An Unfair Leg Up at Carolina

Admission to UNC-Chapel Hill is extremely competitive. Last year, 73,192 hopeful students applied to be new Tar Heel undergraduates. Only 5,624 eventually joined UNC as either first-year or transfer students. Such a large winnowing should be done fairly and predictably. But one program might be giving some students a leg up.

Students from CCAC schools are being admitted at higher rates than students at other N.C. public high schools. According to UNC’s website, “The Carolina College Advising Corps aims to help low-income, first generation, and under-served North Carolinian high school students attend a college that will serve them well by placing recent college graduates as college advisers in public high schools throughout the state.”

This is a laudable goal. Often, low-income students don’t receive high-quality counseling from their parents or high-school counselors. But there is evidence that students from CCAC schools are being admitted at higher rates than students at other N.C. public high schools. And that they are performing worse once they arrive at Carolina.

As the table shows, since 2016, students at Carolina College Advising Corps schools have been admitted at a slightly higher rate than the average across all public North Carolina high schools. At the same time, their first-semester GPAs have been lower. To be sure, these data are imperfect, but they suggest a troubling pattern.

There is also evidence that the program doesn’t give equal opportunity to low-income students in some parts of the state. The program lists 81 school partners in 34 counties (see map below). Few are located in the western part of the state, an oversight that came under fire in 2023. At that time, UNC-Chapel Hill chose locations for scholarship outreach based on whether a high school had an existing partnership with CCAC.

UNC should investigate the admissions process for CCAC students to ensure that they are not being given special preference. As a start, the CCAC program should be more clearly separated from the admissions office, both of which are part of UNC Enrollment and share common leadership.

UNC should also bring back mandatory standardized testing for all applicants. As various Martin Center writers have said before, standardized testing remains the most transparent, objective, and reliable measure to predict student success.

As UNC grows, it should make simplifying and clarifying its admissions process a top priority. That process must also be firmly recommitted to the goal of meritocracy. North Carolina students deserve equal opportunity and transparency.

Jenna A. Robinson is president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.