14 things that are harder to get into than Harvard

REUTERS / Brian Snyder

Harvard is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts, school accepted just 5.2% of roughly 39,000 applications for its class of 2020. As Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said in 2014, "We could fill our class twice over with valedictorians."

The school seeks out students who not only have high grades, but also have outstanding achievements under their belts — from overcoming homelessness to starting their own nonprofits. The students who manage to catch the attention of admissions officers overcome exceptional odds, but they should maintain some perspective.

Many things in life — like landing a job at some Wal-Mart locations — are harder to achieve than getting into that prestigious university.

Ben Winsor and Christina Sterbenz also contributed to this story.

A spot at one of New York City's top elementary schools

The elementary admissions process in New York City is utterly grueling. Among exemplary schools, one stands out as the gold-standard: Hunter College Elementary School.

Each year, Hunter chooses 25 girls and 25 boys from all of Manhattan to be admitted to its incoming kindergarten class.

They're hand-selected from a pool of about 2,500 applicants, according to the website Inside Schools. That makes the acceptance rate for Hunter 2%. 

A job as an NBC page

Landing an internship-like role in the National Broadcasting Company's page program is competitive to say the least. Famously, the character Kenneth Parcel was a page on 30 Rock.

For example, in 2016 there were 2,600 applicants for 120 positions, for a 4.6% acceptance rate.

The NBC page role is a year-long entry-level role where employees perform PR responsibilities among other tasks depending on their department.

A spot at an innovative startup college

College startup Minerva Schools has received 16,000 applications for 306 available places this year, the Financial Times reported.

Its model vastly differs from what four years of school at other prestigious colleges resemble. Students don't stay in one place during their four-year education.

They spend time in up to seven residence houses in San Francisco, California; Berlin, Germany; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Seoul, South Korea; Bangalore, India; Istanbul, Turkey; and London, England.

At 1.9%, the acceptance rate for the unconventional college is far lower than at Stanford.