We gambled incorrectly, thinking UNC would understand the GPA value difference in her school’s situation, which can’t be completely unique across NC. But it’s UNC’s loss, and she’s (unfortunately) in good company of waitlist’ers at her HS (the AP teachers better buckle up for tomorrow…they’re going to be an angry bunch). She has a friend who is a Fr there this year (she had DE classes). Her brother is in my daughter’s classes, same exact GPA & ACT as her, and their mom works remotely for UNC…also waitlisted.
Have the admit stats been released? I haven’t been able to find them
We’re an NC family too - my older daughter is a UNC grad, younger daughter (with higher stats across the board than older daughter, got denied - she’s a proud Hokie now
). It feels like many decades of NC applicants have been trying to unsuccessfully crack the code on who UNC admits and why. So many urban legends (does county of residence and school attended matter? Do they have a better chance getting in if they’re at the top of an under-performing high school? How many AP’s is the right amount of AP’s? etc. etc.) One of my younger daughter’s classmates got in with no AP’s.
I am mentoring a student through a local non-profit in our city, who attends an early college program (their local high school is an under-performer). This student is very bright but didn’t do well on the first round of SAT’s, so they decided not to retake and go test optional on all the applications, including UNC. They had great EC’s (the kind that I speculate UNC would love to see), good recs and I thought their Common App essay was compelling (but we had to spend a lot of time perfecting it, so I would say this student was a little weak on the writing side). I was very curious to see how UNC viewed this student’s early college GPA which on the surface, was competitive for UNC applicants. I wasn’t sure if they would view early college on the same level of rigor as IB/AP. This was my first go around with early college as my daughters went to private school and it wasn’t offered.
I’m happy to report that my student ended up getting the exciting news that they were admitted to UNC! I’m not sure if being in the early college program played to their strengths or not. They were very passionate about their EC’s (which directly tied into their career choice) and I’m sure UNC could see that as well.
Congrats to all who were admitted but for those who were not - redirect the love toward the colleges that love them back and they will thrive wherever they land! Bumps in the road will happen whether they are at UNC or another great college.
Thanks @CollegeNerd67! Congrats to your student! D24 knows of some EC kids from our county and neighboring one that got in too; they must view that favorably. We’d been hearing the same urban myths, and even some of her AP teachers have said they’re always surprised. So agreed, alot of folks trying to crack the code, and it’s probably always changing.
Hurrah for your Hokie daughter! As you can tell, I’m a Hokie ;-), so for D24, the choice is now State or Tech. DH is a Texas A&M alum, so we clearly tend to lean land-grant schools anyway. We’ve been talking about it this morning and she’s super excited now thinking about the prospects of Tech & State and we’re planning additional visits back to both. UNC is fantastic, but socially, I know she’d love Blacksburg, and most of her friend group are set on State (plus being in RTP certainly has it’s advantages). She has already been accepted to Tech & State’s business programs; for UNC, that would have been yet another application process, which had concerned me. So again, she didn’t believe us on Friday at 4pm, but we keep saying it ALWAYS works out for the best even if you don’t think so at the time. Onward & upward!
However, @BumbleBee2 may be in a different situation. As she received a full ride to UNC per her other thread, it may be that UNC has travel funds for first-generation students who live many states away. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.
Mine got into State for business too but just didn’t see herself there (plus, she kind of wanted to get away from it feeling like “13th Grade” since so many from her HS go there too). VT was a big leap for her since she’s on the more introverted side but I’m proud of her for going outside her comfort zone. She has a great group of friends there (most are from states up north with a couple from VA).
Just to give you some perspective from the business major side (not sure what your D24 is interested in) - older D graduated from Kenan Flagler at UNC (Class of 2017) and has had great opportunities and success in her finance career. My Hokie received similar recruitment opportunities through Pamplin at VT. She participated in the “Women on Wall Street” recruitment program, which was promoted through Pamplin and also had many internship interviews through companies that participate in Pamplin’s career fairs. While there were other Hokies at the Women on Wall Street event (and of course Tar Heels) she did not see any name tags from NC State (but RTP has many great opportunities so maybe they are recruiting there?)
