Hi! I’m a high school senior in Maryland. My SAT score (out of 1600) is 1330, my ACT score is 30, my unweighted GPA is approx. 3.8 (out of 4.0), and my weighted GPA is approx. 4.5. I am a part of several clubs and hold an officer position in 3 of them, I was my school’s Varsity Pom co-captain (I quit to focus on grades), I am a member of NHS and SNHS, and I am a full IB Diploma candidate.
I read that only 30% of applicants were admitted into UNCCH and only 19% of those were out-of-state. Do I have a solid chance of being accepted?
Unfortunately no student from out of state has a solid chance of acceptance. There are too many OOS students who apply for a limited number of spots. You need to focus on writing outstanding essays and getting letters of recommendation from your teachers explaining specifically what you did (concrete examples) to make the classroom experience a better place. Your scores are good but are a little on the low side for UNC. As long as you understand that the school is a reach, you should apply. Good luck!
Our OOS high school usually has a couple of students admitted each year to UNC-CH; and, with the exception of legacy students, our admitted students have SAT scores of 1350+, ACT scores of 34+, and weighted GPAs of 4.5+. Other kids in our city who I know were admitted to UNC-CH recently have also had similar statistics; and all of these kids were “unhooked” in admissions parlance (i.e., not a recruited D-1 athlete, or URM, first-generation college student, etc.).
If your school has Naviance, you might look over the scattergrams for UNC-CH and then talk to your guidance counselor about strategies for admission. As @twogirls notes above, writing high-quality essays and having good letters of recommendation are very important in the process also. (If you look at the UNC-CH common data set, under Part C7 it states that standardized test scores, application essay, letter(s) of recommendation, and rigor of your high school record are “very important” academic factors considered for freshman admission, whereas GPA and class rank are “important” academic factors considered for freshman admission.)
UNC admits OOS applicants in numbers that are calculated not to exceed 18% of an entering freshman class. See “Undergraduate Admissions” on Page 2, here: http://www.admissions.unc.edu/files/2013/09/Admissions__Policy.pdf. According to the most recent common data set, the overall admissions rate for high school seniors was 30%.
With how high standards UNC has for OOS students you would have better chances applying to a UNC branch school and transferring.
Please chance me back!
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-north-carolina-chapel-hill/1931354-chance-me-please.html#latest
I don’t know about transfer rates of acceptance, or whether other schools in the UNC system have better rates for transfer students to get into Carolina.
My concern about this approach is this: What if you got into another school in the UNC system, and then didn’t get accepted as a transfer student from there to UNC-CH? What would you do then, transfer to another school other than UNC-CH? And then try to transfer again from there to UNC-CH? You don’t need to spend your college career ping-ponging around different schools.