Is the University of Maryland or Johns Hopkins harder to get into?

The biggest practical difference is that Johns Hopkins is a very highly selective private university with a much smaller applicant pool and far fewer seats, while the University of Maryland is a large public flagship that admits a broader range of students, especially from Maryland. In simple terms, Johns Hopkins is harder to get into overall. Maryland can still be quite competitive for certain applicants and programs, but it is not in the same tier of selectivity as Hopkins.

Johns Hopkins draws a national and international pool of applicants with exceptionally strong academic records, and admission there is widely viewed as far more difficult across the board. The University of Maryland, College Park is selective too, especially for out-of-state students and for limited enrollment programs such as engineering, computer science, or business-related pathways. But as an institution, Maryland is more accessible than Hopkins.

Another reason the comparison can feel confusing is that Maryland has different layers of competitiveness within the university. Getting into UMD itself is one question, and getting direct entry to a high-demand major can be tougher. Hopkins does not really work that way in the same sense because the baseline admission to the university is already much more restrictive.

So if your goal is a simple admissions comparison: Johns Hopkins is clearly the harder school to get into, and the University of Maryland is selective but noticeably less competitive overall.