Admissions Blog

Undergraduate Admissions Uncensored

Vanderbilt Class of 2023 Early Decision Stats Released

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John O. Gaines, Director of Undergraduate Admissions at Vanderbilt University, announced some interesting tidbits of information that should be of interest to students and others who want to learn more about the selectivity of Vanderbilt’s overall Early Decision first-year student admissions process for its Class of 2023. The highlights include:

  • The middle fifty percent of students accepted into Vanderbilt’s Class of 2023 via ED I and ED II who reported their SAT scores had SAT Evidence Based Reading and Writing scores of between 710 and 760.
  • Meanwhile, The middle fifty percent of students accepted into Vanderbilt’s Class of 2023 via ED I and ED II who reported their SAT scores had SAT Math scores of between 770 and 800.
  • Of those students accepted to Vanderbilt’s Class of 2023 ED I or ED II who reported their ACT scores, the middle fifty percent had ACT composite scores of between 33 and 35.
  • No statistics were given regarding GPA averages of accepted students, which is not surprising because GPA scales different from school to school and some schools are ditching GPAs all together. A significant percentage of high schools also do not rank students, and an even greater percentage of high school counselors severely guesstimate students’ ranks in their counselor evaluation reports to colleges; yet, that didn’t stop Vanderbilt from reporting that of those students accepted ED I or ED II this admissions cycle who attend high schools willing to give a decile rankings for their students, ninety-seven percent of accepted students were in the top ten percent of their graduating classes.
  • Overall, Vanderbilt’s average ED acceptance rate for its Class of 2023 was 19.8 percent.

In recent years, Vanderbilt has filled more than fifty percent of its first-year classes with students accepted Early Decision. Also in recent years, Vanderbilt has become a college that has an ED acceptance rate that is at least twice as high as its Regular Decision acceptance rate. With that in mind, it would not be surprising to see Vanderbilt announce later this spring that its Regular Decision acceptance rate has fallen to seven percent or below. We’ll keep you updated.

In closing, we know we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all, but what’s up with colleges combining their Early Decision I and Early Decision II admissions statistics for public dissemination? What we didn’t learn today is how students accepted to Vanderbilt ED I compared to students accepted to Vanderbilt ED II. If Mr. Gaines would like to fill us in on how Vandy’s ED I admits compared to Vandy’s ED II admits, he is respectfully invited to contact us here, and we will happily and thankfully share his response with our loyal audience.

In the interim, congratulations to Vanderbilt and to those students accepted to Vanderbilt ED I and ED II during this admissions cycle.

Washington University in St. Louis sees 70 percent increase in applications

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Ronné P. Turner, Washington University in St. Louis’ Vice Provost of Admissions & Financial Aid, informed counselors on Thursday, February 13, 2019 that inclusive of the university’s two Early Decision rounds and its QuestBridge rounds during this admissions cycle, the selective private Missouri university, “reviewed over 3,000 applications – a 70 percent increase from years past.”

For more clarity and context, last year during its one Early Decision round of admission, Wash U. reviewed 1,850 applications.

Wash U. has been selective for a long time, but this was the first year that Wash U. offered ED II. With the university accepting 250 students on Thursday when its ED II decisions were released, Wash U. anticipates that 60 percent of its first-year class – the Class of 2023 – will be populated by students who were accepted before Regular Decision. Last year only 40 percent of students enrolling in the university’s Class of 2022 were accepted ED. Turner did not provide any specific breakout information regarding Questbridge applications or acceptances.

This year, as in past years, students who applied Regular Decision will get their decisions by April 1, 2019.

Interestingly, despite being a hyper-selective university with an overall acceptance rate in the mid teens, some of those students accepted to Wash U. so far in this year’s admissions cycle will be required to attend the university’s First-Year Summer Academic Program from June 8, 2019 through July 13, 2019. According to Turner, “this is solely to help with the transition from high school to college. Their admission is contingent upon attendance/successful completion of this five-week program.” The First-Year Summer Academic Program “gives a select group of students the opportunity to ensure their readiness for STEM and pre-med coursework as well as to improve their critical reading, writing, and study skills. Students attending FSAP may be among the first in their family to attend college or coming from high schools with limited AP/IB offerings,” according to the university.

