and many have seen their applicant pools double or even triple in the last two years.

Theirs is a roster that includes well-known institutions like Marquette (which promised a free baseball cap to the first 250 respondents to its “Advantage Application”); Rensselaer Polytechnic (the “Candidate’s Choice Application”) and the University of Minnesota (“the Golden Gopher Fast Application”). Others that have regional reputations  like the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. (the “Distinctive Candidate Application”)  are hoping to raise their national profiles.