The competition for astronaut in NASA was higher than at Harvard. This is stated on the website space Agency.
NASA has published the vacancy of “astronaut candidate” December 14, 2015, and closed it just last week. During this time the Agency received a record number of applications — 18 300. This is almost three times more than during the previous open enrollment for astronauts in 2012.
At the time of publication of the vacancy in the astronauts planned to take 8-14 people. Thus the competition to be admitted was slightly over 1,300 people, and a chance to be accepted each of the awards equal to 0.08% — calculated edition of The Washington Post. The competition proved tougher than admission to Harvard — there is 5.9% of applicants.
Selection NASA will last 18 months, the names of the accepted candidates in the Agency will announce in mid-2017. During this time, experts will evaluate all applications and will interview the most suitable applicants for the position.
Those who successfully pass the training, will be to work on one of four spacecraft: the International space station, the spacecraft “Orion” to explore deep space, the commercial ship CST-100 Starliner Boeing, or SpaceX Crew Dragon.