College Applicant Stress and the January 1 Deadline

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The world of college admissions ended 2018 with a rash of articles focused on student stress and the college application process.  The themes were familiar—the pressure of applying is great, the expectations are high, the effect of rejection is too extreme—but this recent spate of articles differed in the sheer number of them.  In a year when even the federal government felt compelled to examine the role of mental health in student safety, it seems the world of college admissions may be willing to rethink some of its most cherished beliefs, all in the interest of supporting the sanity and healthy growth of the students.

If that’s really the case, I’d like to suggest a pretty easy jumping off point for change—end the January 1 college application deadline.  I’m not exactly new to the world of college admissions, and this deadline has never made sense to me.  High school counseling offices aren’t open on January 1, so we can’t send any documents to support applications.  Even worse, high school counseling offices aren’t open from December 24 through at least the first of the year, so we can’t offer students any meaningful help with essays, activity lists, or other application logistics during crunch time.  That may matter little to applicants whose parents started an Ivy League college, but to the students we say we’d like to create more opportunities for, this last-minute help is a big deal.

This deadline also gives counselors the annual moral dilemma of offering to check email during the holidays, or coming in and holding application workshops on their days off, but that puts their mental health at risk—and if you think that has nothing to do with the well being of students, you clearly haven’t seen a high school counselor working on their last nerve.

What’s even more mystifying is that college admissions offices themselves aren’t open on January 1.  Stories float up here and there about a handful of admissions offices requiring their junior staffers to come in for a few hours to take phone calls, but by and large, students waiting until the last minute to apply are left to their own resources.  If it’s really so important to have applications in by January 1, why aren’t any of the applications that meet the deadline touched in any way until at least January 2?

This is where the old school, nudge-nudge-winkery of college admissions comes into play.  The only response I’ve ever received from colleges that could be considered a defense of the January 1 deadline is a logistical one: the reason we ask for the materials by January 1 is so we know we’ll have them when we really need them, which is more along the lines of January 10. 

This argument made tremendous sense in the days when college applications were mailed (even though the US Post Office is closed January 1), but the digital age assures us that anything needed at the end of the day on January 10 can be sent an hour before the end of the day on January 10, and get there.

The only argument left for this “send it before we really need it” strategy is the vagaries of a 17 year-old’s understanding of deadlines—colleges argue they are doing students a favor telling them they need applications before they really do.  But if high school seniors don’t know it’s OK to be late—and what high school counselor in their right mind wants to ever send that message to a student—this “favor” becomes a major source of stress, where students sacrifice the last long December holiday of their youth to meeting a deadline that doesn’t really exist.  Wouldn’t their stress level be better served gathered ‘round the big screen, imbibing in the traditional family ritual of watching that penultimate holiday classic, Die Hard?

It’s easy enough for a high school counselor to point out all the things colleges can do to support the mental health of applicants, and there’s plenty we high school folks should be doing as well.  Still, when I think about the low-hanging fruit that can dramatically change the tone of the college application process, the January 1 deadline is the first, but not only, thing that comes to mind.  It’s worth a review.

12 Reasons Scattergrams Lull Students Into a False Sense of Security

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Scattergrams, the ubiquitous x/y axis graphs that have caught on like wildfire over the last twenty years because of their inclusion in Naviance Student, the online college counseling tool used by thousands of American high schools, purport to show a student’s chances of admission at different colleges and universities by plotting previous students from a particular high school on an x/y axis graph based on such students’ GPAs on one axis and their test scores (ACT or SAT) on the other.

Below is an example of a scattergram for a particular high school showing current students (and parents) at that high school how alumni from that high school fared when applying to University of Maryland College Park from 2010 through 2014.

Note that the below scattergram plots the SAT on the x-axis using the old 2400 SAT scale; however, the SAT is now scored out of 1600. Similarly, the high school in question clearly plots GPA based on a 4.0 scale, but some schools’ scattergrams will have very different numbers of the y-axis because scattergrams can have any sort of GPA scale on them (100, 20, 6, etc.) depending on a school’s grading scale.

