Is Princeton harder to get into than Dartmouth for undergraduate admissions?

Yes. Princeton is typically viewed as harder to get into than Dartmouth for undergraduate admissions, even though both are among the most selective colleges in the country. In practice, Princeton tends to attract an even larger volume of top-end applicants, and it is often treated as one of the very toughest admissions outcomes in the Ivy League. For a college list, that means both belong in the reach category, but Princeton is usually the steeper reach of the two.

One concrete difference is applicant pressure and admissions positioning. Princeton has an especially broad national and international draw, very high academic expectations across the board, and a level of name recognition that pushes huge numbers of extremely qualified students to apply. Dartmouth is also intensely selective, but it is a somewhat smaller, more niche-feeling institution, so the admissions conversation around it is usually a bit different.

Another factor is how students and counselors tend to classify them. Princeton is often grouped with the very top handful of schools where admission is exceptionally unpredictable even for near-perfect applicants. Dartmouth is absolutely still in that unpredictable zone, just usually a notch less daunting in common admissions perception.

That does not mean Dartmouth is meaningfully easy, or that any individual applicant would have a better shot there in a reliable way. The main takeaway is that if you are comparing raw admissions difficulty, Princeton is usually considered the tougher admit.