Is Notre Dame or Michigan harder to get into?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that Notre Dame is a private university with one overall admissions pool, while Michigan’s selectivity depends a lot on whether you are in state or out of state. In broad reputation, Notre Dame is usually viewed as harder to get into overall, especially because it draws a national applicant pool and does not have the residency split that shapes Michigan admissions. Michigan is still extremely selective, but its overall admit picture is more variable because Michigan residents typically have a different admissions landscape than nonresidents.

That is why people can talk past each other when comparing the two. If someone is thinking about Michigan as an in-state applicant, they may see it as somewhat more accessible than Notre Dame. If they mean out-of-state Michigan, the gap can feel smaller, and in some years certain Michigan applicant groups may experience admissions that look just as tough.

In everyday college admissions conversation, though, Notre Dame tends to carry the reputation of being slightly tougher to crack in a straight head-to-head comparison. Michigan is highly selective and very prestigious, but because it is a large public flagship with a substantial in-state mission, people usually do not treat its overall selectivity in quite the same way as Notre Dame’s.

So if you want the short answer: Notre Dame is generally considered harder to get into overall, while Michigan can be similarly difficult for some applicants, especially from out of state.