Hi,
Right now my top choices for college are Northwestern, Georgetown, University of Michigan, and UNC Chapel Hill. Yes I have already researched all of these schools and know a lot about them individually but wanted to hear the perspective of other students who have either visited, attend, or are just very familiar with any of the schools and their pros and cons specifically. Out of the four, I have only visited (and will probably only be able to visit) Northwestern. I’m not 100% sure what I’d like to major in, but I’m not majoring in anything math/science, education, technology, or health related. I’m looking at UNC’s Journalism School and College of Arts & Sciences (I’m also out of state fyi). What are the pros and cons of UNC Chapel Hill as current students and people who have visited see them?
We visited the school 4 times and just returned from orientation. I will give you my impressions as a parent, and what I have been told by students. Pros/cons depend on what you are looking for in a school.
- Out of state acceptance is very difficult. In state is easier. Class rank and community service appear to be very very important. We were told a few times about the HS rank of this year’s entering class.
- We were told that " their minds will be stretched in ways they never imagined." This was stated by one of the presenters at orientation. The students were described as " sharks" ( in a joking way) however we were also told that the students are very nice and helpful towards each other. We found the people to be very very nice.
- There are parties ( and drinking), but there is a lot to do if you choose not to attend- clubs, etc. The school is obviously doing their best to reduce drinking. There was a full hour dedicated to this topic and they take it VERY seriously. One third of the students do not drink at all.
- It’s perfectly ok and not unusual to stay in on a Saturday night and study.
- It is not difficult to get research and/or study abroad opportunities.
- My own kid did not have difficulty getting the classes she wanted. They encouraged students to explore different classes. They repeated stated that you do not have to be a bio major to be pre-med.
- It’s a big school that tries to feel somewhat like a small school. At an accepted students event in our town, the admissions counselor gave out his home phone number and personal email address. At orientation one of the Deans gave out his cell phone number. My daughter emailed her advisor several times and received an immediate response. He signed each email only with his first name. To me, these are huge positives.
- The campus is beautiful ( opinion) and Chapel Hill is an amazing town ( opinion, but my guess is that most agree).
- It is very hard to get merit aid or to be placed in honors as an out of state student. Class rank and test scores do not seem to matter ( for OOS). Merit and/or honors appear to be based on other factors. The Net Price Calculator for us was very accurate.
- It is a selective school without the perceived intensity ( competition) as some other highly selective schools.
- Visiting professors during office hours ( or emailing if you can’t attend during office hours) and attending the writing center are both strongly encouraged.
- All schools will have negatives as nothing in life is ever perfect, but on the four trips we have made to UNC, I honestly have not yet found many negatives. It’s a wonderful school with people who seem to really care about the health, safety, well being of all the students.
- It is an open campus. I see this as the only negative because outsiders have occasionally been in the library, but campus safety is VERY important to the school and the CH PD is very involved. It is my impression that the students feel very safe, and there are programs in place to walk the students home if they are at the library late. My impression is that the campus is very safe.
Good luck!!
Two more things I forgot to mention: there is Greek life but it does not appear to dominate the school like it might on other campuses. If you want to join, that’s great. If not, it’s perfectly fine. Additionally, the students on campus seem to be very very " down to earth." If there is wealth ( as there is at any school), it’s really not noticeable. These are pros to us, but some may consider these factors to be cons.
I am an incoming freshman at the University of Michigan. I chose Umich over UNC-CH and Northwestern, so I feel qualified to speak on this topic.
My sister goes to NU, and I spent an entire summer there last year, so I am very familiar with that school specifically. My main reason for not choosing NU was that I simply did not like it. I came into that summer without any other top tier schools on my mind because I thought my heart was set on NU. The environment and students were too uptight and tense. I took two classes in my strongest subject, so I did very well in the class, yet I was surrounded by NU students who looked down on me as a ‘dumb high school student’ even when I set their curve. I know this is not how the entire school is, but I saw it as a sign that NU wasn’t for me. I also have always wanted a big school, so I started to look into top publics. As a student, my sister has never been in love with NU either. She encouraged me to look elsewhere.
