A classical music conservatory, a military service academy, and one of the country’s largest public universities all have the same acceptance rate.
Juilliard, the U.S. Naval Academy, and UCLA all sit tied at 9%, alongside Amherst College, Barnard College, and New York University.
Six schools, six completely different missions, one identical number.
The chart above shows the ranking of Colleges with the Lowest Acceptance Rates, based on data from U.S. News.
For this data story, we focus on institutions with a 10% acceptance rate or below.
TL;DR
- Six very different schools, including a music conservatory, a military academy, and a major public university, all tie at a 9% acceptance rate
- Caltech is the only school on the entire list with no tie at all, sitting alone at 3%
- Cornell, not any of its Ivy League peers, is the least selective Ivy on the list, tied at 8%
Colleges With The Lowest Acceptance Rates (3% To 10%)
| wdt_ID | wdt_created_by | wdt_created_at | wdt_last_edited_by | wdt_last_edited_at | No. | School Name | Location | Fall Acceptance Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 1 | California Institute of Technology | Pasadena, CA | 3% |
| 2 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 2 | Columbia University | New York, NY | 4% |
| 3 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 3 | Harvard University | Cambridge, MA | 4% |
| 4 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 4 | Stanford University | Stanford, CA | 4% |
| 5 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 5 | University of Chicago | Chicago, IL | 4% |
| 6 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 6 | Yale University | New Haven, CT | 4% |
| 7 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 7 | Brown University | Providence, RI | 5% |
| 8 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 8 | Curtis Institute of Music | Philadelphia, PA | 5% |
| 9 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 9 | Dartmouth College | Hanover, NH | 5% |
| 10 | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | Monica Ebunoluwa | 17/08/2026 10:21 AM | 10 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Cambridge, MA | 5% |
It’s an unusual grouping by any measure.
Juilliard admits students through auditions in music, dance, and drama.
The Naval Academy requires a congressional nomination and commits graduates to years of military service.
UCLA enrolls tens of thousands of undergraduates through a standard academic application.
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Caltech Stands Alone, Everyone Else Ties
The full list covers 33 schools with acceptance rates between 3% and 10%, and Caltech is the only one that doesn’t share its spot with anybody. At 3%, it stands alone at the very top.
Every other rate on the list, from 4% down to 10%, belongs to at least two schools.
Harvard is a clear example. Despite its reputation as the hardest school in the country to get into, Harvard actually ties with four others, Columbia, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Yale, all at 4%.
The next tier down, at 5%, is even more crowded: seven schools share it, including Curtis Institute of Music, a small conservatory, sitting beside Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Northeastern, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Every Ivy League School Makes the Cut, But Not Equally
All eight Ivy League schools appear somewhere on this list, though far from clustered together the way their shared brand might imply.
Columbia, Harvard, and Yale sit at 4%. Dartmouth, Princeton, and Brown, along with Penn, sit at 5%.
Cornell trails the rest of the group by a wide margin, tied with Northwestern, Rice, and Williams at 8%, exactly double the acceptance rate of its highest-ranked Ivy peers.
Further down, at 10%, three schools tie for the least selective spot. Claremont McKenna, Emory, and USC.
And at 9%, alongside the Juilliard-Naval Academy-UCLA grouping, sit Amherst College and Barnard College.
ELI5
A list of America’s hardest colleges to get into shows some surprising matches. A music school, a military academy, and UCLA all accept exactly 9% of applicants.
Caltech is the only school with no tie, sitting alone at the very top. Cornell, still an Ivy League school, trails its seven peers, tied for the group’s least selective spot at 8%.
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