Is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign harder to get into than Notre Dame for undergraduate admissions?

No. For undergraduate admissions overall, Notre Dame is harder to get into than the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Notre Dame is a highly selective private university with a smaller class size and a national applicant pool competing for fewer seats, while UIUC is a large public flagship that admits many more students overall. Even without using year-specific rates, Notre Dame is widely viewed as the more difficult admit in a general sense.

One important differentiator is applicant pool and institutional size. Notre Dame enrolls a comparatively small undergraduate class and attracts a very high concentration of academically strong applicants from across the country. UIUC also draws many strong students, but because it is a much larger university, overall admission is less restrictive than at Notre Dame.

Another key difference is program-by-program selectivity. At UIUC, some majors can be much harder to enter than the university overall, especially in areas like engineering, computer science, and business.

A third distinction is the public versus private admissions context. UIUC, as Illinois’s flagship public university, serves a broader enrollment mission and has substantial in-state enrollment, which affects how admission works. Notre Dame does not have that same public mandate and can be more uniformly selective across its undergraduate population.