Mental Floss

The 25 Hardest Colleges to Get Into In America

By Garin Pirnia

An aerial view of John Kennedy Street in the Harvard University area of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
An aerial view of John Kennedy Street in the Harvard University area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. / Roman Babakin/iStock via Getty Images
facebooktwitterreddit

The website Niche uses statistics and reviews to calculate the best of everything, from neighborhoods across America to the country's best places to work. Though the 2019 school year has only recently begun, the review site is already looking ahead to next year. Using data they received from the U.S. Department of Education and reports submitted by Niche users, Niche crunched the numbers to come up with a list of the hardest colleges to get accepted to in the U.S.

With an acceptance rate of just 5 percent and an SAT range of 1460 to 1590, it’s no surprise that Harvard University claimed the top spot on the list. On the opposite cost, second-placer Stanford University is nearly just as picky, with a 5 percent acceptance rate and an SAT range of 1390 to 1540.

Though Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute may be lesser known than MIT, Yale, or Princeton, with an acceptance rate of just 2 percent, the San Francisco-based school (which is part of the Claremont University Consortium) has the most competitive acceptance rate in the top 25—though they only have 500 undergrads. Even the 25th college on the list, Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, only accepts 15 percent of those who apply.

Niche's full list of schools is rather long (you can view it here), but these at the 25 hardest colleges to get into in America.

  1. Harvard University

  1. Stanford University

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1. California Institute of Technology

  1. Yale University

  1. Princeton University

  1. University of Chicago

  1. Columbia University

  1. Brown University

  1. University of Pennsylvania

  1. Northwestern University

  1. Vanderbilt University

  1. Duke University

  1. Pomona College

  1. Dartmouth College

  1. Minerva Schools at Keck Graduate Institute

  1. Johns Hopkins University

  1. Swarthmore College

  1. Rice University

  1. Cornell University

  1. Washington University in St. Louis

  1. Harvey Mudd College

  1. Claremont McKenna College

  1. Amherst College

  1. Williams College

Home/LIVE SMARTER