What are the hardest colleges and universities to get into? (2024)

FAQs

What are the hardest colleges and universities to get into? ›

An outlier in terms of student population and acceptance rate, Northwestern is the only private university in the Big 10. The school has by far the lowest acceptance rate and the highest level of prestige among the Big 10 schools.

An outlier in terms of student population and acceptance rate, Northwestern is the only private university in the Big 10. The school has by far the lowest acceptance rate and the highest level of prestige among the Big 10 schools.

To have the best shot of getting in, you should aim for the 75th percentile, with a 1580 SAT or a 36 ACT. You should also have a 4 GPA or higher. If your GPA is lower than this, you need to compensate with a higher SAT/ACT score.

Currently, the most difficult school to get into in the world is Minerva University, located in San Francisco, California. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the school has only 613 undergraduate students, yet received nearly 21,000 applications in 2022.

Final Admissions Verdict

If you don't pass their SAT/ACT and GPA requirements, they'll likely reject you without much consideration. To have the best shot of getting in, you should aim for the 75th percentile, with a 1560 SAT or a 36 ACT. You should also have a 4.1 GPA or higher.

At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League – Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown – more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

The College of Staten Island — part of the City University of New York System — accepts 100% of applicants. CSI offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate programs in business, education, and health sciences.

The Academic All-Big Ten threshold is a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher for a student's academic career. A complete list of the 2022-23 Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Award recipients is attached as a PDF.

While you can argue that the difficulty of the course work is similar at Princeton, the average and median grades at Princeton are lower than those at Harvard, because Harvard has had more grade inflation. Thus, you have to work harder at Princeton (on average) to achieve the same grade.

To stay on top of things, continue to refine your study habits and explore career options to solidify your major decision. 3. Junior year: This is typically the toughest academically, as you delve deeper into your major. Balancing internships and possibly studying abroad adds to the challenge.

Is it harder to get into Harvard or Duke? ›

Duke University is highly selective, with an acceptance rate of 10.5% for the class of 2026. Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale have lower acceptance rates, around 4.6%. Average SAT scores for accepted students at Duke (1520) are slightly lower than at Harvard (1540) and Yale (1550).