Welcome Class of 2020!

September 6, 2016 |

Specific accomplishments include:

  • Serving in the U.S. Army as an Apache Pilot in Command (Chief Warrant Officer Two) in Afghanistan;

  • Earning a scholarship through the U.S. Navy for the prestigious Navy Seaman to Admiral program;

  • Winning championships in soccer, swimming, basketball, football, equitation and track—including a gold medal in hurdling for Team USA in the International Association of Athletics Federations competition in Poland;
  • Achieving on the highest level in the arts—writing, music, dance and drama;
  • Conducting research on chemotherapy at the University of Texas; bone marrow transplants at Duke University; epigenetics at East Carolina University; and sea turtle nests for the Cayman Islands Department of the Environment;
  • Working with the National Climate Data Center to produce 3-D plots of snowfall record to validate accuracy of data and better manage disaster relief funding;
  • Inventing a mechanized walker as part of a team for the Pennsylvania Governor’s STEM Challenge that won first in state prize;
  • Developing Yoga4Nepal, a non-profit website to raise money for those affected by the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015;
  • Co-founding EZ World LLC and Soccertalk.net blog, creating and implementing business plans and social media marketing strategies;
  • Founding a company that manufactures and distributes tie-dyed socks;
  • Starting a business to build play sets and remodel bedrooms for children battling cancer;
  • Creating a YouTube channel featuring reviews of various technologies with over 12.5 million views and 100,000 subscribers;
  • Increasing support and awareness of LGTBQ issues in schools and communities;
  • Being named the youngest female glider pilot in North Carolina at age 14;
  • Cycling 500 miles across Spain.

Academic credentials

  • The University considers every candidate for undergraduate admission individually, holistically and comprehensively. These individual evaluations, taken together, do not aim to maximize any single, narrow outcome. Rather, they aim to draw together students who will enrich each other’s education, strengthen the campus community, contribute to the betterment of society and help the University achieve its broader mission. As a result, the statistics that follow are best understood as a description of the entire enrolling class, not as a prescription of the credentials that every candidate must present.

  • Among the 71 percent of the class whose schools reported an official rank in class, 43 percent ranked within the top 10 students in their high school class. Thirteen percent ranked first or second, and 77 percent ranked in the top 10 percent.
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  • The middle 50 percent of the class scored between 1,790 and 2,110 on the SAT and between 1,210 and 1,420 on the critical reading and math sections combined. The middle 50 percent scored the following ranges on each component: 600-700, critical reading; 610-720, math; and 580-690, writing. For enrolling students who reported ACT scores, the middle 50 percent reported scores between 28 and 33.
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  • In evaluating candidates, the Office of Undergraduate Admissions uses the highest score presented by each candidate on each part of the SAT reasoning and on each subject test of the ACT. When a candidate submits results from both the SAT and the ACT, the admissions office uses the test with the stronger results.
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  • Seventy-seven percent of enrolling students reported submitting at least one AP score. They submitted a total of 22,595 scores. Of these, 19,121 were scores of three or higher. Enrolling students submitted 1,038 scores from IB exams.

Demographics

  • Enrolling first-year students hail from 96 North Carolina counties, 41 states and the District of Columbia and 18 countries (including the U.S).

  • The share of students identifying themselves as a race or ethnicity other than Caucasian is 34 percent. In addition to students identifying as African American (11 percent), other ethnicities includes Latino or Latina, 7 percent; Asian or Asian-American, 14 percent; and American Indian or Alaskan Native, two percent.

  • Students who will be the first in their families to graduate from a four-year college or university comprise 17 percent of the class. The class includes 96 international students.
  • Females comprise 60 percent of the incoming first-year class, men 40 percent.
  • The class also includes 202 students (five percent of the enrolling class) from one of the 64 partner high schools served in 2015-2016 by the Carolina College Advising Corps, a public service of the University that seeks to increase college-going rates among low-income, first-generation college and other underrepresented students. The Carolina Corps, a constituent program of the national College Advising Corps, places recent UNC-Chapel Hill alumni as admissions and financial-aid advisers in high schools statewide. The Carolina Corps will serve 71 high schools and more than 55,000 students (over 12,000 high school seniors) in 2016-2017. These numbers include 19 percent of the state’s African American students; 13 percent of Hispanic students; and 33 percent of Native American students.

Admission

For fall 2016 first-year admission, the University received 35,875 applications—12 percent more than last year and 50 percent more than five years ago. The overall admit rate fell from 30 percent to 26 percent this year, and the number of North Carolinians offered admission rose 7 percent to 5,700 compared to 5,330 last year.

 

Applied / Admitted 

First-year class

                             Applied       Admitted
North Carolina         11,662        5,700
Out-of-state            24,213         3,698
Total                      35,875         9,398        

**These numbers reflect residency information at the time of application.

 

Transfer class

Each year UNC-Chapel Hill enrolls approximately 750 transfer students into the sophomore and junior classes in the College of Arts and Sciences. Transfer students bring a diversity of backgrounds and experiences that enrich Carolina, and the University community welcomes these students into the full academic and extracurricular life of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Applied          Admitted

2,879            1,151

**These numbers reflect residency information at the time of application.

Average college GPA: 3.70

The middle 50 percent of the enrolling transfer class scored between 1,610 and 1,980 on the SAT and between 1,080 and 1,330 on the critical reading and math sections combined. The middle 50 percent scored the following ranges on each component: 530-660, critical reading; 550-670, math; and 530-650, writing.

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