What are my chances of getting into UNC?

Hi all,

I would like to apply EA for UNC Chapel Hill and I was wondering if any of you could provide any insight into my chances. I am OOS, have a 34 ACT, have a 96 average from a good public school for my first two years of high school and a 90 from a rigorous private school for my junior year. By the end of high school, I will have taken 6 AP classes along with a number of honors classes. I have played baseball and basketball every year of high school and joined the debate team and won awards at national tournaments in my junior year when I switched schools. I am an umpire for my local little league in the spring and have a summer job. I think UNC is a great fit for me and I really want to get in. What are my chances?

Generally, the chances for any OOS applicant to UNC-CH are somewhat problematic due to the highly competitive nature of OOS applications there: UNC-CH 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. As an example of the difficulty for OOS students to be admitted to UNC-CH, the entering Class of 2020 had a 15% acceptance rate for OOS applicants: http://admissions.unc.edu/apply/class-profile-2/.

One source of information to help you get an idea of your chances is the UNC-CH Common Data Set. If you look at Part C7, it states that standardized test scores, application essay(s), letter(s) of recommendation, and the 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. Extracurricular activities, talent, and character/personal qualities are considered as “very important” non-academic factors.

Further, Part C9 of the Common Data Set for UNC-CH gives the median 50% for both SAT and ACT scores, as well as the percentage of the entering first-year class falling within certain ranges of SAT and ACT scores; and Part C11 gives the percentage of entering first-year students falling within a range of unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale.

By way of comparison, our OOS high school usually has 8-10 students who apply, and 1-2 students who are admitted, each year to UNC-CH; and, with the exception of legacy students, our admitted students have ACT scores of 34+ and weighted GPAs of 4.5+. These successful applicants also were involved in extracurricular activities that showed commitment over time (no “drive-by” ECs), and demonstrated leadership in the school as well as their ECs. Other kids in our city who I know were admitted to UNC-CH recently also had similar academic statistics and non-academic characteristics; and all of these kids were “unhooked” in admissions parlance (i.e., not a recruited D-1 athlete, or a URM, first-generation college student, etc.).

If you are a URM (“under-represented minority”), recruited D-1 athlete, first-generation college student, or OOS legacy, you may have a slightly easier path. If not, then because your standardized test scores (which are competitive for UNC-CH) and GPA are fixed at this point for an EA application, I would work hard on what you have some control right now: namely, getting top-notch essays and LORs, which are “very important” academic considerations for an applicant. If you can attain leadership positions in your ECs by the time that you apply EA, that may help as well.

I don’t know whether your high school has Naviance or any similar program that gives information about how students at your high school have done in applying to colleges and universities; if so, you might peruse that data. I would also try to meet with a guidance counselor at your school early in the Fall semester to discuss application strategies for UNC-CH; if any former students from your school have been admitted to UNC-CH in the recent past, the guidance counselor may be able to give you some insight into how and why such student(s) were successful.

Good luck to you.