I visited Duke and UNC-CH once. I absolutely loved Duke, and it became my first choice school. I visited Chapel Hill after Duke, and a huge snowstorm hit. The weather damped the visit and I wasn’t thoroughly impressed while everyone was in a bad mood. I applied, and I was accepted OOS. I wasn’t happy seeing the great students being rejected and waitlisted with amazing stats just because they were OOS, while students in-state with 3.2 GPAs and 26 ACTs were being accepted. I was rejected to Duke, and so all of my interest in the NC schools dissipated.
I fell in love when I visited Michigan. The atmosphere, the sports (tradition), and the academics were superior to UNC in my opinion. The advantage to in-state students at Michigan is definitely not as aggressive than at UNC. The student body is actually made up of the smartest and most well rounded kids that applied. I just got that feeling at Michigan, and I encourage you to make that visit before you rule it out.
Hopefully it helps to hear from a student that was in your situation. Go Blue!
65% of this year’s freshmen class at UNC graduated numbers 1-10 from high school. I have a family member who just graduated UNC from an out of state HS and graduated #2 in his HS class. He recently told me that he worked very very hard at UNC. That being said, I have no doubt that the student body at Michigan and NU is very strong. I would visit the schools on your list. My daughter hated Duke- could not wait to get off the campus. Duke is obviously an amazing school which is why you should visit your choices if possible.
@illinoisgolf “while students in-state with 3.2 GPAs and 26 ACTs were being accepted” I don’t know where you came up with these figures for UNC, but I don’t believe that is true. My daughter had MANY friends that had much better numbers than that and they did not get in UNC, instate.
My daughter is thrilled with her decision to attend. She is the first ( and only) acceptance since 2012. We found the school to be loaded with spirit, the campus to be beautiful, the people to be incredibly friendly, and the academics to be on par with what she wants ( so far). The administration so far has been amazing- giving out their personal cell phone numbers and responding immediately to emails. The UNC local events have been wonderful to attend. While no school is perfect, so far we have no complaints.
@ITBgirl Look through the discussion titled “UNC Class of 2019 RD results”. Two students in the last page alone were accepted with 24 and 26 ACT scores. My point was that the in-state advantage at UNC is more skewed than at Michigan. Obviously kids with better numbers weren’t accepted, but the fact that numerous students with those numbers were accepted turned me away. I am obviously biased the wrong way for this page, but that’s just the way I look at it. Every student is different.
If you look at the Duke acceptances you will see somebody accepted with a 25. Somebody from my daughter’s school was accepted to Rice two years ago with a 23 on the ACT. These things happen but it’s not representative of the whole school.
My post got cut off. At the UNC accepted students event, we ran into my daughter’s acquaintance from another school in our area who was choosing between UNC, Michigan, and Wash U. She loved all 3 schools and was having a hard time deciding. She dropped Wash U because it felt too intense. She chose Michigan because it had more of a familiar northeast feel to it which is what she wanted, but she made the decision on April 29 and it felt like " splitting hairs." She loved both and felt that both were equally as challenging with the school spirit she wanted.
To the OP: I urge you to visit if possible, as every school is going to have a unique feel. The vibe of a school is very often the deciding factor once other things are accounted for.
@illinoisgolf you are right, I see that on CC too, but I agree with @twogirls that you will see that at every school.
And to the OP, I agree that you should visit if at all possible, please don’t choose a school or rule one out just b/c of these boards. But since you are OOS, you could apply to UNC and visit if you get in.
Now that my daughter has been at this school for two months as an out of state student, I decided to update the list of pros and cons that she has experienced up to this point. Hopefully the cons will start to disappear.
Pros:
- Loves her roommate and at least one suite mate. She gets along with the other suite mates but they do their own thing, which is fine.
- Loves the food in the dining hall, loves the town.
- Loves the fact that she will get to volunteer in the hospital.
