Admit rate
The sub-5% club is real, and it's eight schools
Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, UChicago, Princeton, MIT all admit fewer than 1 in 20 applicants.
Admit rate — Caltech, Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, UChicago, Princeton, MIT
A decade ago the “sub-5%” admit rate was a Stanford and Harvard story. By 2024-25 it's a tight cluster of eight schools, and the gap to the next tier (Penn, Dartmouth, Duke at 5–7%) is now visible in the data.
Northeastern is the surprise entrant — it dropped below 6% in 2024-25, joining Penn and Dartmouth in territory that used to be exclusively Ivy.
Takeaway: The “elite tier” is now narrower and lower than people think — and it's no longer just the Ivies.