These 2 MN Colleges Are The Hardest To Get Into

NORTHFIELD, MN — The hardest Minnesota college to get into is Carleton College, according to a recent ranking that looks at admission rates and other factors to determine exclusivity.

Minnesota has two colleges on the 2025 Hardest Colleges To Get Into list from Niche, whose rankings focus on education and the best places to live.

Those schools and their acceptance rates are:

Carleton College (No. 54 hardest nationwide) — Northfield, MN

• $31,494 per year
• Acceptance rate of 17 percent.

Macalester College (No. 96 hardest nationwide) — St. Paul, MN

• $36,095 per year
• Acceptance rate of 28 percent.

Niche said ACT and SAT scores have been removed in this year’s rankings “to reflect a general de-emphasis on test scores in the college admissions process.”

• Related: Hardest U.S. College To Get Into Is Not An Exclusive Ivy League School

Nationally, the hardest schools to get into are:

1. Minerva University, San Francisco (1 percent)
2. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena (3 percent),
3. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (3 percent)
4. Stanford University, Stanford, California (4 percent)
5. Columbia University, New York City (4 percent)
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (4 percent)
7. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (5 percent)
8. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (5 percent)
9. University of Chicago (5 percent)
10. Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (6 percent)
11. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (6 percent)
12. Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (6 percent)
13. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (7 percent)
14. Vanderbilt University, Nashville (7 percent)
15. Northeastern University, Boston (7 percent)
16. Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania (7 percent)
17. Pomona College, Claremont, California (7 percent)
18. Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (7 percent)
19. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (7 percent)
20. Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (7 percent)

Three of those schools — Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University and Vanderbilt University — are what Forbes calls “the New Ivies,” 20 public and private schools that offer good job prospects to graduates as employers turn away from the nation’s oldest and most venerable schools.

Related: Forbes Names 20 Colleges ‘New Ivies,’ Says Employers Prefer Them