What type of student is Notre Dame looking for?

Notre Dame seeks academically strong, passionate students with deep involvement in a few key activities, demonstrating creativity, intellectual curiosity, and a commitment to service, often within a Catholic context, looking for "creative intellectuals and passionate people with multiple interests" who want to make a positive impact. They value high achievement in rigorous coursework, significant extracurricular leadership (not just breadth), compelling essays, strong teacher recommendations, and indicators of empathy, humility, and growth, considering the student's unique background and opportunities.

What kind of student does Notre Dame want?

Academic performance in high school

We are looking for you to take rigorous classes, achieve strong grades, and demonstrate your academic curiosity and potential to thrive at Notre Dame.

What kind of student goes to Notre Dame?

Notre Dame emphasizes admissions essays and values creativity and skill. It also seeks students with a narrower extracurricular focus—searching for those who demonstrate strengths in a particular area rather than a wide breadth of activities, but less depth.

What are the demographics of Notre Dame students?

The student population is composed of 57.8% White, 12.1% Hispanic or Latino, 5.23% Asian, 4.86% of Two or More Races, and 4.15% Black or African American students, according to Data USA.

How likely am I to get into Notre Dame?

The acceptance rate at Notre Dame is 11.3%.

For every 100 applicants, only 11 are admitted. This means the school is extremely selective. Meeting their GPA requirements and SAT/ACT requirements is very important to getting past their first round of filters and proving your academic preparation.

Notre Dame: The Pros, the cons, and how to get in.

Is it harder to get into Duke or Notre Dame?

Duke is generally harder to get into than Notre Dame, consistently showing lower acceptance rates (around 5-11%) compared to Notre Dame (around 11-20%), though both are highly selective schools with strong academic profiles and competitive admissions. Duke often sees slightly higher average SAT/ACT scores and its admissions are considered more challenging overall, though admissions are complex and depend on many factors. 

Which school sends most kids to the Ivy League?

There isn't one single school, but rather a mix of elite private boarding schools and top public magnet schools that consistently send the most students to the Ivy League, with Phillips Academy Andover, Phillips Exeter Academy, The Lawrenceville School, Stuyvesant High School, and Boston Latin School often topping the lists for sheer numbers and high percentages of admitted students. These "feeder schools" provide rigorous academics, but public schools like Stuyvesant also achieve high rates by focusing on top students, while private schools often benefit from legacies and established pipelines to these universities. 

Is Notre Dame as good as an Ivy League?

Yes, Notre Dame is widely considered to be academically on par with Ivy League schools, often ranking alongside them in national lists and considered a "New Ivy," offering comparable academic rigor, strong research, and an excellent student experience, even though it's not officially part of the Ivy League athletic conference. Many sources highlight its high-quality undergraduate education, strong faculty, impressive research, and robust alumni network as comparable to or exceeding some Ivies in specific areas.
 

What is the #1 hardest college to get into?

There isn't one single #1 hardest school, as it changes slightly by year and criteria, but Harvard University, Stanford University, MIT, and Caltech consistently rank among the top with extremely low acceptance rates (often 3-4%) and intense competition for spots, though other top global universities like Oxford and Tsinghua are also incredibly selective. Harvard is frequently cited as the hardest due to its high volume of applications and focus on global leadership potential, while Caltech is known for its extreme difficulty in STEM. 

Is NYU or Notre Dame harder to get into?

If you're looking at acceptance rate alone, then University of Notre Dame is more difficult to get into. However, each college is looking to fill its incoming class with a variety of students with different strengths, backgrounds, etc.

Is Notre Dame harder to get into than Harvard?

It is significantly harder to get into Harvard University than the University of Notre Dame, with Harvard's acceptance rate often below 4% compared to Notre Dame's, which has recently hovered around 9-11%. Harvard is consistently ranked among the most selective schools globally, requiring exceptional academic and extracurricular profiles, though Notre Dame is also extremely competitive and considered a top-tier university. 

What major is Notre Dame good for?

