These Universities Were The Toughest To Get Into In 2019

Harvard’s Widener Library. Courtesy photo

It may come as a surprise, but not everyone who gets selected to Stanford or Harvard end up attending Stanford or Harvard. Still, when looking at the yield of schools (accepted students that actually enroll and attend classes), both elite schools are at the top of the list. Stanford’s yield rate last year was 82% — higher than any other school besides Robert Morris University in Illinois, which had a yield rate of 87%. Of the 632 accepted applicants, 551 enrolled at Robert Morris. For Stanford, 1,739 accepted students enrolled out of 2,118. Brigham Young University in Utah had the next highest yield rate at 80%. Of the 6,520 to be accepted, 5,246 enrolled. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) rounded out the top five schools for yield with a rate of 73% — where 1,110 of 1,511 accepted students actually enrolled.

While low acceptance rates translate to high yield rates for schools like Stanford, Harvard, and Julliard, it’s not always the case. Pomona College in California, for example, had a yield rate of 54%. Of the 765 admitted out of more than 8,000 applicants, 411 actually made it to campus. Claremont McKenna College — also based in Southern California and also with an acceptance rate of less than 10% had a yield rate of 54%.

(SEE THE NEXT TWO PAGES FOR ADMISSIONS AND YIELD RATES FOR 500 SCHOOLS.)