United States Private Colleges Ranked by Lowest Acceptance Rate

Below is a ranking of the 1198 private colleges in the United States with the lowest acceptance rate for freshman undergraduate applications. California Institute of Technology leads the list by accepting 3% of high school students that applied.

Acceptance rate is a measure of the competitiveness of a school. Lower acceptance rates are more competitive and may require a higher GPA, SAT/ACT score, and other factors to be considered for admission.

List of United States Private Colleges Ranked by Lowest Acceptance Rate
College	Acceptance Rate
California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California	3%
Minerva University San Francisco, California	3%
Yale University New Haven, Connecticut	4%
University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois	4%
Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts	4%
Columbia University in the City of New York New York, New York	4%
Stanford University Stanford, California	4%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts	5%
Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts	5%
Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire	5%
Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey	5%
Curtis Institute of Music Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	5%
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	5%
Brown University Providence, Rhode Island	5%
Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland	6%
Duke University Durham, North Carolina	6%
Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee	6%
Pomona College Claremont, California	7%

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This list is updated annually based on the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Last updated: August 2026

Data source: IPEDS 2025 survey for academic year 2024/2025 - National Center for Education Statistics.