Is UMass Amherst or BU harder to get into for undergraduate admissions?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that Boston University is typically the more selective undergraduate admission, while UMass Amherst is more accessible overall but can still be quite competitive for certain majors and applicant groups. BU draws a very large national and international pool and is usually viewed as the harder admit. UMass Amherst has broader access as a large public flagship, but out-of-state applicants and students applying to popular programs can still face meaningful competition.

For a straightforward comparison, BU is harder to get into in most cases. That is the clearer answer if you are building a college list and trying to sort schools by selectivity. UMass Amherst is not an easy safety for everyone, especially for business, computer science, engineering, or nursing, but it is usually less selective than BU overall.

A few school-specific details matter here. BU is a private university with a more nationally concentrated applicant pool, and its admissions process is typically read as more selective across the board. UMass Amherst, as the Massachusetts public flagship, serves a wider range of in-state and out-of-state students, so its overall admission landscape is broader even though some colleges within the university are much tougher than others.

If you are organizing your list, treat BU as the tougher admit and UMass Amherst as the less selective of the two, with the important caveat that major matters a lot at UMass.