<p>Here are the facts:</p>
<p>Admissions rates:
UNC Out-of-State
19% for non-legacy
39.2% for legacy
hypothesis: around 25-30% overall, depending on the split (assuming it’s in favor of non-legacy)</p>
<p>Northwestern
around 25% in the past several years</p>
<p>SAT Range
UNC (in 1991)
1120 average in-state (68th percentile)
1293 average out-of-state (89th percentile)
weighted average (18% OOS): 1151 (74th percentile)</p>
<p>Applying that 21% differential, while maintaining allowances for the bell-shaped curve (ie the differential decreases as the score increases) to the most recent academic year and working backwards:
UNC average SAT score in 2008: 1305 (90th percentile)
1180 average in-state (77th percentile)
1340 average out-of-state (92nd percentile)</p>
<p>Northwestern
Average SAT score in 2008: 1435</p>
<p>Judging from this data and extrapolation, Northwestern is rather significantly more difficult to gain admission to than UNC out-of-state. This difference could be mitigated to an extent if you assumed more of the recent increase in UNC’s SAT scores came from out-of-state applicants, but I would deem that rather unlikely considering the statistical rarity of applicants in the higher SAT ranges, evidence of increased competition over the very top academic programs (ie SAT ranges increasing dramatically across the top 15-20 universities) as well as articles referencing the state of North Carolina’s continuing improvement in their SAT score ranges.</p>
<p>sources:
[UNC</a> General Alumni Association :: Admissions FAQs](<a href=“Carolina Alumni”>http://alumni.unc.edu/article.aspx?SID=1839)
[CTL:</a> Publications / Teaching at Carolina](<a href=“http://ctl.unc.edu/hintro.html]CTL:”>http://ctl.unc.edu/hintro.html)
<a href=“http://www.colchestertalks.com/SATPercentileRanks.pdf[/url]”>http://www.colchestertalks.com/SATPercentileRanks.pdf</a>
[N.C</a>. SAT scores close in on national average :: WRAL.com](<a href=“N.C. SAT scores close in on national average”>N.C. SAT scores close in on national average)</p>