- Loves her classes, loves the academics. Three of her classes are relatively small- 50 or fewer. She is able to engage in conversation and her teachers know her. Two of her classes are bigger lecture hall types but not too gigantic- maybe 100 + kids but not 300. The professors know her, these classes are discussion based and are not straight lecture, and she is able to sit front and center. The TAs know who she is and she finds the review sessions very helpful. She works very very hard and so far has A’s in every class except Spanish, where she is doing well but does not really know her grade. She goes to the writing center on a regular basis and finds it helpful. Also attends office hours for her professors. Yesterday she told me that she gets less work than in HS. I asked her if the work is too easy, too hard, or just right. She feels that it is just right, because she recognizes that it will become more intense as she moves along in her major. She gets personalized emails from her biology professor, who knows her first name. Bio is her biggest class.
- The choice of majors is terrific. The opportunity for research is there and in your face all the time.
- She found a library that she loves. The one she knew about was too intense and “scary” for her.
- She seems to be meeting kids that she likes.
- The campus is quiet- as in there are not many parties (if any) on the campus. Parties are off campus and seem to be about a 20 minute walk or a bus ride from her dorm. For her, this is a pro. She does not like parties. There are weekend activities on campus.
- She has been to a few soccer and football games. They do not seem to be too crazy/wild- however basketball season has not yet arrived. For her, this is a plus (the lack of craziness so far at games)
- The kids she sees in the dining hall seem friendly and open so asking to sit with them seems fairly easy. Tonight she is going to see a speaker with a group of kids from class - they all exchanged numbers and formed a group chat.
- I asked her - academically speaking - how the other students are. She says she is surrounded by a lot of very smart kids.
Cons:
- The size. She finds the campus huge and overwhelming. This is her most difficult hurdle.
- When you make a friend in class, you need to really make an effort to see them. You need to text- you may not see them walking the campus all the time as you would in a small school. You may not have a class with them next semester and if you want to see them again, you need to work at it.
- This is another big con for her. The clubs. She is joining clubs to try and make the school feel smaller, but she says the clubs are huge (400 kids) and it’s a little hard to form close ties. She also finds many of the clubs to be a “competition,” often requiring applications of 15 pages. You can’t just join a committee that interests you- you have to apply for it and get chosen. She was chosen for a committee she likes- and she will have an opportunity to volunteer in the hospital- but the committee itself is still huge and somewhat impersonal (that should change with time). She is hoping to be chosen for an admissions ambassador because this will help make the school feel smaller. She had to fill out a 15 page application and see if she got called for an interview (she did). Then she had to see if she got a call back (she did). Now she is waiting to see if she made it. This will help with the social piece as there are a lot of activities.
- She joined the out of state student organization, but says a lot of the events are long- like 6 hours. They go hiking etc but right now she is not comfortable taking so much time away from the academics. She needs to attend some of these events that are less time consuming- like dinner etc.
- Her goal right now is to regularly eat in the dining hall so that she sees kids with some consistency. So far she has not done that because she was too nervous about the academics, so she has been eating outside her dorm while reading (not good).
- At first she was a bit intimidated because she thought that a lot of kids knew one another from high school. She saw groups of girls walking together and many went to the same HS. She seems to be overcoming this and understands that this is common at state schools.
Well my daughter just became an admissions ambassador. She is beyond thrilled because now she has taken a big school and has successfully made it smaller.
Overall, there’s virtually no difference between UNC-CH and Michigan academically. U.S. News ranks Michigan as the #4 public university in the nation, and UNC #5. Both schools are considered “Public Ivies”, i.e. they provide a near-Ivy League quality education at a public school price.
As far as sports tradition, Michigan takes the cake in football, but UNC is the greater power in basketball. UNC actually has more NCAA sports championship titles overall than Michigan, and living legends like Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm were Tar Heels.
With a total student body of 43,000+, Michigan is annoyingly large. UNC is a more bearable and manageable 29,000+. UNC has the better student-faculty ratio.
Violent crime in Ann Arbor is considerably higher than in Chapel Hill, Ann Arbor having a lot more aggravated assaults and forcible rapes.
The winters are considerably milder in North Carolina. I lived in Michigan for several years, and always disliked the long, hard winters.
OOS students who aren’t going to qualify for much financial help at either school, should be advised that OOS tuition at Michigan is about $10,000 more per year.
UNC has been ranked the #1 overall value in public universities on multiple occasions by multiple ranking entities, in regard to the quality of education and cost.