Is University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign or UCLA harder to get into?

UCLA is usually considered harder to get into overall than the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It draws an enormous national and international applicant pool, has a very strong yield, and is widely viewed as one of the most selective public universities in the country. For most students comparing overall admissions difficulty, UCLA is the tougher admit.

That said, UIUC can be extremely selective in certain programs, especially in high-demand majors like computer science, engineering, and business. A student applying to one of UIUC’s most competitive direct-entry majors may face odds that feel as tough as, or in some cases tougher than, applying to a less impacted major at UCLA. So major really matters at Illinois in a very concrete way.

UCLA tends to be the tougher option for the student who is looking at the university as a whole and not a specific specialized program. Its applicant volume, limited space, and broad appeal across many fields make admission difficult even for strong students. It is also more unpredictable because many applicants have excellent grades and coursework.

UIUC is a different kind of selective. It is especially challenging for applicants who want one of its marquee STEM or pre-professional programs, while some other colleges or majors may be more accessible than UCLA overall. If your question is simply which school is more selective in the general sense, the answer is UCLA. If your question is about a specific major, especially CS or engineering, the comparison can get much closer and sometimes shifts depending on the program.