Research · Ivy League · October 2026

What It Takes to Get Into the Ivy League in 2026: Scores, Early Decision, Admit Rates

As of October 2026: For fall 2027 applicants, 6 of the 8 Ivies require the SAT or ACT, and a strong score sits near the 75th percentile -- about 1550 to 1560 on the SAT and 35 on the ACT. Admit rates at the eight schools run from 3.5 percent at Harvard to 8.2 percent at Cornell, while early decision admit rates run far higher, such as 21.62 percent at Dartmouth against a 6.02 percent overall rate.

Test rules, score bands, early decision math and admit rates for the eight Ivy League schools, read straight from each college's own published data.

Analysis: Test Prep Gurus (High School Reach, highschoolreach.com), October 2026. Figures and the table may be quoted with attribution to Test Prep Gurus.

What SAT and ACT scores do Ivy League students have?

Score bands and test policies for the eight Ivy League schools, taken from each college's own Common Data Set or admissions facts page. A null value is not reported.

Harvard and Penn publish only SAT section scores in their Common Data Sets, so no SAT composite band is shown for them. Brown and Cornell do not publish test-submission shares in the documents used here.

How much better are early decision odds?

Early decision and overall admit rates from each college's own Common Data Set. Rows with null early decision counts are colleges that confirm an early decision plan but leave the counts blank in their own document.

Harvard, Princeton and Yale do not appear here because this file holds no early decision rows for them. Middlebury's early decision admit count excludes February admits, so its early rate is understated. Northeastern, Boston College, Amherst and Middlebury rows describe the fall 2024 entering class.

What are the admit rates at the most-applied-to colleges?

Applicant counts and admit rates from IPEDS Admissions 2023, covering the fall 2023 entering class. The seven Ivies in this file appear alongside the other large-volume colleges families usually compare.

Trimmed to the first 50 rows of a 60-row file, sorted by admit rate from lowest to highest.

What did Ivy score bands look like in the IPEDS 2023 data?

A second view of the same eight schools, this time from IPEDS Admissions 2023 for the fall 2023 entering class. Dartmouth is not in this file.

This file holds 7 rows. Bands describe enrolled first-years who submitted that test, not admitted students.

Which Ivy League schools require the SAT or ACT in 2026?

Six of the eight Ivies require the SAT or ACT from fall 2027 applicants: Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn and Yale. Columbia and Princeton stay test-optional for the 2026-27 cycle. Both then require scores starting with the 2027-28 cycle, for fall 2028 entry.

The dates differ school by school, and that matters for a junior deciding whether to sit for a test. Brown's rule began with the 2024-25 admission cycle. Cornell's rule applies to students who enroll in fall 2026 or later, across all eight of its undergraduate colleges and schools. Penn's rule began with the Class of 2030 and carries forward to fall 2027 applicants.

Yale is the trickiest case. For the fall 2025 entering class, Yale was test-flexible: a student could send the SAT, the ACT, AP scores or IB scores. Starting with the 2026-27 cycle, Yale asks for the SAT or the ACT in particular. AP and IB scores no longer stand in for a test score there.

For a family planning a testing calendar, the practical read is simple. Six of the eight Ivies already ask for a score, and the other two ask from fall 2028 entry. Even at Columbia and Princeton, a student who tests well can still send a score this cycle. Princeton states that an application without scores is complete and not at a disadvantage.

What SAT score do you need for the Ivy League?

A strong Ivy SAT score sits at or above the 75th percentile mark, which is 1560 at Columbia, Princeton and Yale, and 1550 at Brown, Cornell and Dartmouth. Those are the top edges of the published middle-50 bands. A quarter of the class scored above them.

The bottom edges tell a different story. Dartmouth's 25th percentile is 1440, Brown's is 1470 and Yale's is 1480. Cornell and Princeton both report 1490, and Columbia reports 1510. One in four admitted or enrolled students scored at or below that lower number. These schools do not use a cutoff, and Brown says plainly that there are no minimum scores required.

Two Ivies publish no SAT composite band at all. Harvard and Penn report only section scores in their Common Data Sets. We left those cells blank rather than adding the two sections together to make a number the colleges never printed. That gap is named again in our method note.

What this means at home is that a score near 1550 sits inside the published band at any Ivy that reports one. A score of 1440 is inside Dartmouth's reported band but sits at the bottom edge of it. The band tells you where enrolled students landed, and nothing more.

What ACT score do you need for the Ivy League?

A good Ivy ACT composite is 35 or better, because 35 is the 75th percentile at every Ivy that reports one, and Brown reports 36. The ACT scale is short, so one point covers a wide slice of the band.