She landed a great internship for this summer in Charlotte and had offers from two additional firms in NYC (couldn’t make the housing work financially there). The one caveat is that many companies that specifically recruit at VT are located in the DC or Richmond areas. To end up in NYC or back in NC, she had to do some additional legwork on her own - but the firms she targeted seemed to love the Hokies because she had a lot of interviews.
Sorry to highjack!
@CollegeNerd67 - THANK YOU!!! That’s exactly the info we’re weighing! Thanks for the info & feedback!! (I’m completely taking this off track for this thread and would chat directly with you, but can’t figure out how…).
She applied as a finance major too. I was a VT FIN grad, Pres of the FIN club my senior yr, board member for Business Horizons, etc. I just feel VT has a stronger program, but I also don’t know if it’s because I’m bias. We went to the VT Open House last spring, and found out more info there than any other college tour. VT does a great job, and they seem to care. My DH came away saying how impressed he was with how helpful & engaging everyone was there. The majors fair in Squires was particularly useful, as we talked to every Pamplin dept, plus some. We chatted with an awesome Econ professor, who said he’d worked at UNC, and did some work at Duke…and he’d pick VT, all day.
State has a great location, and it’s in-state…but Poole just celebrated their 30th anniversary. I graduated Pamplin 25 years ago.
Pamplin has just been doing this alot longer with no doubt better name recognition. She has slight concerns about State being “13th grade” but is way more open to it than App (which she wouldn’t even consider for that reason).
D24 thinks she’d perhaps like to end up in DC. I’m originally from eastern VA, was recruited out of VT, ended up in NOVA, where I met my DH (at work…his employer is one of the top VT mktg majors recruiters). She was born there, but corp relo moved us 16 yrs ago. She thinks CLT has too much traffic, so NOVA/DC may not be as enticing as she thinks.
We need to figure out what’s going on recruiting wise at Poole. She likes their general first year business program there, where at VT, she’ll jump right into FIN classes per the info we received at the majors fair. One of the students that lead the Poole tour back in the spring was from NJ - he was impressive, an ACCT major, with an offer from a big 4 firm up north. Maybe they’re just participating in other recruiting events, or he did the legwork on his own? We noticed when we toured KF there wasn’t as much talk about working with local firms as there was at Poole. Our impression was KF is looking more NYC/BOS/etc. She thinks that all sounds cool, but reality, not so sure she’s a NE big city type of gal. Starting salaries are lower coming out of Poole, but is that due to cost of living in NC vs DC/NYC/etc?
Thanks again for the info! I really appreciate it. Big decisions!
Sent you a DM if you’d like to chat further ![]()
My kid handles all his college stuff and I only occasionally read emails that come to me. Not sure if I’m stress dreaming about college or my email is failing me. Was there a recent email telling kids to sign up for an account of some sort regardless of whether they plan to commit so that they could get updates? We can’t find it. Is it real? ![]()
I think if they go into their letter there are steps to take.
I haven’t read his letter. Maybe I did invent this email in a dream then? Haha
Two of the top boys at my school. Both 1600ish/4.0ish. Top of class. Both will easily end up at ivies. The one with great personality and ECs did not get in. The other did. UNC is a safety for no one OOS and not predictable.
Same issues still. Not locked but not operational either. : /
same
My son got in early, OOS. Valedictorian (class size about 380), 36 ACT, all state music in 2 instruments, all state in jazz as well, and other well-developed EC’s in music. Composed his own symphonic piece that his school wind ensemble will be performing in their spring concert.
In all honesty, he didn’t know how competitive UNC OOS is and upon reading all of this, he’s very fortunate to have been admitted. Actually, he probably won’t attend (he had UNC pretty low on his applied list) and has been admitted EA to Georgetown and Notre Dame. He’s waiting on a number of other RD’s in March (Ivy’s and other Top 20’s), but UNC is the most affordable option.
Good luck to everyone else in their respective journeys…this process is truly brutal.
Just give it a few days I would say. IT needs time to get the info from admissions and set everything up. It’s only be a few days (all weekend days)
Our portal is now functional. I think it was just not ready yet. Hope yours opens up!
Did your daughter set up 2-step verification for Duo? This is what I was told when I called UNC just now.
Can you see the financial aid and scholarships?
Rejected