What majors and academic programs is the University of Notre Dame known for? The most popular majors at the University of Notre Dame are econometrics and quantitative economics; finance; political science and government; accounting; and computer and information sciences, among others.

Why do people like Notre Dame so much?

Most Americans know Notre Dame because the Fighting Irish have won more national football championships (11) than any other school in history. It even inspired the famous 1993 movie “Rudy” about a small but plucky student who manages to fulfill his lifelong dream of one day playing for the team.

What was Mark Zuckerberg's SAT score?

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT, achieving the maximum possible score before attending Harvard University. This high score reflects his exceptional academic performance, matching other tech leaders like Bill Gates and Will Smith who also attained near-perfect or perfect scores, according to various reports.
 

What type of student goes to Notre Dame?

StudentsScroll to Top

The typical Notre Dame student is "very smart" and exemplifies what one student describes as "a type-A personality that studies a lot, yet is athletic and involved in the community.

Should I submit a 1440 to Notre Dame?

You should likely submit a 1440 SAT score to Notre Dame, as it falls right at the 25th percentile, meaning 25% of admitted students scored at or below this, but you'll need strong essays, extracurriculars, and high GPA to balance it and stand out, as the score alone isn't a guarantee, especially with high competition and ND valuing non-numeric factors heavily. 

Where do top 1% send kids to college?

The "top 1%" of students, referring to those from the highest income brackets, tend to attend elite universities like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale that consistently rank high in national and global lists, with some even having more students from the top 1% income bracket than the bottom 60% combined, according to The New York Times data. Top-ranked institutions like MIT, Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford are frequent top contenders in various 2026 rankings from U.S. News & World Report and Times Higher Education. 

What is the #1 party school?

For 2026, the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is widely ranked as the #1 party school by sources like Niche and Business Insider, followed by schools like Florida State University and Tulane University, based on student surveys about campus party culture, access to bars, and Greek life.
 

Where do the 1% go to college?

The 1% of the wealthiest Americans disproportionately attend highly selective, elite universities, particularly Ivy League schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, Penn, Columbia) and other top institutions like MIT, Stanford, Duke, and UChicago, where they make up a large percentage of the student body, often outnumbering students from the bottom 60% of income earners combined. Liberal arts colleges and prestigious public universities also attract many wealthy students, with specific examples including WashU St. Louis, UVA, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt, and Johns Hopkins.
 

Is Notre Dame a wealthy school?

University of Notre Dame - $16.6 Billion

Coming in at number nine is the University of Notre Dame, located in Notre Dame, Indiana, with an endowment of $16.6 billion.

What is the vibe at Notre Dame University?

What Students Say. The University of Notre Dame is often described as a beautiful campus with a strong sense of community, where traditions and school spirit are integral to the student experience.

Is a degree from Notre Dame respected?

As one of the most highly regarded Catholic institutions in the US, Notre Dame is respected for producing well-rounded scholars and leaders and sending them out into the world with a vision for leadership, integrity, and community service.

What are the 63 hidden Ivies?

The 63 "Hidden Ivies" are a list of excellent, selective colleges outside the traditional Ivy League, known for strong academics, often with liberal arts focuses, broken down into Northeast (37), South (12), Midwest (11), and West (3) regions, including schools like Amherst, Williams, Carleton, Duke, Emory, Stanford, Pomona, and UChicago, offering Ivy-level education without the traditional Ivy League name. 

What high school sends the most kids to MIT?

The high schools who send the most students to Harvard, MIT, and Princeton. 1 Stuyvesant High School, NYC 2 Phillips Academy, Andover 3 Boston Latin School, Boston 6 Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH 8 Lexington High School. The chart does not specify a time frame.

What is the #1 high school in America?

There isn't one single #1 high school, as rankings vary by publication and criteria, but BASIS Tucson North was named #1 by U.S. News in their 2025-2026 rankings, while NC School of Science and Mathematics (NC) is often top-ranked by Niche, and other top contenders include Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (VA) and Stuyvesant High School (NY). These rankings often favor specialized STEM schools or magnet schools with rigorous selective admissions.