Hi! I’m a class of 2022 senior right now and I’m applying to UNC-Chapel Hill. I kinda wanted somebody to gauge my chances of getting in.
Demographic:
African-American
Wake County (in-state)
*I don’t know my parent’s exact income but were lower middle class.
Grades:
My GPA right now is 4.167 weighted and 3.6 unweighted
I’ve taken 2 AP Courses APUSH (got a B) and APES (did pass because of covid) (school offers 5 AP Courses)
12 honors courses
12 dual enrollment courses (college GPA is a 3.7 on a 4.0 scale)
Haven’t taken SAT yet
Been on the honor roll all four years.
Extracurriculars:
4 years of Varsity softball
Over 250 volunteer hours (from kids museum, city youth council, social justice initiative, etc.)
Vice President of schools NHS
Class Representative
*Work in fast food and at a summer camp
Essays and LOR:
My LOR should be like an 8/10 from a teacher who helped me a lot over the pandemic with school fatigue and my softball coach.
8 Essays are pretty solid right now just need some more editing.
Does your HS use Naviance or Scoir? What does your HS GC say about your chances? Those two sources will be the best tools to help categorize the school, whether reach or match.
Being a URM will work to your advantage. Being from Wake County will not work to your advantage.
Have you taken, or plan to take, the ACT? As you may know from Section C7 of the Common Data Set, Carolina considers standardized test scores to be a “very important” admissions criterion, whereas academic GPA is an “important” admissions criterion.
If you were not in Wake (or Mecklenburg) county, I would say you are more likely to get admitted. Students I know that fit your profile from every other county usually get admitted to the big two (UNC and NCSU). However, Wake is an overrepresented county at UNC and the school leans toward trying to even out county representation on campus.
For instance, if you look at the Class of 2025 page for UNC, you’ll see they have freshmen from 97 of NC’s 100 counties. Also, the sheet makes it a point to mention that 36% of NC freshmen are from rural counties - which is larger than the approximately 20% of NC residents listed as living in rural areas.
It’s honestly a crap shoot from Wake & Mecklenburg. My D21 (Mecklenburg) looked a lot like you (fellow 4yr varsity softball player - yay!), memberships in every academic honor society, tons of volunteer hours (but had more AP’s (8) and no dual enrollment) and SAT (1340) ACT (29), decent LOR’s & interesting essays and held a job for 2+ years. Her HS class was exceptionally high stat and I think somewhere around 70-75 kids applied to UNC. She got a no from them but a yes from NC State (and actually, NC State’s admissions was also tougher this year for in-state students). D21 chose Virginia Tech, which was in her top two, and she received a merit award from them. She is very happy with her decision.
Sometimes it depends on the admissions cycle and what they’re looking for in that particular year. She looked much better on paper than my older daughter who was admitted to UNC in 2013 - we lived in Union County then, so it could have played a role in the admissions. Definitely go for it and with a bit of luck, it could be your year.
I would consider submitting a test score, if you can, to help your chances.
ETA - I think UNC will like your EC’s - are any of your essay topics about your experiences with those?
I think it looks tough for you being from Wake. We are from Meck. My D20 had 9 APs, and a 4.0 UW, 4.5 W, and was 14/600 in class rank, with a 1430 SAT, just for comparison. There were several with lower stats than her from her school that did get in, but not as low as a 4.1 W or 3.6 UW. Definitely apply to NCSU. It is a great school and I bet you would like it.