McDonald's Hamburger University can be harder to get into than Harvard and is even cooler than you'd imagine

With a selection rate of 1% at its Shanghai campus, the intense, week-long training program is more exclusive than Harvard, reports Bloomberg.

Students at the American campus can earn up to 23 credits toward their Hamburgerology degree, according to CNN, or toward an associate's or bachelor's degree at 1,600 US colleges and universities, the American Council on Education reports.

The program currently has seven campuses worldwide in Oak Brook, Illinois, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Munich, São Paulo, and Shanghai, with an eighth campus opening scheduled for Moscow later this year.

Founded in 1961, Hamburger University now has more than 275,000 graduates and will celebrate it's 55th anniversary next year. Here's a look at how it started and how it's evolved.

Vivian Giang contributed to a previous version of this article.