Hey y’all 
As you can see I’m an instate applicant for UNC-CH. I go to a small high school in a small town and I’ve been there my junior and senior year. Before that, I was on a scholarship at an elite private academic boarding school in a different country where I took 12 advanced classes per semester (yeah it sucked), so my gpa kind of got affected by that, but I’ve been told that Chapel Hill takes foreign schooling into consideration? Because I can tell you now classes were a million times harder there than it is here. That’s why I made straight A’s my junior and senior year here in all my honors classes. My transcript looks like night and day when you compare my first two years in high school versus these last two. When I came to North Carolina, I didn’t really know what all this AP nonsense was about since my transition was rather abrupt, so I only managed to squeeze in 2 AP classes. My GPA’s not so hot, it’s a 3.5 right now but after this first semesters grades I think it’ll bump up a bit.
GPA- 3.5
ACT- 33
I have great extracurriculars, international experience in more than one country, Im fluent in 3 languages, I’m a black female with an amazing personality :)))
And my essay writing skills are flawless. I’m applying to Regular Decision since I wanted the extra time to strengthen my application. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Dial it back a bit on the self-promotion (“great extracurriculars”, “amazing personality”, “flawless writing skills”) in your essays; your accomplishments will probably speak louder and better than over-the-top self-assessments.
ACT is solid, GPA probably good enough for an in-state applicant. Also, work on having very good LORs, since they are a “very important” factor in the admissions decision.
One or two other things. If your high school is a public school, your opportunities to meet with or get significant help from the school’s guidance counselor may be limited; nevertheless, I would also try to meet with your school’s guidance counselor at your earliest convenience to discuss application strategies for UNC-CH, if you haven’t done so already. If any former students from your school have been admitted to UNC-CH recently, the guidance counselor may be able to give some insight into how and why such student(s) were successful; and also to give you some ideas about what you may or may not want to do with your application.
Also, in terms of the recommendations that will be sent in, you might discuss with the guidance counselor (who will probably be sending a statement in to the UNC-CH admissions office) whether it would be appropriate for him/her to explain the differential in grading between your 9th-10th grades and your 11th-12th grades; I could see where it might sound better coming from a school professional. Just a thought.