The typical student seeing the above scattergram assumes, if he or she has a 3.6 GPA and an SAT score of 1860 he or she is definitely going to get into University of Maryland College Park. Most of the rest of students with that combination of grades and scores would assume, after seeing the above scattergram, that Maryland is at least a huge safety college for them. After all, all students from this high school in the past few years who land in that GPA/score range got into Maryland, as illustrated by all of those green squares.

STOP RIGHT THERE!

The problem is a student with this GPA/score combination could easily get rejected from University of Maryland College Park for any number of reasons that a scattergram will not be able to display. The most common reasons scattergrams lull students into a false sense of security are as follows:

  1. Many selective colleges get more selective every passing year, rendering antiquated past years’ admissions statistics.
  2. Scattergrams don’t show the quality of past applicants’ extracurricular resumes.
  3. Scattergrams don’t show the quality of past applicants’ essay writing skills.
  4. Scattergrams don’t show past applicants’ demographics (rich, middle-class, poor, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, International, etc.). College admissions officers for American colleges – especially selective institutions – often care quite a lot about their applicants’ demographics.
  5. Scattergrams don’t show incredibly important (again, in the eyes of college admissions officers) background information about past applicants’ beyond their demographics. Here we are talking about characteristics like an applicant’s legacy status (Did a past applicant’s mom or dad attend the same college?), athletic prowess (Was a past applicant a highly-sought athletic recruit?), and/or his or her parents’/grandparents’ proclivity for giving money to the college on the scattergram in question.
  6. Most high schools set their scattergrams to hide from current students/parents whether or not past applicants to the college in question applied Rolling Decision, Early Decision, Early Action, Priority Admission, and/or Regular Decision. That’s important information! This is because colleges that offer different admissions plans/deadlines often have very different standards for each such plan/deadline. You can also forget about a scattergram showing whether a past applicant applied for and/or was accepted to the college for fall, spring, or winter term (if such varied options exist at the college in question).
  7. Scattergrams don’t show the quality of past applicants’ teacher and counselor recommendation letters/evaluations.
  8. Scattergrams likely don’t account for whether or not past applicants submitted their ACT scores, SAT scores, both, or neither (in the case of test-optional colleges) to the colleges’ scattergrams on which they are plotted.
  9. Unless the scattergram’s GPA axis is a weighted GPA, the GPA axis is not capable of communicating to students and parents the past applicants’ curricular rigor.
  10. Scattergrams don’t show past applicants’ grade trends in high school (colleges care so much about this).
  11. Scattergrams show past applicants’ final GPAs in high school, not their GPAs when they applied to college (usually in the beginning of a student’s senior year). Senior slumps in the final months of past applicants’ senior years often slightly (and sometimes greatly) deflate their final GPAs relative to what their GPAs were in October of their senior years.
  12. Directors of college counseling (the leaders of college counseling offices) can be applicants’ best advocates or worst enemies depending on whether or not these directors have written a strong and compelling high school profile and done everything else they can do to encourage particular colleges to accept their students. Scattergrams don’t note when certain directors’ regimes began and ended; therefore, in a field where many directors of college counseling only stay in their roles for a few years before moving on, a five- or ten-year scattergram could be capturing admissions statistics for students applying from a particular high school under very different college counseling regimes. Some directors write bang-up high school profiles (which are sent to all colleges to which students apply in a particular admissions cycle) and some don’t. Sadly, at some schools, the high school profile is written and designed by the communications team and/or individuals in the admissions, advancement, development, head of school, principal, and or central office! The further removed from college counseling the writers of the high school profile are the more likely the profile will not provide college admissions officers the information they are looking for in a high school profile. Meanwhile, some directors of college counseling make calls for their students or their colleagues’ students, others simply don’t. Some are on a first-name basis with Ivy League admissions officers, some don’t know any. Some act as PR agents for their students, others are real in their recommendation letters, which leads to such letters carrying more weight with admissions officers than those that only share glowing reviews. Scattergrams lull students and parents into thinking (just like point #1 above) that each student plotted on the scattergram had the same college counseling team behind him or her and faced the same college admissions rates from year to year. The fact is, high schools change and colleges change, and as a result, scattergrams fail at capturing subtle or quite large subjective changes to students’ chances from year to year based on how high schools and colleges change.

