The Top 25 Hardest Business Schools to Get Into [Rankings]

Any successful businessperson knows that to succeed in the corporate world, you have to take risks. Whether this means applying for a job you might not get, or taking on a challenging project, the saying holds true: with no risk, comes no reward.

For business undergrads, the first real big risk in their young careers is sending out applications to MBA programs. The bold who aim high are often the ones rewarded with acceptance letters to prestigious programs. The risk for students in choosing this path is that, for elite business schools, the odds are stacked against them to get accepted.

With that in mind, StartClass has identified the 25 business schools with the lowest acceptance rates. The self-reported data comes from each business school’s individual website. We’ve included each school’s Smart Rank, which is a weighted average of business school rankings awarded by six publications: Business Insider, Businessweek, The Economist, The Financial Times, Forbes and U.S. News. Multiple years are taken into account to measure consistency over time.

Though these might not be the 25 highest-ranked MBA programs, they are definitely the pickiest when it comes to admitting students.

#25. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Business

Acceptance rate: 25.5 percent
Total number of applicants: 683

#24. Duke University Fuqua School of Business

Acceptance rate: 25.1 percent
Total number of applicants: 3,453

#23. University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business

Acceptance rate: 24.9 percent
Total number of applicants: 535

#22. University of Massachusetts Amherst Isenberg School of Management

Acceptance rate: 24.8 percent
Total number of applicants: 214

#21. Arizona State University Carey School of Business

Acceptance rate: 24.5 percent
Total number of applicants: 477

#20. University of Florida Hough Graduate School of Business (Wharrington)

Acceptance rate: 24 percent
Total number of applicants: 221

#19. Penn State University Smeal College of Business

Acceptance rate: 24 percent
Total number of applicants: 541

#18. Yale School of Management

Acceptance rate: 23.7 percent
Total number of applicants: 2,756

#17. Texas A&M University Mays Business School

Acceptance rate: 23.6 percent
Total number of applicants: 525

#16. University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Acceptance rate: 23.5 percent
Total number of applicants: 4,175

#15. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

Acceptance rate: 23.2 percent
Total number of applicants: 4,652

#14. University of Washington Foster School of Business

Acceptance rate: 22.9 percent
Total number of applicants: 1,025

#13. Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business

Acceptance rate: 22.7 percent
Total number of applicants: 427

#12. UC Irvine Merage School of Business

Acceptance rate: 22.7 percent
Total number of applicants: 866

#11. Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business

Acceptance rate: 22.2 percent
Total number of applicants: 643

#10. Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business

Acceptance rate: 22.1 percent
Total number of applicants: 2,437

#9. University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School

Acceptance rate: 20.7 percent
Total number of applicants: 6,111

#8. Columbia Business School

Acceptance rate: 18.2 percent
Total number of applicants: 5,799

#7. NYU Stern Business School

Acceptance rate: 18.1 percent
Total number of applicants: 3,890

#6. UCLA Anderson School of Management

Acceptance rate: 17.8 percent
Total number of applicants: 4,129

#5. UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Acceptance rate: 15.3 percent
Total number of applicants: 359

#4. MIT Sloan Business School

Acceptance rate: 13.8 percent
Total number of applicants: 4,735

#3. UC Berkeley Haas School of Business

Acceptance rate: 13.2 percent
Total number of applicants: 3,475

#2. Harvard School of Business

Acceptance rate: 11 percent
Total number of applicants: 9,543

#1. Stanford Graduate School of Business

Acceptance rate: 7.1 percent
Total number of applicants: 7,355