Please chance my daughter for OOS admission and potential scholarship.
Location: California
ACT (breakdown): 34 Superscore (35 E, 34 M, 32 R, 33 S)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.7
Weighted GPA: 4.2
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 65/~740 of very good public high school
APs: Calculus AB, US Gov, Env Science, US Hist, Euro Hist, Stats, Comp Sci Prin,
Dual Enrollment Classes in Psychology and Sociology
Major Awards: National Hispanic Recognition Program (top 2.5% of Hispanics taking the PSAT), Principal’s Honor Roll
Subjective:
Extracurriculars: Varsity Lacrosse (Defensive-starter on championship team) and JV Lacrosse for 4 years, Sunrise Movement, Surfrider, and Free Tibet Club member
Job/Work Experience: n/a
Volunteer/Community service: Intern for State Senator, City’s Youth Commission, Volunteer for State Assemblymember Campaign
Recommendations: From English Teacher and State Senator
Other:
Intended Major: Undeclared, potentially Poli Sci or Business
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: Hispanic
Gender: Female
Income Bracket: ~$190,000
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): Hispanic
Her stats will put her in range, but UNC should be considered a reach for all OOS students due to the 18% limit on OOS students freshman year. Her GPA is perhaps a little low but she seems to have a rigorous curriculum. What are her AP test scores?
Being hispanic will likely help as well, as UNC does consider race in admissions (which is currently being challenged legally).
Is UNC affordable without merit? Have you run their net price calculator to get a cost estimate? Access NPC here via link: https://admissions.unc.edu/afford/cost-of-attendance/
Merit will be tough to come by as it is highly competitive.
Her AP test scores so far are: Calc AB (2), Euro History (3), US History (4), Env Sci (5); other three are this year.
Cost of attendance is possible, but considering she has a full tuition ride at a very good honors college and she will probably get into a UC and CSU school or two, it would have to be aid of $10K-$15K to make UNC competitive.
Familiar with its competitiveness OOS; waitlisted myself OOS back in the 80s, so I went elsewhere.
Great news on the full tuition offer! Certainly was no downside to applying at all…I doubt UNC will get close to $10K-$15K though, considering OOS COA is around $50k…but you never know.
Hmm, is she a senior this year? Generally in state kids are top 10% of their class, and the bar is much higher for OOS kids. I would think maybe top 3%? Her uw does look low, although I agree being URM will help. When did her lower grades occur? If UNC senses that her grades trended downward junior year, that will not help. However, the reverse is also true…if her lower grades were made Freshman year, but she has an upward trend, that would be positive. Good luck. Either way, you’ll know in a few weeks!
I don’t think most OOS students get any merit. This says 200 total merit scholarships each freshman class, so even $10K-$15K is unlikely, but you’ll know soon enough. https://studentaid.unc.edu/faqs/
I think admission will be difficult as an OOS student. In state is usually top 10% of class and in some counties more like top 6%. There are many hispanic in state students in NC. Based on income aid will be likely $0. You will qualify for unsubsidized Stafford loan of $5, 500 which UNC considers part of an aid package and merit aid is very unlikely at UNC.
Whats $85…have her apply. Throw everything she has at it, great references, etc. Why not, they have a holistic application process. You never know until you try.
I would also add that turning down a full tuition offer from even a semi-respectable local school to pay substantially more for an out of state education would be an issue unless there was money to burn.
@Cheapdad00 , I agree 100%. My DD received a full tuition ride at ASU Barrett Honors, and we both like it a lot. We live in CA so it’s a substantial amount of money ($29K/year). My daughter understands finances and value, so we can’t justify paying $60-$70K/year for undergrad.
In the end, she decided not to apply to UNC. No interest in any schools on the East Coast. Being that she was rejected yesterday at UT Austin, her chances would have been very slim anyway at UNC.
Waiting on the UCs and some other schools before making her final decision.
I know you decided not to apply but for future searchers. My OOS D never had a B in her life and only took the hardest available classes. Had good ECs. She had a 36 on her ACT as a 14 year old and still got rejected.
My daughter was just rejected for admission to the UNC bioengineering major. She is so devastated. She has a 1540 SAT super scored, SAT subject 760 and 800 in chemistry and Math. Unweighted GPA of 4.0. She has taken many AP courses with a score of 5 in all except two of them where she had a 4. Her high school does not rank students. She gets the awards that only the top 5% of the class are eligible for and therefore we know she must be ranked way up there. Captain of her varsity tennis team for the last 3 years, student body vice president, lots of volunteer community service in NY state and medical mission trip abroad. Works on part-time jobs as a math tutor and baby sitter and life guard during summer. How much more can a kid do? Don’t understand UNC’s way of evaluating students for admission.
Both of your daughters sound outstanding. I’m sure they will go on to do great things. Warren Buffet and Nobelist and former NIH Director Harold Varmus were also rejected from college programs they eagerly wanted to attend.
One thing to check, while your kids are still under consideration elsewhere, is whether the colleges have their transcripts and letters of recommendation. For a parent, one can usually monitor this through Naviance. Sometimes these get sent out in mid to late January in batch by overworked guidance counselors. If a program is evaluating early action applicants, they might not be able to make a decision without a transcript in hand. Of course one would hope that they potentially defer in this instance to the RD pool as well as reach out to the school for this information, but every college likely has its own policy (as well as staffing and time constraints) that might limit how many times and through what channels they try to obtain this information. Again, just a box to check for still open applications where decisions haven’t been made. Best of luck to the both of your kids.
Good point to check on the transcripts and recommendations. We discovered two colleges where Naviance showed the recommendations had been sent but for some reason, they never were connected to her common app. For the other 15 applications, the connection worked just fine. My daughter spent two weeks with her guidance counselor and tech support at both Common App and Naviance trying to figure out how to re-send the recommendations and nothing worked. She ended up getting the teachers to print them out and seal them in envelopes with their signature on the back (you know, old school like we did it) and sent them in. Thankfully, both colleges had been kept up to date on the delay and accepted them. But it was nerve-wracking! Plus, I had to send them FedEx in order to get them to one school by their required deadline and that equated to another application fee! Sometimes technology is not your friend.
@NYSdad2020 The Biomed Engineering degree is a joint program with NC State, so she really should have considered applying there as well. I am not sure if it is too late for Regular decision. Best of luck to her.