In summary, so much of what colleges will ultimately base their admissions decisions on is NOT captured in scattergrams; therefore, don’t use them as the end all be all when it comes to determining whether a particular college on your list is a Safety, Possible, or Reach. Any college counselor, student, or parent who tells you otherwise has no idea what he or she is talking about.

I frequently get irate parents telling me that I am too pessimistic about their student’s chances at a particular college or university based on what the family sees on a particular college’s scattergram on Naviance Student. I remind them that I often know the back story on each applicant on the scattergram and/or that there are at lease twelve reasons why the scattergram is only part of the story – especially at the country’s most selective colleges and universities. Sadly, this does not often calm the parents down, and as a result, a few parents hold months-long bouts of resentment towards me – usually until all admissions decisions are released in April, at which point reality sets in – for good or ill. With that said, I am happy when I have a student get into a college that I classified as a Reach that the parents and student thought I should have classified as a Possible or a Safety. It’s my job to help turn all colleges on a student’s list into offers of admission; yet, I need the student’s cooperation and effort if I can make this happen. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Scattergrams are trustworthier for colleges that primarily base their admissions decisions on applicants’ grades and scores only. Theses types of colleges are usually those that accept over 50 of applicants and/or large state universities that ask for the perfunctory essay and extracurricular list but which don’t have the actual manpower to review these subjective aspects of students’ applications. Such colleges usually simply default to determining whether or not to accept a student based on his or her scores and grades. Yet, even in such cases, a student who is quite deficient or exceptionally strong in one or more of the twelve areas listed above could easily become an exception to the rule that the scattergram seems to convey.

Bottom line: strong college counselors always explain this important, complex, and as you can now see, somewhat time-consuming information to students and parents. Such college counselors tend to lean towards being more conservative with their Safety, Possible, and Reach classifications for colleges on their students’ lists than those college counselors who take a relatively two-dimensional approach (x,y axis, anyone?) to college acceptance/rejection prognostication. If you are a student or parent going through the college application process now or in the future, please remember to be skeptical of scattergrams. Though they have valuable data on them, scattergrams only capture some objective data, and they certainly don’t capture the subjective strengths or weaknesses of past college applicants or their college applications.

Penn’s Class of 2022 Acceptance Rates

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Eric J. Furda, University of Pennsylvania’s Dean of Admissions, provided high school counselors with a June update today, and in it he shared Penn’s three acceptance rates for the just-concluded admissions cycle.

Penn in the city of Philadelphia, PA.

Penn’s overall acceptance rate for this year’s roughly 44,500 applicants was a hair above 8 percent. Yet, this number tells only a small part of the story. Over fifty percent of Penn’s Class of 2022 was accepted Early Decision, and Penn’s Early Decision Acceptance rate this cycle was 18.5 percent. This meant that Penn’s third and final acceptance rate, it’s Regular Decision acceptance rate, was a paltry 6 percent.

In terms of ratios, this year’s numbers track well with Penn’s proclivity for having an Early Decision acceptance rate that weighs in at roughly three times as size (percentage-wise) as its Regular Decision acceptance rate (18.5:6).

Furda also shared information on the importance Penn places on fit it its applicants while also informing counselors that last year, 46 percent of Penn undergrads received financial aid. The average aid award last year was an impressive $50,348.

College Counselor to Bloomberg: It Doesn’t Work That Way

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It didn’t take long to realize that the College Admissions Cycle of 2018 was an utter failure.  No sooner was the last article published on Waitlists That Run to The Moon and Back, but Bloomberg thought they’d try and cheer everyone up by telling us that the birthrate in the US is declining at an alarming rate. Their conclusion?  Fewer teens means fewer students applying to college— all colleges– making the process that much less stressful for everyone.

