Is NYU or Johns Hopkins harder to get into overall?

Johns Hopkins is usually considered harder to get into than NYU. Both are highly selective, but Hopkins tends to sit in the more restrictive tier for general undergraduate admission, especially because of its smaller class size and consistently intense applicant pool. NYU is also very competitive, but at the university-wide level it is usually seen as a bit less selective than Hopkins.

This is most true for students applying without a niche institutional hook and looking at the schools as a whole rather than at one standout program. Hopkins attracts a very concentrated group of high-achieving applicants, especially students strong in STEM, research, and pre-med interests, and it has less room overall. That usually makes the admissions bar feel tighter across the board.

NYU can look extremely selective in certain corners of the university. Programs like Tisch, Stern, and some specialized majors can be especially difficult, and NYU’s popularity means it gets a huge number of applications. But because NYU is a much larger university with more schools and programs, the overall admissions picture is broader and not quite as uniformly tight as Johns Hopkins.

So if you are asking for the broad, school-wide answer rather than comparing Stern to BME or Tisch to Peabody, Johns Hopkins is more often viewed as the tougher admit. NYU remains a reach-level school for many applicants, just not usually the more selective of the two when people compare them in general.