10 US Colleges With Stingiest Acceptance Rates

Squeezing into America's most selective colleges now makes Harvard in the '90s look generous. Back then, roughly 1 in 9 applicants got in. For the Class of 2029, it was fewer than 1 in 25. Using federal data, Business Insider ranked US schools that admit 10% or fewer applicants, then ordered them by the slimmest odds of acceptance for 2024–25. Here are the 10 most selective (ties were broken in the rankings by the number of applications received).

1. California Institute of Technology (3% accepted)
2. Minerva University (3%)
3. Columbia (4%)
4. Yale (4%)
5. Stanford (4%)
6. Harvard (4%)
7. University of Chicago (4%)
8. Northeastern (5%)
9. University of Pennsylvania (5%)
10. Brown (5%)

See the full list, which is based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics' College Navigator.