It may have been another long admissions season, but it didn’t take the Twitterverse long at all to respond with a collective, “What?”  Several respondents pointed out that a vast majority of colleges have had empty seats on the first day of fall classes for years—according to James Murphy of Princeton Review, that number is about 78% of all colleges.

The next round of rebuttal came in the form of witty repartee, including remarks like “Well, Harvard should just become an open admissions institution,” and, “What will those poor admissions officers at Penn do with all their free time?” Bloomberg may be able to count babies, but their abacus counting the ever-rising number of Ivy League applications is apparently in the shop.

The Bloomberg piece may have come as comic relief to admissions officers who had a busy April, but it also points to a reality that has long plagued the college application process.  Using national newspaper coverage of college admissions as their North Star, nearly a full generation of college applicants have had to deal with the “high stress of applying to college.” What was once viewed as a fairly simple process that took less than an hour is now viewed as a gut-wrenching, life-altering experience that makes waterboarding seem like a date with your rubber ducky.  The hyperbole about the stress of applying to college is so bad, I have actually had to guide students through stress management strategies because they finished applying to college and never once felt worried about it.  It was the lack of stress that was stressing them out.

The attention-grabbing headlines equating the odds of admission to college with getting hit by lightning overlook the realities school counselors know.  A vast number of students will apply to four colleges or fewer, all of them within 150 miles of home.  Most of those colleges will admit 75% or more of their applicants, and—to Mr. Murphy’s point—most will still have seats open in classes on the first day of the fall term.  For these students, the greatest stress is how they will pay for this opportunity, but that has nothing to do with birthrate, and much to do with the times we live in.

None of that will make the front page of a single national newspaper, since it isn’t exciting or controversial.  Neither will the damage that’s done by the national media’s obsession with a handful of colleges with single digit admit rates.  There’s a little bit of stress involved in any college application, just like there’s a little stress involved in driving a car on the freeway; it helps you pay attention.  Suggesting that a life-altering amount of stress is involved in applying to college if you’re doing it right places a burden on our children, and keeps first generation students from applying in the first place.  They deserve a better, and more accurate, picture of the process.

Each year, I somehow hope this will be the time Southwest Michigan College’s need for more students will find its way to my newsfeed, and change the way America sees college.  Perhaps an admissions officer from Brown will write an op-ed about this in the coming years, making it interesting enough to make coast-to-coast headlines.

After all, they’re going to have all that free time on their hands.

Over 10,700 Applications for 420 Spots in Swarthmore Class of 2022

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Swarthmore College

As we begin another admissions cycle in 2018-2019, we’re still catching up with some of the latest admissions season’s most notable broken records. Case in point, Swarthmore. The tony Main Line Philadelphia college received roughly 10,700 first-year applications competing for the approximately 420 spots in Swarthmore’s Class of 2022. In order to yield the desired magic 420, Swarthmore sent out 980 letters of admission to applicants who utilized the college’s Early Decision I, Early Decision II, and Regular Decision admissions deadlines.

This means that Swarthmore’s overall first-year acceptance rate has crossed the magic ten percent milestone. Last year, Swarthmore’s overall acceptance rate was eleven percent. This year, despite tears being shed world-wide at receiving a Swarthmore rejection, you may have heard the distinct sound of popping – the popping of Champagne Bottles in Swarthmore’s admissions office and president’s office, as the college’s overall acceptance rate now hovers around nine percent.

Based on previously reported stats from last year, it’s actually not nearly as hard to get into Swarthmore Early Decision (though we don’t have separate stats about EDI vs. EDII). The Early Decision acceptance rate last year was thirty-four percent. This puts Swarthmore in the category of super users of Early Decision, colleges at which the Early Decision acceptance rate is three times greater than its Regular Decision acceptance rate.

For the love of all that is good in this world, IF SWARTHMORE IS YOUR FIRST CHOICE COLLEGE, AND YOU ARE AN ACTUAL COMPETITIVE APPLICANT, APPLY ED! No official numbers on this year’s ED vs. Regular breakdown, though we can expect that spread to be revealed in the months ahead when colleges report for the Common Data Set. In the meantime, may we respectfully request that Swarthmore release its ED I vs. ED II application numbers and acceptance rates?

