Acceptance Rates At The Top Undergraduate Business Schools

What are my chances of getting in?

That’s a question many high school students and their families consider as they weigh decisions on where to apply to college and categorize safety schools and reach schools. No doubt college admissions are competitive. And if you desire to study at one of the best business schools, it’s likely even more competitive.

Each year as part of our Best Undergraduate Business Schools ranking, we ask schools to report their latest acceptance rate data and factor that into the rankings methodology. This data is specific to the business school and doesn’t include students applying to other majors.

This year, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School had the toughest acceptance rate at 7.62%. The rate is actually a bit lighter than last year’s 6.65%. Following Wharton closely is fellow Ivy League school, Cornell University’s Dyson School, which only accepted 7.96%. That’s tough, but not as bad as 2019 data when Cornell Dyson’s acceptance rate was 6.41%. Rounding out the top three is the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School at 11.51%, which is also higher than last year’s 1o.57%.

For two year schools like Kenan-Flagler, we consider the acceptance rate of the university and the specific business school. Meaning for this year, we calculated the 2018 UNC university-wide acceptance rate and the 2020 Kenan-Flagler acceptance rate. Following UNC is New York University’s Stern School of Business, which had an acceptance rate of 12.65%. Stern had a big jump from the entering 2019 class, which had to overcome an acceptance rate of 7.61%. Rounding out the top-five is another two-year school — the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce at 13.42%. McIntire’s acceptance rate is also higher than last year’s 12.87%

Across all 93 schools to be ranked this year, the average acceptance rate was 51.88%. That’s up a bit from last year’s average of 47.06%. Some 18 schools this year had acceptance rates lower than 25%.

At the other end, the University of Akron had the highest acceptance rate for the second year in a row at 95.14%. That’s up from 90.19% last year. Christopher Newport University’s Luter School had the second-highest rate at 93.42%. And the University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s Haslam School followed with 93.12%. Overall, five schools had acceptance rates of 90% or higher, which is up from last year when just the University of Akron was higher than 90%.

(SEE THE NEXT PAGE FOR 2019-2020 ACCEPTANCE RATES AT THE TOP 93 B-SCHOOLS)

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