The toughest college to get accepted to in the United States isn’t an Ivy League institution, Stanford University, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It’s Minerva University, an independent college headquartered in San Francisco.

Minerva University, which boasts a small student-to-faculty ratio and involves living and learning across the globe, has an acceptance rate of 4% and is ranked first on the 2025 Hardest Colleges to Get Into in America by Niche, a website that provides reviews, grades, and other information on K-12 and postsecondary schools. It also ranked the best colleges in California for 2025, many of which overlap with this list.

Minerva University had nearly 10,000 first-time undergraduate students apply for fall 2023, according to Integrated Postsecondar

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