As someone who has a 4 year degree from both UVA and UNC I can say they are both great institutions but I live in North Carolina and my daughter went to UVA OOS. I joke if we had lived in Virginia she would have wanted to go to UNC…she got into both.
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Both UVA and UNC are wonderful schools. After multiple visits to both we found the vibes to differ. Neither is better or worse, just different and depends on the student.
Just my opinion.
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My older D graduated from UVA, which is also an amazing school. UVA and UNC are both great, and you can’t go wrong with either. They have a lot of similarities and some differences. UNC is bigger, is in a bigger city, and is close to a large airport.
UNC has more students from NC, while UVA has more out-of-state students. This is due to the different instate acceptance requirements.
We are from the Northeast, so we didn’t know what to expect from Southern schools. We were pleasantly surprised and grateful they got to experience them. I hope my youngest D gets into one of these schools.
We love them both.
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Chapel Hill! He was accepted to all the schools he applied to, which also included UCLA and UVA. He likes UNC because he feels the coursework is challenging, but his classmates aren’t competitive with each other. He loves the school spirit. He notices that UNC OOS students tend to stand out a bit in the classroom where his sibling at UVA has not found much difference academically between in-state and OOS students.
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No regrets! Money comes, money goes, but can’t buy back those 4 years. (Although UGA I am sure, would have been amazing.)
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This is us. We live in VA and my son refused to apply to UVA, but sure did apply to Carolina…
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This is where the disparity is most evident. Overall the school systems in Va are stronger than those in NC (NOVA alone could fill a UVA class). There are pockets of good schools in NC but we lived in Chapel Hill (which is regarded as the strongest school system in NC) and I still sent both of mine to private school.
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From what I understand UGA had a much firmer position on the protests. They shut them down immediately, after offering to have them move to the designated free speech area, which the protesters refused. My nephew graduated from UNC during the height of the protests, and there was some pretty unsightly property damage caused by protestors during graduation according to visitors that were in town for the event.
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Why?
Same!
New to forum. Great perspectives and intel. Will try to use the appropriate abbreviations. D25 OOS. EA and like many of you, pessimistic about next week (the quality of you and your children’s resumes is outstanding, kudos!) but holding out hope because it’s a phenomenal place (my wife and I are alumni).
Many posts ago, someone suggested the mechanism for calculating GPAs in the NC system (I believe referring to HS). HS she attends does not do rank. UGA is very transparent regarding their GPA methodology in an effort to standardize (published on website). Is anyone aware of that process with UNC? I have to think the admissions people don’t work in silos. There must be best practices that have been shared among them. Trying to make sense of the highly variable grading systems across the state and nationally would be unwieldy. Does UNC have a mechanism for standardizing?
Not anything published. That said, DD has an appointment to view her admissions file next week, and I will post info about anything she sees related to that. I would assume they have some sort of rubric that is used to standardize, and given it is their profession,
I would imagine admissions folks are pretty used to the main few grading procedures in the country. (E.g. the schools that don’t weight at all, but have honors/high level courses, the system for the state, which is standardized and the same as many schools and states, neighboring states like SC who have a 6.0 system for AP, etc.) Schools send a school report that describes this with their transcripts, so if it’s on a rubric, anyone with very high stats would check the same box on the rubric which would standardize grades.
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Copy that. The info from the application review will be fascinating. Clearly wish that mechanism was published because currently we don’t really know where she stands as our school does 100 point scale, not GPA. Oh well, doesn’t matter at this point-will find out soon enough lol.
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There are students which have discussed their admit profile in the past. In general, every section is quantified. ECs and essays tend to be scored lower unless there are some outstanding qualities, thus GPA and especially course rigor are important factors to have in place. Dual enrollment is something quite common in NC due to the rural areas having less APs at times. UNC I believe allows for a list of Dual Enrollment to be placed on the common App and I believe specifically asks for this. This is to say if you are rural they expect dual enrollment but I wouldn’t go so far to say they prefer them( Some privates in NC prefer AP vs dual enrollment) In terms of standardized grading, UNC has done in house research with their stats dept, indicating a specific number of APs translate to better graduation outcomes of their students. Thus they are interested in # of rigorous courses more than a 4.0, although both helps your chances. Hope that helps and good luck. Also, living in a rural area, APs and DE are interchangeable in terms of rigor. Depends on the instructor. In the end however the standardized score of AP will need to be relatively high for college credit at UNC, often above a 3 to replace a course, with a 3 or above given general graduation credit .
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My daughter (OOS) reviewed her application when she was there. She told me that they wrote about her essays and letters of recommendation. She didn’t comment on anything else.
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And for English, students MUST either take English 105 at UNC or the equivalent at a CC. So despite teh fact that mine had 4s on APLang, APLit, APSem and AP Research, she still had to take English 105. (Well, we actually discovered, buried deep in some doc that she could have submitted the syllabus for each and they would have made a ruling if she would have needed to take it. Given the papers she wrote in Eng 105 - a lit review, a science article and a literary essay, it is likely the 4 courses she took would have replaced that one. Oh well.)
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Yes. It’s a difficult journey attempting to know what courses can benefit a student in terms of prerequisites. UNC has a good equivalency list for every Community College/ Dual Enrollment in NC which has helped us. There are many NC students able to have 18-20 courses towards college, going in as a freshman but technically only needing 2 yrs to graduate.
What is an application review? Do they offer this to all applicants?
If you’ve been accepted, a student can review their admission review/ application and get an idea how admissions viewed their application.
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I believe this would only be if you were ultimately admitted to UNC, but I could be wrong. I doubt they would have the capacity to allow any applicant, regardless of of admission, to come review their file. But, that is just my educated guess, not from specific experience.
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