The top colleges in NCAA Division 1

July 4, 2022 Donna Meyer

The 31 highly selective colleges in NCAA Division 1 include the 8 Ivy League colleges plus 23 more colleges with acceptance rates below 25%.

These 31 highly selective colleges collectively have a total of almost 22,000 NCAA athletes with 11,200 men representing 51% of total athletes and 10,700 women representing 49% of total athletes at the 31 colleges. The NCAA sports played at these colleges range from very popular sports like basketball, football and track and field to niche sports like fencing, crew and water polo.

See How the top colleges in Division 1 select their athlete recruits

The table below lists these 31 colleges.

Highly Selective Colleges in NCAA Division 1

COLLEGES	Division
Barnard College	I
Boston College	I
Boston University	I
Brown University	I
Colgate University	I
Columbia University	I
Cornell University	I
Dartmouth College	I
Davidson College	I
Duke University	I
Georgetown University	I
Georgia Institute of Technology	I
Harvard University	I
Northeastern University	I
Northwestern University	I
Princeton University	I
Rice University	I
Stanford University	I
Tulane University	I
University of California Berkeley	I
University of California Los Angeles	I
University of Michigan	I
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill	I
University of Notre Dame	I
University of Pennsylvania	I
University of Southern California	I
University of Virginia	I
Vanderbilt University	I
Villanova University	I
Wake Forest University	I
Yale University	I

See this gallery in the original post