RALEIGH (April 9, 2025) – It’s really tough to get into UNC-Chapel Hill. But Chancellor Lee Roberts says the University is trying to make room for more students.
In a presentation to a UNC System Board of Governors committee, Roberts said applications to UNC have increased by 76%, from 48,000 in 2020 to 84,000 in 2025, and by 33% just from 2023-25.
It’s absolutely competitive for a university with 4,641 first-year students and 983 transfer students last fall.1 Among admitted first-year students:
•14% were a valedictorian or salutatorian in their high school class.
•77% ranked in the top 10% of their class.
•79% had either straight As or all As and one B.
•37% of in-state applicants are admitted, compared with 8% of out-of-state applicants.2
But Roberts – a former member of the Board of Governors himself – told the Board that Carolina aims to increase enrollment by 5,000 students over the next 10 years.
IN AN INTERVIEW last fall, Roberts told Public Ed Works that UNC’s enrollment has grown at least 9.6% since 2014. But Chapel Hill’s growth hasn’t kept pace with the dynamic growth of the state.
“The state is growing extremely rapidly, as everyone who lives here knows and sees every day. Carolina hasn’t really grown very much,” he said.
“So every year, we enroll a decreasing percentage of North Carolina’s high school graduates. It used to be about 5 percent. Now it’s about 3-1/2 percent. … If we don’t do anything, that percentage will continue to decrease.”
A working group Roberts appointed that was headed by Rachelle Feldman, Vice Provost for Enrollment, recommended that the university increase undergraduate enrollment by 5,000 students over 10 years – 2,500 in-state students and 2,500 out-of-state students.
That would require a “modest and gradual” change from the UNC Board of Governors to the university’s cap on out-of-state enrollment from 18% to 25% over 10 years, the report says.3
Roberts told the Board of Governors committee that roughly half of those out-of-state students remain in North Carolina.
“We are finding many of the best and brightest all over the country, bringing them to Chapel Hill, and then half of them are still here five years after graduation,” he said.
He also outlined an option that allows applicants to check a box to be admitted to another UNC System school – Western Carolina, UNC Asheville, UNC Greensboro, UNC Pembroke or Elizabeth City State – if they are not admitted at Chapel Hill.
Some 18,000 first-year applicants, or 23%, choose that option. And even 18% of out-of-state applicants do, Roberts said.
IT WAS CLEAR from board members’ questions that they get plenty of questions themselves about the UNC admissions process.
Education Planning Committee Chair Terrence Hutchens asked Roberts for advice for students that aren’t admitted.
And despite the world of AI and quantum computing in which we live these days, the answer sounded conventional.
“Grades are far and away the most important component of the application process,” Roberts said. “Class rank is also important.”
1 https://admissions.unc.edu/explore/our-newest-class/.
2 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=68393&code=bog, pp. 14-36.
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