2 Pennsylvania Colleges Among the Hardest to Get Into in America

Pennsylvania has some excellent colleges and universities, and as it turns out, the Keystone State is also home to two of the colleges that are the most difficult to get into in America.

Now is the time that millions of high school students are applying to colleges across the county and hoping to get into the school of their choosing. Many will get that coveted No. 1 pick, while others will have to, well, settle.

The new ranking of the hardest colleges to get into in America is from Niche.com, which says is has determined the 50 hardest schools to get into in 2023. Niche.com has determined the rankings based on acceptance rates and SAT/ACT test scores.

The No. 1 most difficult school to get into in America is not a big surprise: Harvard. It has a 5% acceptance rate, according to Niche. That's actually higher than I thought. I expected the Harvard acceptance rate to be more like 1%. No. 2 on the list is Stanford, with an acceptance rate of 5%, too. It's not No. 1 because Stanford accepts students with slightly lower test scores, according to Niche. Princeton comes in at No. 2 with a 6% acceptance rate. Of course, these schools are also not cheap to attend. Tuition can be more than $50,000 per academic year at each of the top three colleges.

So, which Pennsylvania colleges are among the toughest to get into? The University of Pennsylvania is No. 11 on the list, with an acceptance rate of 9%. "Penn is an elite private university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is a mid-size institution with an enrollment of 9,960 undergraduate students," the site states. Swarthmore College is also on the list, coming in at No. 16, also with an acceptance rate of 9%. Find the full list of the hardest colleges to get into in America here. This list includes both public and private four-year colleges.