Is it harder to get into the University of Washington or Duke University?

The biggest practical tradeoff here is that Duke is a highly selective private university with a much smaller undergraduate population, while the University of Washington admits a far larger class and has a public university mission that includes serving Washington residents. In overall admissions difficulty, Duke is harder to get into for most applicants. UW is certainly competitive, especially for some majors, but Duke is the more selective school at the university-wide level.

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that UW can feel very hard to access in specific areas. Its direct admission pathways for majors like computer science, engineering, and business can be especially competitive, and out-of-state applicants may face a different admissions landscape than Washington residents. So someone applying to a high-demand UW program may experience that process as extremely selective.

Duke, though, is more selective across the board, not just in a few standout majors. It draws a national and international applicant pool for a relatively small class, and admission expectations are very high in academics, extracurricular impact, and overall application strength. That makes it tougher to gain admission overall than UW.

So if your question is simply which school is harder to get into in general, the answer is Duke. If your real concern is a specific UW major, especially a capacity-constrained one, that particular path can still be very difficult even though Duke is the more selective institution overall.