IL's Most Selective College: SAT Score Needed To Win Admission

ILLINOIS — The most selective college in Illinois is the University of Chicago, according to a new report, which says that to get admitted, you’d probably need an SAT score of between 1480 and 1580. The financial news and opinion site 24/7 Wall Street showed wide disparities depending on where applicants live.

University of Chicago, for example, admits 8.7 percent of students, making it one of the top 10 most selective in the nation. Admission rates range from as low as 5.2 percent — Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts — all the way to 96.8 percent at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Meanwhile, the median among the 50 most selective colleges was about 29 percent. The Northeast has some of the most selective of the colleges that are hardest to get into, claiming four of the five lowest admission rates, according to the study, published Wednesday.

1. Massachusetts — 5.2 percent (Harvard University)
2. New Jersey — 6.4 percent (Princeton University)
3. New York — 6.6 percent (Columbia University)
4. Connecticut — 6.9 percent (Yale University)
5. California — 7.7 percent (California Institute of Technology)
6. Rhode Island — 8.5 percent (Brown University)
7. Illinois — 8.7 percent (University of Chicago)
8. Pennsylvania — 9.3 percent (University of Pennsylvania)
9. North Carolina — 9.9 percent (Duke University)
10. New Hampshire — 10.4 percent (Dartmouth College)

The list includes states with large, elite universities that receive tens of thousands of applications every year, but it also includes small — and often expensive — private institutions.

The authors noted that acceptance rates are often considered an “approximation for exclusivity.” Generally, schools with lower acceptance rates will be able to provide higher qualities of education and a more “prestigious” degree.

The authors determined the most selective colleges by reviewing education data for thousands of four-year, degree-granting institutions from the National Center for Education Statistics and other sources. The acceptance rates, SAT and ACT scores of admitted students were then indexed to see how difficult it is to get into a university.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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