Little Ivies — The 20 Most Selective Elite Liberal Arts Colleges
Twenty undergraduate-focused liberal arts colleges with Ivy-like selectivity and prestige signal — Amherst-to-Swarthmore shelf, Claremont included — without research-university scale. Membership is editorial; rank is by admission rate.
Editorial membership · ranked by admission rate · Top 20 · Compiled 2026-09-01
Chase these schools
Top schools on this list that also show up elsewhere — hop lists without leaving the trail.
- 1Pomona CollegeClaremont, CA · Private6.8%Compare nearby
- 2Colby CollegeWaterville, ME · Private6.8%Compare nearby
- 3Swarthmore CollegeSwarthmore, PA · Private6.9%Compare nearby
- 4Barnard CollegeNew York, NY · Private8.0%Compare nearby
- 5Bowdoin CollegeBrunswick, ME · Private8.0%Compare nearby
- 6Amherst CollegeAmherst, MA · Private9.8%Compare nearby
- 7Williams CollegeWilliamstown, MA · Private10.0%Compare nearby
- 8Middlebury CollegeMiddlebury, VT · Private10.4%Compare nearby
- 9Claremont McKenna CollegeClaremont, CA · Private11.1%Compare nearby
- 10Hamilton CollegeClinton, NY · Private11.8%Compare nearby
- 11Grinnell CollegeGrinnell, IA · Private12.7%Compare nearby
- 12Haverford CollegeHaverford, PA · Private12.9%Compare nearby
- 13Bates CollegeLewiston, ME · Private13.0%Compare nearby
- 14Harvey Mudd CollegeClaremont, CA · Private13.1%Compare nearby
Also on 9 other lists
- 15Wellesley CollegeWellesley, MA · Private13.9%Compare nearby
- 16Davidson CollegeDavidson, NC · Private14.5%Compare nearby
- 17Wesleyan UniversityMiddletown, CT · Private17.1%Compare nearby
- 18Washington and Lee UniversityLexington, VA · Private17.4%Compare nearby
- 19Vassar CollegePoughkeepsie, NY · Private17.7%Compare nearby
- 20Carleton CollegeNorthfield, MN · Private22.3%Compare nearby
How this list was built
- Measure
- Editorial membership set; within that set, ranked by admission rate (lowest to highest).
- Source variable
ADM_RATE- Dataset
- Membership is editorial. Displayed figures come from U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard, Most-Recent-Cohorts-Institution (05-19-2025 release).
- Four-year, main-campus institutions awarding bachelor's degrees or higher (2,406 schools).
- Membership is an editorial set of elite liberal arts colleges often discussed under the “Little Ivies” label (undergraduate-focused, typically under ~5,000 undergrads). Specialty schools, service academies, and research universities are out of scope.
- Within that set, schools are ranked by College Scorecard admission rate (lowest = most selective). Rank order will change when Scorecard updates admit rates.
- Overlap with other curated shortlists is allowed when a campus fits more than one frame.
An editorial shortlist is a narrow way to sample prestige signaling — not a quality verdict. Read this alongside other Scorecard rankings, and see the methodology.
Keep exploring
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- Live leaderboardReshuffle Top 10–50 on one Scorecard measure
- Explore games & mapsShowdown, Name That College, sports, and more lists
- Sports at Pomona CollegeEADA programs for the #1 school on this list
Keep going
The Ivy League — All Eight Schools, Ranked by Selectivity
The eight members of the Ivy League athletic conference — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale — ranked by admission rate. Membership is fixed by the conference, not editorial.
Hidden Ivies — 20 High-Signal Schools Beside the Ivy League
Twenty selective private universities and college-scale campuses that sit next to the Ivy League — Emory, Tufts, Colgate shelf — without the eight Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, or hyperbrand near-Ivies (Duke, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern). Membership is editorial; rank is by admission rate.
Resume Signal — Top 100 Undergraduate Brands
An editorial ranking of how loudly a U.S. undergraduate brand tends to read on a résumé in elite hiring and selective graduate admissions — not a quality score, and not a College Scorecard sort.