You're More Likely to Be Ambidextrous Than Get Accepted to This College

24/7 Wall St. Insights

24/7 Wall St. identified the hardest colleges and universities to get admitted in each state using data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Acceptance rates range from 3.7% to 85.3%.
Also Discover “The Next NVIDIA”

High school students hoping to get accepted by Stanford University in California must have grades and test scores at the top of their class. Stanford accepts less than 4% of applicants each year. The average SAT score of Stanford students in reading and writing is 760 while average math scores are 790. For comparison, the average SAT score nationwide in reading and writing is 529 while the average math score is 521. Although Stanford has the lowest acceptance rate on the following list, it’s not the only exclusive university in the country. (Here is a look at the best colleges in the United States.)

Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 24/7 Wall St. identified the hardest colleges and universities to get into in each state. The schools on this list were identified using a two-part index composed of the admissions rate – the share of applicants who are offered admission – and the median SAT score among students admitted in the fall of 2022. Both Alaska and Wyoming were excluded from this analysis due to incomplete data. Supplemental data on the average annual cost of attendance, median earnings 10 years after entry, and the graduation rate — or the share of students who graduate within eight years after entry — are from the U.S. Department of Education.

Of the 50 highest-ranking schools on The Wall Street Journal’s list of best colleges in 2024, nearly half are in the Northeast — more than double the number in the Midwest, South, or West. While some college-bound Americans simply enroll in the best school they can get into, others consider a range of additional factors, and one of the most common is distance from home. For prospective college students living outside of the Northeast who want to avoid thousands of dollars in travel expenses every year, the Ivy League may not be in the cards. But there are still alternative options.

The following list of 50 schools contains a wide variety of educational options. Though each school is the toughest to get accepted within its state, some are much harder to get into than others. For example, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island are each home to an Ivy League institution. These schools offer admission to fewer than one in ever 10 applicants. On the other hand, there are five states on the list where the most selective school has acceptance rates of 70% or above.

Why Are We Writing About This?

Even for those who cannot get into an elite college or university or do not want to travel out of state, the benefits of a college degree from most schools are undeniable. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical college graduate earns about 68% more in the workforce than those with only a high school diploma. Additionally, college graduates are far less likely to be unemployed than those with no more than a high school education. (These are the colleges with the most upward mobility.)