These 5 PA Colleges Are The Hardest To Get Into

PENNSYLVANIA — The hardest Commonwealth college to get into is the University of Pennsylvania, according to a recent ranking that looks at admission rates and other factors to determine exclusivity.

Pennsylvania has five colleges on the 2025 Hardest Colleges To Get Into list from Niche, whose rankings focus on education and the best places to live. Two of those were also among the top 20 in the nation.

Those schools and their acceptance rates are:

1. University of Pennsylvania

• Acceptance rate: 7 percent

2. Swarthmore College

• Acceptance rate: 7 percent

3. Carnegie Mellon University

• Acceptance rate: 11 percent

4. Haverford College

• Acceptance rate: 14 percent

5. Villanova University

• Acceptance rate: 23 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