Is McGill or Dartmouth harder to get into?

The biggest practical difference is that Dartmouth is a highly selective, holistic private university, while McGill is much more numbers-driven and often more predictable if your grades meet the published standards. Dartmouth evaluates applicants in a broad U.S. admissions style with very limited space in each class, so it is harder to get into overall for most students. McGill is selective too, but admission is usually more transparent and tied more directly to academic results, especially by program and curriculum.

Dartmouth is the tougher admit. It is one of the most selective colleges in the U.S., and admission depends on far more than just having strong grades. Essays, activities, recommendations, course rigor, and institutional priorities all matter, which means even excellent applicants are often denied.

McGill can be very competitive for certain faculties and majors, especially for applicants to high-demand programs, but it is not selective in the same way. For many applicants, if you meet or exceed the academic cutoff for your program and educational system, your chances are much more straightforward. That makes McGill feel less random and, for strong academic applicants, often more attainable than Dartmouth.

So in an overall head-to-head comparison, Dartmouth is harder to get into. McGill is still a respected and selective university, but Dartmouth’s admissions process is narrower, less predictable, and significantly more difficult at the top level.