The top 10 most selective colleges in the United States

1.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2.Princeton
3.California Institute of Technology
4.Yale
5.Harvard
6.Stanford
7.Columbia
8.University of Pennsylvania
9.Brown
10.Swarthmore

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The most selective college in the United States is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's the word from Atlantic Monthly, which has joined the crush of magazines anxious to rank U.S. colleges in what has become a lucrative venture for magazine publishers.

People--that would be high school juniors and seniors and their parents--pay close attention to these lists. Some might say, too close attention. But the lists sell magazines and books. Atlantic Monthly's list is somewhat different from that of U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review, which both rank colleges based on a myriad of factors. This list is based on one thing only: the difficulty of admission.\

Top 10 best colleges as ranked by U.S. News & World Report:

1.Princeton
1.Harvard
3.Yale
4.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
5.California Institute of Technology
5.Duke
5.Stanford
5.University of Pennsylvania
9.Dartmouth College
9.Washington University in St. Louis

Princeton Review's top 10 colleges that are the "toughest to get into":

1.United States Military Academy
2.Princeton
3.Harvard
4.Yale
5.United States Naval Academy
6.Massachusetts Institute of Technology
7.Davidson College
8.Stanford
9.Dartmouth
10.Cooper Union