Is Michigan State harder to get into than Notre Dame for admissions?

The biggest practical tradeoff here is that Notre Dame is a highly selective private university with a much smaller freshman class, while Michigan State is a large public university that admits a far broader share of qualified applicants. In plain terms, Notre Dame is much harder to get into than Michigan State. The two schools sit in very different admissions tiers, so they should not be treated as similarly selective options on a college list.

Notre Dame’s applicant pool is typically packed with students who have very strong grades, rigorous coursework, and substantial extracurricular achievement, and the school can only take a limited portion of them. Michigan State is certainly a legitimate and respected university, but its admissions process is much more accessible by comparison and is not viewed as being at the same level of difficulty.

For list-building purposes, Notre Dame should be treated as a reach for nearly everyone, including many very strong applicants. Michigan State is more likely to fall into the target or possible safety range depending on your academics, residency, and intended major. That does not mean admission is automatic, only that the odds are far more favorable there than at Notre Dame.

So if your question is simply which school is harder to get into, the answer is Notre Dame by a wide margin. Michigan State and Notre Dame are both well-known schools, but in admissions selectivity they are not especially close.