TOP 50 LATEST Class of 2026 Acceptance Rates!!!

Overall College Acceptance rates are lower again because of more applications and ever competitive applicant pool. Test Optional policies are primarily responsible for the increase in applications to Top50 schools. In addition, there are more International students applying this cycle. There are some schools like Princeton/UPenn/Stanford/Cornell and others who are made a conscious effort not to disclose admit rates. I have done my best to extrapolate these rates based on comparing them to peer numbers and historical yield rates. These school rates are marked ++. I'm not sure when the actual data will be available but fairly confident that my numbers are not too far off. Here are most of the TOP 50 schools ranked from hardest to get into down to easier to get into.

Class of 2026 Acceptance Rates vs 2025 rates

Asterisks are estimates

Institution 2026 2025

Caltech <3.00%++3.92% (2021-22 Common data set) Until CDS for 22-23 comes out, can't verify applicant #s.

Harvard 3.19% 4.01% (Revised including waitlist admits originally 3.43%)

Columbia 3.73% 3.89% (Revised including waitlist admits originally 3.66%)

Stanford 3.79%++4.13% (2021-22 Common data set)

MIT 3.96% 4.03%

Princeton 4.36%++4.38% (Revised to include waitlist admits orginally 3.98%)

Yale 4.47% 5.30% (Revised to include waitlist admits orginally 4.62%)

Brown 5.03% 5.51% (Revised to include waitlist admits orginally 5.45%)

Pomona 6.03% 6.60%

UPenn 6.00%++ 5.87% (Assumptions for '26, 55000 applicants, 3300 accepted)

Vanderbilt 6.13% 6.70%

Duke 6.17% 5.76%

Dartmouth 6.24% 6.17%

JHU 6.48% 6.43%

NEastern 6.79% 18.38% (Article 4/4/22 states NE reduced freshman class 25% due to overcrowding)

Cornell 6.91% 8.68%

Amherst 6.93% 8.00%

Swarthmore 6.95% 7.79%

NWestern 7.00% 6.80%

Colby 7.45% 8.07%

Barnard 8.00% 11.45% (Revised including waitlist admits orginally 10.44%)

Williams 8.51% 8.00%

Rice 8.56% 9.48%

Bowdoin 8.75% 8.82%

Tufts 9.00% 11.43%

UCLA 9.68%++10.77%

WashU 10.00% 13.11%

Tulane 10.00% 9.73%

CMC 10.58% 11.40%

Emory 10.66% 13.01%

CMU 11.26% 13.54%

Colo. Coll. 11.50% 14.25%

UCBerkeley 11.70%++14.55%

USC 11.88% 12.44%

Hamilton 11.80% 14.07%

Georgetown 12.10% 11.67%

NYU 12.21% 12.80%

Nortre Dame 12.87% 15.07%

Harv. Mudd 12.97% 9.99%

Wellesley 13.01% 16.00%

Colgate 13.71% 17.19%

Wesleyan 13.86% 19.32%

Boston U 14.15% 18.33%

Middlebury 15.00% 13.44% (Middlebury rates went up)

Carleton 15.88%++17.50%

Boston Coll. 16.50% 18.90%

Davidson 16.80% 17.79%

Haverford 16.96%++17.85%

Bates 17.93%++17.31%

Wash. & Lee 18.12%++18.95%

UMichigan 18.28%++20.15%

UVA 18.68% 20.62%

Vassar 19.03%++20.19%

UNC 19.23%++21.00%

Macalaster 25.05% 31.05%

Lafayette 28.63% 40.74%

Trinity Coll. 32.27% 36.02%

Will./Mary 34.90% 37.00%

Dickinson 34.99% 48.40%

Union Coll. 38.82%++41.48%