If you’re applying to a top undergraduate business program in the U.S., you’ll need more than just strong test scores and a polished application. You’ll need to stand out among thousands of high-achieving peers. And once you get in, the real challenge begins: finishing the degree.
For our 2025 ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Programs in the U.S, we collected two critical metrics: acceptance rates and six-year graduation rates. These figures show what it takes to get into the most competitive programs and whether students are crossing the finish line once they do.
So, what was the hardest school to get into in the 2024-2025 academic year?
The answer isn’t much of a surprise. It also happens to be the business school that topped our 2025 ranking: University of Pennsylvania’s The Wharton School.
Wharton reported an acceptance rate of 4.5% for the fall 2024 incoming class, making it the most selective school in our ranking of 104 business programs. But not by a lot.
New York University Stern School of Business (ranked No. 5 overall in our 2025 ranking) reported an acceptance rate of 4.8% while Cornell University Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management (No. 2) accepted 4.9%
WHY ACCEPTANCE RATES MATTER
Besides signaling to prospective students their chances at getting into a particular business school, admission rates can also indicate the quality of classmates admitted students can expect. That’s why the metric accounts for 25% of a school’s Admission Standards category in our ranking methodology. (Admission Standards, in turn, accounts for a third of the overall score). (See our full ranking methodology here.)
Wharton students are certainly part of an elite class of high achievers. Entering students posted an average SAT score of 1532 (four points higher than last cycle’s 1528), the third highest average in our ranking. Further, 92% of its first-year students reported being in the top 10% academically of their graduating high school classes.
The table below shows the most and least selective schools from our 2025 business school ranking.
Of the 104 ranked schools, four admitted 6% or fewer of applying students (compared to three schools in the previous cycle) and 10 schools admitted fewer than 10% of applicants.
Over the top 10 business schools in our 2024 ranking, acceptance rate averaged 8.3%, more selective than the 9.2% from the previous ranking cycle and the 9.3% the year before that.
Across all 104 business schools ranked this year, the average acceptance rate was 48.8% up slightly from 47.9% rate from the 91 schools ranked for 2024.
NEXT PAGE: 6-year acceptance rate comparison at 2025 ranked business schools