The 25th percentile ACT runs from 32 at Dartmouth to 34 at Brown, Columbia, Penn and Princeton. Harvard, Cornell and Yale each report 33 at the bottom of the band. In other words, three quarters of these students earned a 32 or higher, and the top quarter earned a 35 or more.

The ACT is also the less common choice. At Harvard, 79 percent of enrolled first-years submitted an SAT score while 27 percent submitted an ACT score. At Dartmouth the split was 69 percent SAT and 33 percent ACT. Columbia sits at 50 percent SAT and 17 percent ACT. Those shares add past 100 at some schools because some students send both.

For a student who is stronger on the ACT, the data is reassuring. Every Ivy that lists a policy accepts the SAT or the ACT. A 35 sits at the top edge of every published ACT band. The choice between tests can rest on which one a student scores better on.

What are Ivy League acceptance rates right now?

Ivy admit rates in the IPEDS 2023 file run from 3.5 percent at Harvard to 8.2 percent at Cornell. Columbia sits at 4.2 percent, Yale and Princeton at 4.5 percent each, Brown at 5.2 percent, and Penn at 5.9 percent. Dartmouth is not in that file.

Those rates come from very different pools. Harvard drew 56,937 applicants, Cornell drew 65,635, and Princeton drew 39,644. Cornell has the largest applicant count of the seven Ivies in this file and the highest admit rate of the group.

Non-Ivy schools in the same file make a useful reference. Stanford sat at 3.9 percent, below six of the seven Ivies listed. The University of Chicago sat at 4.8 percent and Northeastern at 5.6 percent, with 96,631 applicants in this IPEDS 2023 file. Vanderbilt was 6.3 percent, Duke 6.8 percent and Northwestern 7.2 percent.

The honest read for a family is that every number in this group is small. The gap between a 3.5 percent school and an 8.2 percent school is a gap between two long shots. Families often pair these schools with places where the admit rate runs higher, like the University of Texas at Austin at 29.1 percent or the University of Florida at 24.0 percent.

Does applying early decision really help?

Yes, at all 24 colleges with a confirmed Common Data Set breakdown, the early decision admit rate is higher than the same document's overall rate. The spread runs from about 1.4 times higher at Rice to about 8.3 times higher at Northeastern. Most schools cluster between 2 and 3 times.

Rice shows the small end: 11.26 percent early against 8.01 percent overall. Northeastern shows the far end: 43.05 percent early against 5.22 percent overall. Dartmouth is the sharpest Ivy gap, with 21.62 percent early against 6.02 percent overall, about 3.6 times higher.

The Ivies with early decision rows in this file are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn. Brown admitted 907 of 5,062 early applicants for a 17.92 percent rate. Cornell admitted 1,889 of 10,057 for 18.78 percent. Penn's early rate of 13.32 percent sits against an overall rate of 4.92 percent.

We want to be careful about what this gap means. The data shows a difference in rates, not a cause. Early pools and regular pools are not the same set of students, so the higher rate is not proof of a boost. Still, the pattern repeats at every school with a confirmed breakdown in this file.

Which colleges hide their early decision numbers?

Four colleges -- Duke, NYU, the University of Chicago and Wake Forest -- confirm they offer early decision and publish the plan dates, but leave the applicant and admit counts blank in their own Common Data Set. No early rate can be computed for them from a primary source.

Each of the four still reports an overall rate. Duke's overall rate was 5.24 percent on 55,541 applicants. NYU reported 114,125 applicants and a 9.06 percent rate. Chicago reported 45,533 applicants and 4.48 percent. Wake Forest reported 19,600 applicants and 20.76 percent.

Two more colleges could not be sourced at all this pass. Wesleyan has no Common Data Set document we could reach, and Pomona publishes its data as an interactive dashboard rather than a file. Those two are named as gaps and left blank rather than filled from a secondary site.

For a family, the practical effect is small but real. If a school does not publish early counts, no early rate for that school can be read from its own document. Claims about a specific early rate at Duke or Chicago do not come from these files. We prefer to say the data is not reported.

Which Ivies report early decision figures?

Five Ivies report early decision figures in this file: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn. Harvard, Princeton and Yale have no early decision rows here, so no early rate is shown for them.

That shapes the choice a senior makes in the fall. The five schools with reported early decision plans are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn. A family comparing early options has those five rows to read, and nothing comparable for the other three Ivies.

The size of these early pools shows how many students apply this way. Cornell received 10,057 early decision applications and Penn received 9,503. Columbia received 5,868 and Brown received 5,062. Dartmouth, the smallest of the five, received 3,552.

The admit counts are smaller still. Cornell admitted 1,889 early applicants and Penn admitted 1,266. Columbia admitted 819, Brown admitted 907 and Dartmouth admitted 768. Each of those five rates sits above the same college's overall rate in the same document, which is the clearest pattern in the table.

How many Ivy applicants actually submit test scores?

