UNC Chapel Hill OOS Chances!?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
1

Hi, I’m a senior from Nebraska who’s applied to Chapel Hill Regular Decision… any insight as to what my chances are?

(Also- chances to UVA, Vanderbilt, UGA?)

GPA: 4.0/4.0 (we don’t weigh ours beyond 4.0)
ACT: 32 Composite, 34 Superscore
Math- 32
Science- 33
Reading- 35
English- 35

SAT- didn’t take

Courseload
-Freshman/Sophomore year- all Honors
-junior year- APUSH (5), AP Lang (5), AP Psychology (3, did not report), the rest were honors classes
-senior year- AP Calculus AB, AP Literature, AP Gov & Politics, AP Microeconomics, Dual Enrollment Physics, Honors Spanish IV
Only 7 AP’s, but counselor rated my schedule as ‘most difficult’ for our school

Rank- school doesn’t rank, but go to a large Jesuit school, ranked around 9/10 in a class of 292

Race- white
Gender- male

Awards- School’s Most Outstanding Freshman of the Year Award, Nationak Spanish Exam Silver Medalist, NHS, Honor Roll, 1st place in APUSH essay competition at local university

EC’s
4 year runner, 2 year letter on Cross Country, team won state championship one of those years
3 years (1 Varsity) American Legion baseball
1 (will be 2) years Varsity track
2 years on both Model government teams (Harvard Model Congress, Stanford Model United Nations)
~20 hours/week on average working at country club as cart attendant
Multiple stints at various tutoring sites, one for a Sudanese refugee
Volunteer for recent local Congressional Campaign

One thing I see missing is definitive leadership (though I was selected for and took part in a Leadership Institute my sophomore year)

Interests: business/government

Essays
Pretty solid (been told they’re creative and “poignant” (though that’s my mother’s word, so I can’t put TOO much weight on that one). I think they clearly show that I can write, maybe won’t stand out as the “one” someone remembers after reading hundreds, but not forgettable?

Reccomendations
Counselor Rec- filled out a questionnaire, and I think he focused on our school’s rigor and impressions of me. Good, but again, not unforgettable
Teachers- APUSH and AP Lang (had the latter for 2 years, knows me well). Both had me fill out questionnaires and are regarded as two of the best in the school; I liked both a lot, and they liked me as well

Any guesses or prior experiences would rock… thanks!

2

Please refer to this thread

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-north-carolina-chapel-hill/1945534-do-i-have-a-reasonable-chance-as-an-oos.html#latest

3

I don’t know. Your accomplishments look good, but it is so competitive OOS. If you have any questions about UNC let me know

4

I think that you are a lock for UGA, solid for UVA, marginal to low chance for UNC, low chance for Vandy.

Applying RD for UNC may be a disadvantage, as there are probably over 20,000 EA applications and these comprise the bulk of applications for first-year students (last year there were almost 36,000 applications for first-year students).

5

I disagree with the above poster about UGA. UGA can be very unpredictable. I think you have a shot at most of these schools, though most are reaches, especially Vanderbilt.

6

Strong and likely for UGA. Not sure why the poster above ranked you differently for UVA and UNC.Both are quite selective for out of state students but both schools are within reach depending on your application strength (essays primarily and how well you sold yourself as a potential asset to the school).

Best of luck to you.

7

Just FYI, I don’t think UVA or Vandy superscores the ACT.

8

@smack28752: Kids from our school (which is OOS to both UVA and UNC-CH) having the GPA of the OP have gotten into UVA with a 31 ACT composite, although many have had a higher composite ACT score; with the OP’s GPA, it usually takes a 34 ACT composite to get into UNC-CH absent unusual circumstances. Also, at our school about one-third to one-half of the applicants to UVA have been accepted in the recent past (a somewhat self-selecting applicant pool, of course); a similar applicant pool to UNC-CH from our school usually has a 20% or lower acceptance rate. That’s why I think that the OP’s chances are a little better at UVA than at UNC-CH. Both are very competitive, of course, and nothing can be taken for granted.

9

^ Also, UVA caps OOS admissions at around 27%, whereas at UNC-CH the limit is 18% (and in fact the OOS admission rate last year was 15% at UNC-CH). So that also works in favor of the OP having a slightly better chance of getting into UVA than UNC-CH.

10

^ In thinking more about the UVA/UNC-CH admissions numbers, I looked at information from both the UVA website, here: http://admission.virginia.edu/admission/statistics and the UNC-CH website, here: http://admissions.unc.edu/apply/class-profile-2/. The UVA link states that “we do seek to maintain a 2/3 majority of Virginians in our student population” whereas UNC-CH seeks to have “no more than eighteen percent nonresident enrollment in the entering freshman class.” (I think I read somewhere that the entering OOS freshmen classes in the recent past at both UVA and William & Mary, another state school, have been around 27%.)

If you look at the statistics from the websites above, UVA had 9186 admitted students; if 27 % of these were OOS, that comes to 2480 OOS freshmen (if 33% of these were OOS, that number increases to 3031). By contrast, UNC-CH admitted 9386 students; if 18% of these were OOS, that comes to 1689 OOS freshmen.

If my assumptions are correct, there were almost 800 more OOS students admitted as freshmen at UVA than at UNC-CH, if 27% of incoming UVA freshmen are OOS; if 33% of incoming UVA freshmen are OOS, then the disparity increases to over 1300 more OOS freshmen admitted at UVA than at UNC-CH.

So. all other things being equal, it seems that an OOS applicant has a better chance of admission to UVA because it admits a larger cohort of OOS freshmen each year compared to UNC-CH.

I never tried to quantify this before; so if my assumptions/numbers are incorrect, let me know (math was never my strong suit).

11

@gandalf78 little late, I know, but since Carolina superstores the ACT, they’re looking at me having a 34, are they not? Obviously 34 is kind of a contrived cutoff, but would UNC view a superscore and composite any differently (They make it sound like they see one number)?

12

vs a 32 composite, which you say may lower my chances significantly

13

They do look at superscore.