Which is more selective, Cornell or MIT?

MIT is typically more selective than Cornell. Both are among the most competitive colleges in the country, but MIT admits a smaller share of applicants and has a more compressed academic profile among admitted students. Cornell is also highly selective, though its admissions landscape varies more because it includes multiple undergraduate colleges with different applicant pools and priorities.

A student who is looking at MIT should think of it as an especially intense reach for almost everyone, including applicants with top grades, rigorous coursework, and very strong testing. MIT’s applicant pool is unusually self-selecting: many students applying there already have exceptional preparation in math, science, and problem-solving, so standing out is difficult even among very accomplished candidates.

Cornell attracts outstanding applicants too, but it is a larger university with a wider range of programs, from engineering and computer science to hotel administration, agriculture, labor relations, architecture, and arts and sciences. Because of that, selectivity is not identical across the university. Some Cornell colleges and majors can be extraordinarily difficult to enter, while others have somewhat different criteria and a broader mix of applicants. So when people compare Cornell to MIT, they are often comparing MIT to Cornell as a whole, which can flatten important differences.

If your question is purely about admissions competitiveness, MIT is the tougher admit overall. If you are thinking about a specific Cornell college, though, that comparison can get more nuanced, especially in fields like engineering or computer science where Cornell is also exceptionally hard to get into.