What makes a competitive candidate for admission?
We aim to build a talented and diverse body of students who display strong academic performance and intellectual curiosity. We receive freshman applications from roughly 20,000 well-qualified students from all parts of North Carolina, the nation, and the world. These students come from various ethnic, religious, geographical and socioeconomic backgrounds. From this large group of applicants, we choose a small number of the most competitive students, with an eye towards enrolling a class of roughly 3,900. Our admissions process is competitive, but we strive to make it fair and humane. We don’t use formulas or cutoffs or thresholds; no one is automatically admitted or denied because of a single number. Instead, we read each application thoroughly, one by one. When we read yours, we’ll try to understand you as fully as we can, both as a student and as a person, and within both your high school and our applicant pool. We understand that students travel many different roads to get to Caroli