In other news that we must report but which you don’t care about nearly as much as what was mentioned above, twenty-four percent of those accepted to Swarthmore this admissions cycle identified as first-generation college students (but does anyone actually fact-check?), and California is the most highly represented home state of those students accepted to Swarthmore this year, coming in before students accepted from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, and Illinois in descending order.

Finally, Swarthmore is happy to boast of its students’ increasing geographic diversity; students accepted this year represent sixty-three nations, all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Don’t doubt that those from in and around the Main Line itself will likely make up the largest demographic of students who ultimately matriculate.

 

Georgetown’s School-By-School Acceptance Rates for Class of 2022

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Georgetown University has announced its school-by-school acceptance rates for students applying during the 2017-2108 admissions cycle, and while another cycle is just about at a close, Georgetown hasn’t made much news with this year’s admissions stats, as they are quite consistent with last year’s numbers.

According to The Hoya, the Georgetown student newspaper, last year (the 2016-2017 admissions cycle) Georgetown reported acceptance rates by school that were pretty similar to this year’s acceptance rates.

Bottom line: Georgetown is tough to get into statistically. But is this really news? No, but we hope you appreciate the up to date intel.

Also fun to note, Georgetown shared that nobody should be making predictions about whether or not they will be taken off this year’s Georgetown University “Waiting List.” That’s because recent years’ waitlist stats indicate that anything is possible.

 Admitted Students 2018
Georgetown
College		 Walsh School
of Foreign Service		 McDonough School of Business School of
Nursing & Health
Studies		 Total
Applied
 13,809 4,166 3,422 1,500 22,897
Admitted
 1,932 630 540 225 3,327
Admission Rate 14% 15% 16% 15% 15%
Mean Class Rank Percentile 94.4% 96.0% 94.4% 94.3% 94.8%
Middle 50%
SAT Verbal
 700-760 720-770 690-750 690-750 700-760
Middle 50%
SAT Math
 710-790 710-790 720-790 700-780 710-790
Middle 50%
ACT Composite		 31-35 32-35 32-35 31-34 32-35
Recent Acceptance Rates of Candidates From the Waiting List
2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012
Georgetown College 4% 7% 14% 11% 10% 7%
McDonough School of Business 3% 1% 4% None 6% 10%
School of Nursing & Health Studies 9% 28% 4% 22% None 10%
Walsh School of Foreign Service None None 17% 13% 8% 6%

Thanks for the transparency Georgetown!

Villanova’s Acceptance Rate Falls to 29%

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Villanova University will release its Regular Decision admissions notifications on Thursday, March 22, 2018. Yet, before it does, the suburban Philadelphia university has shared with high school counselors important bits of information about its Class of 2022 applicant pool.

According to Michael M. Gaynor, Villanova’s director of undergraduate admission, Villanova received 22,727 applications for the 1,670 spots the university has allotted for first-year students entering this fall. 22,727 first-year applications represents a 7.65% increase in first-year applications from last year’s previous high.

In addition, Villanova began offering an Early Decision application option to students who applied this past fall. In its inaugural year, 24% of Villanova’s entering class will be admitted through the university’s new Early Decision program.

Villanova also still offers non-binding Early Action, and 12,677 Early Action applications were submitted this past fall.

As a result of its new differentiated admission options, Villanova’s overall acceptance rate has fallen to 28.8%. Last year, when the university only offered Early Action and Regular Decision, Villanova’s overall acceptance rate was 34.9%, and during the previous admission cycle, it was 43.2%. Long story short, Villanova has now joined many other colleges in using Early Decision to reduce its overall acceptance rate.

Of those students accepted, the middle 50% earned weighted high school GPAs on a traditional 4.00 scale between 4.10 and 4.48. Note that such GPAs are not final GPAs, but rather cumulative GPAs students’ earned at the time of their application submissions. Also, of those students accepted, the middle 50% SAT score range fell between 1380 and 1490 and the middle 50% score range on the ACT was between 32 and 34.

