What is Harvard’s acceptance rate (and other top colleges)?

Every year, the college admissions process gets more and more selective among the nation’s top colleges. So what is Harvard’s acceptance rate? What is Stanford’s acceptance rate? And what is Penn’s acceptance rate? Let’s find out who is the most selective!

Here are the latest acceptance rates:

  • Harvard - 3%

  • Stanford - 4%

  • California Institute of Technology (CalTech) - 4%

  • Princeton - 4%

  • Columbia - 4%

  • M.I.T. - 4%

  • Yale - 5%

  • Brown - 5%

  • Dartmouth - 6%

  • University of Pennsylvania - 6%

  • Duke - 6%

  • University of Chicago - 6%

  • Vanderbilt - 7%

  • Johns Hopkins University - 7%

  • Cornell - 9%

This represents the list of the nation’s most selective colleges and those that frequently make the top 10 and top 20 most selective colleges each year. There are also many smaller, liberal art's colleges with similar acceptance rates, such as Amherst College, Pomona College, and Swarthmore College.

So what is the acceptance rate of Ivy League colleges? There you have it! They average an acceptance rate of 4.5%—making them among the—if not the—most selective institutions in the world.