Harvard admits 3.5% of everyone who applies to it. It admits 1.9% of international applicants.
Every US university files its applications, admissions and enrolments broken out by residency, including a line for international students, in a public document called the Common Data Set. Almost nobody converts those two numbers into the rate that applies to you.
We did, for 160 universities, using each one's most recent filing. Start with the eight universities most international students ask about first.
The Ivy League, MIT and Stanford
Six of the eight Ivy League universities publish the numbers. Here is what they say.
| University | Overall rate | International rate | Admitted of applied |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harvard | 3.5% | 1.9% | 301 of 15,934 |
| Princeton | 4.6% | 2.1% | 209 of 9,891 |
| Columbia | 4.0% | 2.6% | 337 of 13,025 |
| Penn | 5.9% | 3.1% | 419 of 13,310 |
| Cornell | 8.4% | 3.5% | 588 of 16,858 |
| Brown | 5.2% | 3.8% | 401 of 10,646 |
At every one of them, an international applicant faces roughly half the odds of the published rate, and at Cornell less than half: 8.4% overall against 3.5% for international applicants.
Yale, MIT, Stanford and Dartmouth do not publish it.
Yale, MIT and Stanford leave the entire residency section of their most recent Common Data Set blank. No applications, no admissions, no enrolments, for any residency category. There is no international acceptance rate to calculate, because they publish nothing to calculate it from.
Dartmouth is the interesting one. It reports that 9,968 international students applied and that 170 enrolled. It leaves the admissions line blank, for every category. So you can see both ends of the funnel and not the middle.
Those 170 enrolled from 9,968 applications work out at 1.7%, but that is the enrolment rate rather than the admit rate, and the admit rate will be higher than it because some admitted students choose elsewhere.
If you want these four to publish it, the Common Data Set is voluntary and they have chosen not to fill that section in.
The gap
The Ivy League pattern repeats everywhere, and it is widest at universities that look welcoming. The University of the South admits 50.9% of all applicants, which any list would file under safety. Its international rate is 2.6%, forty admitted out of 1,547.
These are the universities where the two rates diverge most sharply.
| University | Overall rate | International rate |
|---|---|---|
| Oklahoma State | 75.0% | 12.7% |
| Bradley University | 76.8% | 25.6% |
| Colorado State | 88.6% | 38.9% |
| The University of the South | 50.9% | 2.6% |
| Oregon State | 77.3% | 30.4% |
| University of Nebraska-Lincoln | 77.1% | 30.8% |
| Furman University | 52.6% | 9.6% |
| Allegheny College | 58.5% | 15.8% |
A student building a list from published rates would put Colorado State down as near-certain at 88.6%. The rate that applies to them is 38.9%. At Oklahoma State the headline says 75% and the number that applies to them is 12.7%.
This is the single most useful thing in this post. If you are using acceptance rates to sort universities into reaches and safeties, you are sorting with the wrong number.
The hardest universities for international applicants
Restricted to universities receiving at least 500 international applications, so small samples do not distort the list.
| University | International rate | Admitted of applied |
|---|---|---|
| Bowdoin College | 1.4% | 77 of 5,347 |
| Washington and Lee | 1.9% | 67 of 3,524 |
| Harvard | 1.9% | 301 of 15,934 |
| Princeton | 2.1% | 209 of 9,891 |
| Hamilton College | 2.2% | 78 of 3,516 |
| Columbia | 2.6% | 337 of 13,025 |
| Amherst | 2.6% | 150 of 5,664 |
| Colgate | 2.9% | 231 of 7,922 |
| Penn | 3.1% | 419 of 13,310 |
| UC Berkeley | 3.4% | 754 of 22,301 |
| Cornell | 3.5% | 588 of 16,858 |
| Bates College | 3.7% | 149 of 3,983 |
Two things stand out. Harvard's overall rate is 3.5% and its international rate is 1.9%, so the university everyone calls impossible is roughly twice as hard again for you. And the small liberal arts colleges, which rarely appear in conversations about selectivity, are the hardest places on this list. Bowdoin admits 7.1% of applicants overall and 1.4% of international ones.
Students do get in. Nazokat from Uzbekistan is one of the 150 Amherst admitted. A student from Ghana reached Bates on full financial aid, and a student from Bahia reached Columbia. The point of these numbers is not that it cannot be done. It is that a list made only of universities like these is a list with a very small expected value.
Where international applicants are admitted
The other end of the same dataset, and the part that should change how you build a list.
| University | International rate | Admitted of applied |
|---|---|---|
| University of Mississippi | 99.0% | 761 of 769 |
| Michigan Technological University | 95.2% | 1,038 of 1,090 |
| University of Kentucky | 93.4% | 969 of 1,038 |
| University of Utah | 92.7% | 711 of 767 |
| University of South Florida | 89.9% | 534 of 594 |
| Arizona State | 89.6% | 7,988 of 8,912 |
| Washington State | 89.4% | 1,032 of 1,154 |
| Michigan State | 88.1% | 6,257 of 7,102 |
Arizona State admitted 7,988 international applicants in a single year, which is more than twenty-six times what Harvard admitted. Michigan Tech admits 95 of every 100 international applicants who apply.
A student from Armenia who chose UC Berkeley came through the 3.4% end of this table. Both routes exist, and a sensible list contains some of each.
These are accredited public research universities with the same F-1 visa, the same work rules and the same route to a US degree. A student who won a 100% scholarship to study robotics engineering at Arizona State is the version of this that works.
How this was calculated
Every figure comes from section C1 of each university's Common Data Set, which reports applicants, admits and enrolments split by in-state, out-of-state and international.
The international rate is admitted divided by applied, for international applicants only. The overall rate is the same calculation on the university's total.
We used each university's most recent filing. Of the 160 universities, 73 filed for a 2023 cycle, 86 for 2024 and one for 2025, and each table above shows figures from that university's latest available year rather than a single common year.
One university was excluded. UC Merced's filing reports 22,816 international admits against 3,465 international applications, which is not possible and appears to be a reporting error.
What these numbers do not tell you
A low rate is not only selectivity. It reflects who applies as much as how choosy a university is. A university that attracts enormous numbers of international applications will show a low rate partly for that reason.
A high rate is not a guarantee. It describes last year's applicants, not your application.
Not every university files this. 160 universities in our data report the residency breakdown. Plenty of others file a Common Data Set without it.
Admission is not funding. Being admitted at 89% and being funded are separate questions, and the second one is usually the harder one. Our guides to what US universities cost international students and how to appeal a financial aid offer cover that side.
Start your own journey
Go and find the Common Data Set for every university on your list. Search the university's name with "Common Data Set", open section C1, and divide international admitted by international applied. It takes a few minutes per university and it replaces a number that was never about you with one that is.
Then build the list around the second number.
Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, works out your odds at each university, tells you which ones admit and fund students from your country, and balances the list so it is not made entirely of 2% chances. It's free to use.
Start with Kai, and read the stories from students who got in at both ends of this table.
