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Social media has been active with fans and alums of universities having spirited conversations about whether their universities are selective in admissions.
Here are just some of the social media posts.
A Cincinnati fan's take on the acceptance rates of universities and confusion about why some fans are 'flexing" their school's lower acceptance rate.
A BYU fan's perspective is that the acceptance rate of BYU is so high because it includes its Idaho campus.
Here is a perfect example of a fan taking this data out of context. The Kansas State fan is poking fun at Kansas, but according to World News & World Report, Kansas is ranked #143, and Kansas State is ranked #158.
The good news is that if the social media post below were 100% accurate, Texas Tech would rank fifth among Big 12 schools in selectivity and acceptance to its university compared to most other Big 12 schools. However, the post circulating on social media is not entirely accurrate.
U.S. News & World Report deems the tweet incorrect, prompting us to conduct our own thorough research instead of relying on potentially inaccurate AI-generated lists.
Here is where every school in the Big 12 is ranked according to U.S. News & World Report acceptance rank.
The University of Kansas has the highest acceptance rate out of the other 15 Big 12 schools, but they are ranked tied at #143 among national universities. Even though it may seem like it is the easiest Big 12 school to get accepted into, they are ranked higher in the 2026 U.S. News Rankings than other conference schools such as the University of Utah, Kansas State University, and the University of Cincinnati, for example.
Arizona State has the second highest acceptance rate out of the Big 12 schools, but only a couple of Big 12 schools are ranked higher than them in the U.S. News & World Report 2026 Best National Universities rankings. Only Baylor, TCU, Colorado, and BYU are ranked higher than them in the rankings. Arizona State is ranked tied at #117 in the national universities rankings.
One interesting note is that the school's official name is Iowa State University of Science and Technology. Furthermore, the school is ranked tied at #117, which is higher than a good number of Big 12 schools with lower acceptance rates.
The University of Utah technically is tied with the University of Arizona, with both schools having an acceptance rate of 86%. Utah is tied with other schools at #151 in the U.S. News & World Report national university rankings.
The University of Arizona wins the tiebreaker with Utah because they're ranked tied at #127 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, which is 24 spots higher.
This ranking is a perfect example of how acceptance rates don't match up with national rankings, at least according to U.S. News & World Report. The University of Cincinnati is tied at #158 in the national rankings, which is lower than the five schools ranked below them in the acceptance rate rankings. In other words, you can have a lower acceptance rate but also a lower national university ranking.
Here now is a look at the other schools ranked in the top 10 of the Big 12 acceptance rankings.
These are the schools ranked ten through six in the Big 12 based on their university acceptance rates.
Both the University of Cincinnati and this school are tied at #158 in the U.S. News & World Report national university rankings, but they have a lower acceptance rate than other Big 12 schools ranked below them.
If this were a ranking of Colorado's position in the national university rankings among Big 12 schools, it would rank higher. The University of Colorado Boulder is tied at #97 in the national university rankings, which is higher than all of the other Big 12 schools already mentioned in this article.
Even though Oklahoma State is ranked No. 8 in these rankings, the university's overall national ranking is #198, which is over 100 spots lower than Colorado. This just reiterates the fact that the acceptance rate of a university does not correlate directly with the university's overall national ranking among universities in the U.S. Finally, the social media post mentioned earlier in this article has Colorado's acceptance rate at 78%, but the U.S. News & World Report has it two percentage points lower.
The University of Houston is tied at #132 in the overall national university rankings and their acceptance rate to their school is very similar to other Big 12 schools' who have a moderately selective admission policy.
This is where social media posts and less known and credible websites that post about university admissions seem to be wrong. According to the U.S. News & World Report, West Virginia has a 73% acceptance rate, which puts it high in these rankings. However, the social media post shared among many college fans in the FBS claims that WVU has an acceptance rate of 89%. No one is claiming that U.S. News & World Report is 100% accurate on everything they report, but they have a ton of credibility in comparison to a random social media account. Between the two, that is a 16-point difference, and we tend to go with credible, trustworthy, and reputable outlets.
Here now is a look at the top five Big 12 schools with the lowest admission rates.
Texas Tech is included in the top five most selective Big 12 schools
Before we get to the top five, let's review: in summary, the Big 12 Conference comprises 16 member institutions across the country, from as far west as Utah to as far east as West Virginia. The conference has recently gone through a significant realignment, including schools as far southeast as UCF and as far southwest as Arizona, and it now features a distinctive combination of massive public research flagships, land-grant universities, and selective private institutions.
The Big 12 is usually pretty accessible overall compared to the Big Ten and ACC, with around a 70% to 75% average conference acceptance rate. But acceptance rates vary widely by institution—from around above 40 percent, like TCU, at its most selective institutions to more than 90 percent at broad-access land-grant flagships like Kansas.
Texas Tech may not be ranked high in the national university rankings according to U.S. News & World Report, but it has the fifth lowest acceptance rate, meaning it is more selective about who attends its school compared to the majority of the Big 12 schools. The undergraduate enrollment is just over 32,500, and the success of the athletic teams can only help boost the number of applicants wanting to attend Texas Tech in the near future.
Brigham Young University-Provo comes in at number four in these rankings. BYU's acceptance rate, according to their official website, is 70.2%. However, U.S. News & World Report has the acceptance rate at 68%. BYU-Provo is ranked tied at #110 in the national university rankings. The data on private schools is not as accessible as that for public universities. The social media post mentioned in this article states that BYU-Provo's acceptance rate is the lowest at 67%.
Once again, the popular social media post had Baylor with a 45% acceptance rate, but according to U.S. News & World Report, their acceptance rate is six points higher at 51%. Baylor is ranked tied as the #88 national university, making it one of the highest-ranked Big 12 schools.
Even though they are the second most selective Big 12 universities, Baylor, BYU, and Colorado rank higher than UCF in the national university rankings. They are ranked #117, tied with Arizona State and Iowa State. Both ASU and ISU have less selective admission acceptance rates to their universities but have the same national ranking according to U.S. News & World Report.
TCU is technically the most selective Big 12 school. But once again, a school like Baylor is ranked higher than TCU in the U.S. News & World Report national rankings. TCU is ranked #97, which is nine spots lower than Baylor, but the rankings of colleges is subjective and subject to the criteria of the national publication doing the rankings.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/texas-tech as Where does Texas Tech Rank in the Big 12 in Acceptance Rate Rankings.