At the Ivies that publish the share, between 50 and 79 percent of enrolled first-years submitted an SAT score. Harvard reports 79 percent, Dartmouth 69 percent, Yale 67 percent, Princeton 60 percent, Penn 52 percent and Columbia 50 percent.

The ACT shares are much smaller: 33 percent at Dartmouth, 27 percent at Harvard, 25 percent at Yale, 20 percent at Princeton, 18 percent at Penn and 17 percent at Columbia. Taken together, those shares show that a large share of enrolled students at these schools sent some test score.

Two Ivies do not publish a submission share in the documents we used. Cornell leaves the percent fields blank and gives only raw counts, so we show no share. Brown's facts page carries score bands but no submission share, so those cells are blank too.

These shares come from the Class of 2029. At Columbia, Cornell, Penn and Princeton, that class applied under a test-optional policy, as each row notes. We do not have data for later classes, so we do not predict where these shares go next. The pack names no figure past the Class of 2029.

Why do two different sources show different Ivy score ranges?

The two tables on this page cover different years and different groups, so Harvard's 75th percentile SAT reads 1580 in the IPEDS 2023 file and is not reported in its 2025-26 Common Data Set. Both numbers are correct for what they describe.

The IPEDS file covers the fall 2023 entering class. In it, Princeton, Harvard and Yale all show a 1580 at the 75th percentile and a 1500 at the 25th. Brown, Columbia and Penn show 1570 at the top. Cornell shows 1560. Those bands describe enrolled first-years who submitted that test.

The Common Data Set figures on this page describe the Class of 2029, which entered in fall 2025. Brown is a further exception: its row reports admitted students, not enrolled students, as the row's own population note states.

The takeaway is to compare like with like. Do not set a target by mixing a 2023 enrolled-student number with a 2025 admitted-student number. Pick one source, read the full band, and note which year and which group that band describes.

How many applications does an Ivy really get?

Application volume at the Ivies ranges from 28,230 at Dartmouth to 72,544 at Penn in the most recent Common Data Set figures. Cornell reported 72,523, Columbia 59,611 and Brown 42,774 in the same files.

The IPEDS 2023 file counts an earlier year, the fall 2023 entering class. It lists 59,465 applicants at Penn and 65,635 at Cornell. Harvard listed 56,937 and Columbia 57,613. The two files are not the same year, so they are best read side by side rather than as one trend line.

The Ivies are not the biggest pools. In the early decision file, NYU reported 114,125 applicants for fall 2025 and Northeastern reported 98,425 for fall 2024, so those two counts come from different years. Among the publics in the IPEDS 2023 file, UCLA drew 145,903 applicants and UC San Diego drew 130,771. A large pool does not mean a low admit rate; UC San Diego admitted 27.2 percent.

For a student, the counts give a sense of scale. Each Ivy reads tens of thousands of files. The tables here report how many applied and how many were admitted, and both numbers are large in the first case and small in the second.

What does the data say about minimum scores at an Ivy?

No Ivy publishes a minimum score, and Brown says directly that there are no minimum scores required for admission. The published bands describe who was admitted or enrolled, not a bar a student must clear.

Look at the reported ranges and the point becomes clear. Dartmouth's band starts at 1440 and ends at 1550. That is a wide spread for a college that admitted 1,699 students out of 28,230. Students across that whole band enrolled, which the band itself shows.

The bands also leave half the class out of view. A middle-50 range names the 25th and 75th marks only. One in four enrolled students scored below the low end, and one in four scored above the high end. Brown's row also reports admitted students rather than enrolled ones, which the table notes.

Our read for families is that a score inside the band matches what these schools report. The tables on this page do not report anything else about an application, so we do not claim to know what else moved a decision. The data here covers scores, test policies, applicant counts and admit rates.

What should our family do this year?

Plan for a test score, because 6 of the 8 Ivies already require one and the other 2 require one from fall 2028 entry. A student with no SAT or ACT score cannot meet the stated requirement at those six schools.

Set a target using the published band for each school on the list. At the Ivies in our first table, the 75th percentile SAT sits at 1550 or 1560 and the 75th percentile ACT sits at 35. The 25th percentile marks run from 1440 to 1510 on the SAT and 32 to 34 on the ACT.

Look at the early decision rows with the dates in mind. The five Ivies with reported early plans show early rates from 13.32 percent at Penn to 21.62 percent at Dartmouth, each above its own overall rate. Four other colleges report a plan but no counts, so no rate exists for them.

Finally, read the full admit-rate table, not only the top. It lists big public colleges with higher rates, such as the University of Washington at 42.5 percent with 62,428 applicants and the University of Wisconsin-Madison at 43.3 percent with 63,505 applicants. Those numbers sit in a different range from the single-digit rates above.

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