20 Colleges with the Lowest Admission Rates

Cooper Union

In the backwards world of college admissions, prestige is all-too-often equated with exclusivity. A sad kind of perverse competition exists in which colleges proudly point to how few students they were able to accept in any given year as a badge of honor. During admissions season, the New York Times keeps a running tally, and US News and World Report (USNWR) uses these numbers as metrics in determining the “best” colleges.

But the reality is a little more complicated. Some of the most “exclusive” colleges in terms of admissions rates are there because they offer a specific kind of experience or have a corner on the education market. Others have low admission rates because tuition is free or extremely low.

So those who think the nation’s lowest admission rates are only found within the Ivy League will be surprised to find that the Curtis Institute of Music (3.2%) and the Julliard School (6%) are right at the top along with Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford for the lowest admission rates in the country.

The Naval Academy (7.5%) topped the local list, with Georgetown University (18.1%), Washington & Lee (18.2%), and Johns Hopkins (18.4%) all coming in under 20 percent.  Liberty University (24.6%), the Corcoran College of Art & Design (27.2%), the University of Richmond (32.7%), and George Washington University (33%) also made it onto the top 100 list.

Thanks to the numbers crunchers at USNWR, here is the most recent list of colleges with the nation’s lowest admission rates (the rest of the list may be found on the USNWR website):

• Curtis Institute of Music (3.2%)
• Julliard School (6%)
• Harvard University (6.3%)
• Columbia University (7%)
• Stanford University (7.1%)
• US Naval Academy (7.5%)
• Cooper Union (7.7%)
• Yale University (7.7%)
• Princeton University (8.5%)
• Brown University (8.9%)
• College of the Ozarks (8.9%)
• MIT (9.7%)
• Dartmouth College (10.1%)
• Florida Memorial University (10.5%)
• US Military Academy (10.6%)
• US Air Force Academy (10.8%)
• University of Pennsylvania (12.4%)
• Berea College (12.5%)
• California Institute of Technology (12.8%)
• Amherst College (13.3%)