UCLA is an outstanding major research university that also happens to be part of the University of California system of schools. That means that you are exceptionally lucky if you love UCLA and live in California, as 80% of UCLA students are from California. If you don’t live in California, which makes up only about 20% of any first-year class, things get a little trickier. As a state school, UCLA prioritizes students from California. That doesn’t mean getting in is easy, but it’s a whole lot easier than getting in if you are from, say, New York. In recent years, they have received over 145,000 first-year applications (the highest number of any university, private or public, in the United States), and admitted only 9% overall. The acceptance rate for the College of Letters and Science for the fall of 2025 was 11%.

USC Dornsife is the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences of the University of Southern California. USC is an iconic California university where you could study nearly anything, and Dornsife, the liberal arts college of the university, is widely respected as one of the best in the nation. There are about 7,800 undergraduate students, or 38% of the USC undergraduate population. The top five majors are Psychology, Economics, Human Biology, Political Science, and Biological Sciences. The acceptance rate is about 11%.

Amherst is a college small in size but enormous in impact. Located in Amherst, Massachusetts, students are immersed in an intellectual environment that prizes making an impact. For most of Amherst’s modern existence, it flew quietly under the radar, attracting mostly east coast students who prized the educational environment and community Amherst offered. Twenty years ago, the acceptance rate was a (then) record low for the college at 17.5%. A lot has changed in the past two decades, though. Word about a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts spread far and wide, and the acceptance rate plummeted. Most recently, for the Class of 2030, Amherst reported another record low acceptance rate of only 6.78%.

Vanderbilt is an impressive and highly-respected university that is at a major inflection point — and has been for a while. Over the past decade, Vanderbilt has become one of the hardest universities to gain admittance to in the country. In that time, the university hasn’t changed massively. It’s been a great school for a long time, and it continues to be a strong bet for setting driven students up for a successful future. As acceptance rates decreased among the top tier of schools, Vanderbilt has experienced one of the wildest drops. Today, the acceptance rate is only 7.35%.