Finally, Gaynor notes that some Villanova majors are harder to get into than others. In particular, the most competitive programs were Biology, Business, Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, and Nursing.

UNC and a tale of one – make that four – acceptance rates

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Update: On March 22, 2018, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Vice Provost for Enrollment and Undergraduate Admissions, Stephen Farmer, informed high school counselors that his institution received more than 43,000 applications during the 2017-2018 admissions cycle – another record and a six percent increase from last year.

“We’re grateful to every student who honored us by applying, and we’ve enjoyed getting to know them over the course of the last five months. At the same time, this increased interest has made our decisions especially difficult. With more applications, a class no larger than last year’s, and yields that we expect to remain healthy, we will reluctantly need to decline the applications of many students who would have received better news from us a year ago.” wrote Farmer.

Previously: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released its Early Action decisions on Friday, January 26, 2018; therefore, now is as good of a time as any to remind our readers that UNC at Chapel Hill doesn’t have one annual acceptance rate – the one that is published in popular college guides and online data sites such as CollegeBoard.org. In fact, UNC at Chapel Hill has a grand total of four annual acceptance rates for first-year applicants. Understanding this reality will put your recent acceptance or rejection or your future acceptance or rejection in proper perspective.

First, what the student on the street would say about UNC at Chapel Hill acceptance rates: “I will just go on Naviance Family Connection or College Board’s Big Future to figure out my chance of getting into UNC at Chapel Hill…Oh look, Naviance Family Connection says the university’s acceptance rate is 28%. College Board’s Big Future says UNC at Chapel Hill’s acceptance rate is 27%. That’s a bit odd. La di da di da…Let me compulsively check Snapchat…”

But as a reader of Admissions Intel you are not going to be the student on the street. You are going think multi-demsionally and realize that University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill actually has multiple acceptance rates EACH admissions cycle, four of which are extremely important to know in order to properly place the university into either the safety, possible, or reach section of your college list.

For first-year applicants, UNC at Chapel Hill offers both Early Action and Regular Decision consideration each admissions cycle; yet, the university has quite different standards for students applying from North Carolina versus students applying from outside of North Carolina. Thus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill actually has four distinct acceptance rates each admissions cycle:

1. Early Action (North Carolina Residents)
2.Early Action (Out-of-State Residents)
3.Regular Decision (North Carolina Residents)
4.Regular Decision (Out of State Applicants)

We are only half-way there so far this admissions cycle, so we only have the two EA acceptance rates (reportedly 48 percent for EA North Carolina Residents and 18 Percent EA Out-of-State Residents).  Those two numbers tell us quite a bit, as it’s clear that UNC is statistically far more difficult for out-of-state residents to get in than it is for in-state residents. That trend will continue Regular Decision even as the exact acceptance rates for Regular Decision will differ from those EA. At the very least, please note that the 28% and 27% acceptance rates mentioned above for UNC that are reported on two of the most trusted online college websites are averages of the four distinct acceptance rates that UNC has each year. Long story short, right about now, with EA decisions sinking in, North Carolina residents are not nearly as impressive as they feel and non-North Carolina residents are not nearly as unimpressive as they feel.

While Naviance Family Connection and College Board’s Big Future don’t even try to explain to visitors the differences in first-year applicant acceptance rates between in-state and out-of-state applicants to UNC at Chapel Hill, we are thankful that UNC at Chapel Hill itself at least shares on its website that the overall first-year application acceptance rates for in-state and out-of-state residents differs quite dramatically.

We are big fans of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill here at Admissions Intel, but we would appreciate if in the future the university could err on the side of even greater transparency by also reporting its bifurcated acceptance rates by admissions plan so that prospective students, their parents, and those who advise them are able to make more accurate assessments of students’ chances of admission in the years ahead. Until that happens, though, do note that UNC is slightly harder to get into for both North Carolina residents and out-of-state residents Regular decision than it is Early Action. So, if you didn’t get an admissions decision EA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this January, buckle up for Regular Decision later this spring, which is sure to bring acceptance rates of lower than 48% for North Carolina residents and lower than 18% for out-of-state students. Good luck.

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