Acceptance rates by major, not by university

Every ranking site publishes one acceptance rate per university. For a student choosing a major, that number is close to useless — you apply to a programme, and programmes inside the same university can differ by a factor of five.

Where the gap is biggest

Each row compares a university's advertised acceptance rate against its most competitive published programme.

University	Headline	Hardest programme	Its rate	Gap
University of Washington	43%	Computer Science	2%	21.5×
UCLA	9%	Nursing	0.5%	18.0×
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign	36.6%	Computer Science	7.2%	5.1×
Carnegie Mellon University	11.07%	Computer Science	4%	2.8×
University of Texas at Austin	31%	Computer Science	12%	2.6×
Georgia Tech	15%	Computer Science	6%	2.5×
University of Michigan	17.9%	Business	8%	2.2×
UC Berkeley	11%	Business	5%	2.2×
Villanova University	25%	Nursing	14.5%	1.7×
Cornell University	8%	Business	5%	1.6×
New York University	7.7%	Business	5%	1.5×
Purdue University	43.4%	Engineering	34.7%	1.3×
University of Pennsylvania	5.4%	Business	4.5%	1.2×

Why this happens

Large universities admit into colleges, not into the university as a whole. A computer science applicant at a school with a direct-admit CS programme is competing against other CS applicants for a fixed number of seats, not against the general pool. The published rate averages the competitive programmes with the quiet ones, so it describes nobody.

The effect is strongest in computer science, business, nursing and engineering — the four fields where applications have grown fastest. It is weakest in the humanities and in universities that admit undeclared.

What to do with this

Check whether your target school admits directly into your major. If it does, the published rate is not your rate.
Ask whether internal transfer is open before planning to switch after arrival. At most schools with direct admission it is capped and competitive.
Do not pick a subject for its admit rate. Four years is a long time to study something chosen on a spreadsheet, and admissions readers can tell.

Check your odds by major — free, no sign-up →

Individual school breakdowns

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Purdue University University of Washington Cornell University Carnegie Mellon University Georgia Tech

These are published institutional figures, not predictions. Admission decisions also rest on essays, recommendations and institutional priorities, which no calculator can see. Not affiliated with any university.