The Series
Real acceptance rates, school by school
A published acceptance rate is an average of very different odds. We took 22 universities’ own admissions filings apart to find the numbers that actually apply to an applicant: by application round, and by the major or college you apply through. The widest gap in the series belongs to UCLA, where the same published rate covers odds ranging from 0.5% to 24%.
When you apply changes the number
At these 14 schools, the binding early round and everything else are effectively two different admissions processes. One honest caveat we repeat in every article: the early pool is not the same population as the regular pool, so these gaps overstate what switching rounds would do for an identical applicant.
| School | Published rate | Early Decision | Everyone else |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boston College | 13.9% | 33.45%Early Decision | 13.77%Everyone else |
| Boston University | 12.83% | 31.35%Early Decision | 11%Everyone else |
| Brown | 5.6% | 16.46%Early Decision | 4.23%Everyone else |
| Cornell | 8.38% | 18.78%Early Decision | 6.7%Everyone else |
| Dartmouth | 6.02% | 21.62%Early Decision | 3.77%Everyone else |
| Duke | 5.2% | 12.6%Early Decision | 4.2%Everyone else |
| Emory | 10.3% | 22.19%Early Decision | 8.59%Everyone else |
| Johns Hopkins | 6.11% | 10.93%Early Decision | 5.25%Everyone else |
| Northeastern | 5.22% | 43.05%Early Decision | 3.83%Everyone else |
| Northwestern | 7.7% | 23%Early Decision | 5.9%Everyone else |
| Penn | 5.4% | 14.22%Early Decision | 4.05%Everyone else |
| Rice | 8.01% | 11.26%Early Decision | 7.41%Everyone else |
| Tufts | 10.81% | 32.02%Early Decision | 9.28%Everyone else |
| Vanderbilt | 5.38% | 14.09%Early Decision | 4.09%Everyone else |
What you apply for changes the number
At these 7 universities, the campus-wide rate is nearly meaningless on its own. The college, program, or residency category you apply through decides your odds, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
| School | Published rate | Least selective unit | Most selective unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Tech | 13.34% | 17.4%Ivan Allen College (of Liberal Arts) | 9.7%College of Computing |
| Purdue | 43.4% | 73.9%College of Pharmacy | 7.7%Professional Flight Technology (Flight) |
| UC Berkeley | 11.45% | 18.08%Rausser College of Natural Resources | 5.18%Haas School of Business |
| UC Irvine | 28.95% | 34.18%Arts & Humanities | 16.16%Business |
| UCLA | 8.97% | 24%Herb Alpert School of Music | 0.5%School of Nursing |
| UIUC | 36.6% | 48.5%College of Agricultural, Consumer & Environmen | 7.4%Computer Science (major, within Grainger Colle |
| UW | 41.75% | 47%All First-Year Applicants (baseline for non-ca | 2%Computer Science/Computer Engineering (Direct |
Every figure comes from the university’s own Common Data Set filing, official class profile, or public institutional dashboard, with the cohort year stated in each article. Where a school does not publish a breakdown, we say so rather than estimate.
Build a list around the real numbers
Our free tools use published admissions data the same way: the college list builder sorts schools against your score, the deadlines tracker shows every early and regular date, and the testing policy tracker covers who requires scores this cycle.
