How do Notre Dame and Vanderbilt compare in admissions difficulty overall?

They are both extremely selective, and in broad terms Vanderbilt is usually viewed as a bit harder to get into overall than Notre Dame. Vanderbilt tends to draw a very large national applicant pool for a relatively small undergraduate class, while Notre Dame is also highly selective but has a somewhat more distinct self-selecting applicant base tied to its Catholic identity, campus culture, and traditions. In practice, neither is remotely a “safer” option for a strong student.

Vanderbilt often feels toughest for students who are applying because it has broad appeal across many different academic interests and attracts a heavy volume of applicants from all over the country. It is the kind of school that gets a lot of applications from students aiming at the most selective private universities, so the competition can feel especially compressed at the top. If someone is asking which school is more difficult in the abstract, Vanderbilt is the one I would place slightly higher on the difficulty scale.

Notre Dame is still firmly in the same high-selectivity tier, just with a somewhat different admissions dynamic. It appeals strongly to students who actively want its particular mix of academics, residential community, school spirit, service orientation, and Catholic character. That can make the pool a little more targeted, but not easy. A student who is a strong fit for Notre Dame’s values and campus culture may feel more at home in its applicant pool than at Vanderbilt, even though admission remains very hard.

So the clearest short answer is Vanderbilt by a small margin overall, with Notre Dame close enough that the difference should not change how seriously you treat either application.