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UNC Offers Admission to 4,885 First-Year Applicants

Carolina offered admission today to 4,885 students chosen from a record first-deadline pool of 13,692 applicants.

The students admitted include 3,476 North Carolinians – a record number, and 48 percent of the 7,175 who applied – and 1,409 students from around the nation and world. Of the record 6,517 out-of-state applicants – an increase of 25 percent compared to last year – just 22 percent will receive offers of admission.

This year, Carolina plans to enroll 3,943 first-year students, 82 percent of whom will be North Carolina residents.

UNC also has a second deadline for applications, which this year is midnight Thursday, Jan. 15. The date for notification of decisions for those applications is March 20.

University officials praised the quality and diversity of the students who are being offered admission.

“We couldn’t be happier with the quality and the diversity of this class,” said Stephen Farmer, associate provost and director of undergraduate admissions. “With first-deadline applications up 16 percent over last year, we were fortunate to have an extraordinarily broad and deep pool.”

The average SAT Reasoning score (Critical Reading and Math combined) for admitted students is 1343, an increase of nine points from last year. The group includes 885 North Carolinians scoring 1400 or higher – an increase of 6 percent from last year, when 86 percent of all high-school seniors in North Carolina scoring at this level applied to Carolina.

The group also includes 421 students who rank first in their high-school class, an increase of 13 percent from last year. Fifty-three percent rank first through 10th, and 87 percent rank in the top 10 percent.

Nine percent of the students admitted identified themselves as African-American; 6 percent as Hispanic, Latino, or Latina; and 1 percent as American Indian. Students identifying themselves as Asian or Asian-American comprise 10 percent of the group.

The admitted group also includes 736 students who are first-generation college, an increase of 2 percent from last year.

Beginning in October, each of the 13,692 candidates for admission was evaluated comprehensively and holistically at least twice. Most were evaluated three or more times. To identify students for admission, the 25 members of the Carolina admissions committee spent more than 1,250 hours in committee meetings and conducted more than 37,000 comprehensive assessments of individual applications.

Farmer expressed his appreciation for all of Carolina’s applicants, whether or not they were admitted.

“We know that admission to Carolina is a deeply cherished dream for many strong students and their families,” he said. “We also know that our candidates have put themselves on the line in applying for admission. We’re grateful for their interest in Carolina and are here to help all of them, whether the news we’ve had to deliver has been good or bad.”

For detailed conversations between students and UNC admissions officers during the weeks leading up to the posting of decisions, as well as tips about applying for admission to Carolina, see the UNC admissions blog.


Related material available online:

  • In-depth articles about admissions and Carolina, along with details about each year’s entering class, that have appeared in the Carolina Alumni Review dating to 1996, are available online. The Review writes about the subject of admissions in each March/April issue. The subject also was the cover story in the November/December 2008 issue.

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