How to get into Princeton

What is Princeton’s reputation?

“the top ranked Ivy” “total grind school” “hyper-competitive” “super stressful” “lots of grade deflation” “everyone is either a music prodigy or a D1 athlete” “great college town” “an hour to NYC” “everyone has to do a senior thesis” “25% of students are engineering majors” “rich and snooty” “big focus on undergraduate teaching” “lots of research opportunities”

Princeton University, located in the idyllic college town of Princeton, New Jersey, is frequently ranked as the #1 college in the Ivy League, and the #1 college in America. You have to take these annual rankings with a grain of salt, since all eight Ivies are world-class institutions, but it’s worth nothing that Princeton is often regarded as the most prestigious of them all, or at least in the Top 3 (with Yale and Harvard). Princeton is also the second smallest Ivy League university (behind Dartmouth) with only 5,500 undergraduates, which gives the university a small college feel.

The “total grind” school.

While academics at all of the Ivies are difficult, Princeton has carved out a reputation for being the most rigorous of them all. Princeton students regularly report feeling “overworked” “stressed-out” “burnt out” and overwhelmed by the “insane” workload and “harsh grading.” Unlike Harvard and Yale, which have significant grade inflation and allow most students to earn A’s or A-’s, many of the best Princeton students struggles to earn B’s, and that can be problematic when it comes time to apply to medical school or law school, when GPA is paramount.

Not only are Princeton students buried in their coursework, but they tend to be very competitive with each other. Part of this might have to do with the fact that some some (large introductory) courses are graded on a curve, so if you help out your neighbors, it’s only going to hurt you. But part of this just seems to be the culture of Princeton itself. Like UPenn or Harvard, there’s a pervasive feeling of “one-upmanship,” where everyone’s always comparing themselves against their peers. Compare this with free-spirited Brown, for example, which embraces a much more collaborative culture, since grades are de-emphasized.

The Pros of Princeton…

If you want to surround yourself with extremely high-achieving, highly-motivated students who are always two steps ahead of everybody else, this is the place for you. Princeton is heaven for “intense over-achievers” who thrive in a pressure-cooker environment where they’re constantly pushed to do more, because everyone around you is always doing more. If you’re looking for a less-intense Ivy League experience, where challenging coursework is balanced out with a more relaxed campus vibe, you’ll be disappointed. Everyone at Princeton is going 100% all the time.

Princeton’s location also offers the best of both worlds: a small, safe, traditional college town that’s only about an hour to New York City. You get a beautiful Gothic-style college campus, and if you’re looking for more excitement, variety or culture on the weekends, or want to interview with a major firm, NYC is quick train ride away. Compare this with Cornell or Dartmouth, which are located way up “in the middle of nowhere,” probably buried under a few feet of snow.

Princeton is also revered for its focus on undergraduate teaching (much like Dartmouth and Brown), in part because of its small undergraduate population, and in part because its top-ranked graduate school is not very large (about 3,000 students who are seeking advanced degrees in a wide variety of fields). At the larger Ivies like Columbia and Harvard, for example, undergraduate courses are frequently taught by grad students and teaching assistants, but this is not the case at Princeton; the university’s primary focus is always undergraduate education.

The Cons of Princeton…

The “eating clubs” at Princeton can either be a pro or a con, depending on your perspective. Basically, the eating clubs are like coed fraternities for upperclassmen (juniors and seniors), and 70% of students join one. Once (or if) you get accepted into an eating club, it can become the focal point of your social life: it’s where you’ll eat all of your meals, it’s where you’ll go to parties, it’s where you can hang out, and it’s where you can live if you’re one of the club’s officers. Each club has its own distinct personality, and there’s something of a social pecking order to them. While some students love their eating club, others complain that it “fractures” their friendships, since friends suddenly can’t eat meals or hang out together like before.

The other major con of Princeton is the intense grind culture that makes even the most driven students always feeling like they’re not doing enough. Is there a better club they should join? Should they spend even more hours studying? Have they done enough to secure the best summer internship or research position? When you’re in a ultra-competitive environment like this, it’s easy to lose perspective and get down on yourself, even when, by any objective measure, you’re doing just fine.

What does Princeton look for in applicants?

Ridiculous overachievers. Many of the students who are admitted to Princeton have perfect or near-perfect academic records, meaning they have straight A’s in all AP classes or whatever the hardest classes their high school offered. And in addition to that, they have achieved some incredible level of proficiency in something else. For example, they’re a top nationally-ranked athlete (Princeton has won far more Ivy League titles than any of the other seven Ivies, and 20% of students play a Division 1 sport). Or, they’re some kind of music prodigy who has won international competitions.

While Harvard claims to be looking for “future leaders” and Brown wants students “who will change the world,” Princeton seems to recruit students who “overachieve for the sake over overachieving.” If you’re the best at what you do, and you’re a straight A student to boot, you’ve got a good shot a Princeton.

Final tips for getting in.

While Princeton has recently stopped sharing its early admission statistics (known as Single Choice Early Action/SCEA), it’s worth noting that the acceptance rate for Regular Decision is about 4%, so we estimate the Early Action rate is about 8%. What this means is that applying early gives you a slight statistical advantage, but not nearly the pronounced advantage you get applying early to say, Dartmouth, Cornell, UPenn or Brown. But, you should be aware that approximately 45% of the freshmen class at Princeton will be made up of SCEA applicants, so if you apply Regular Decision, half of the seats will already be gone by the time they look at your application.

You should also know that while Princeton is technically “test optional” for the SAT and ACT, 85% of admitted students submitted their scores for the Class of 2026. That means that while you can still get into Princeton without submitting your test scores, only 15% of students managed to do so. Our advice: sign up for an SAT or ACT program, crush the test, and submit that score.