Class of 2016 may be UNC’s smartest class ever

If pitted against each other, the class of 2015 might beat the class of 2016 by sheer virtue of its size.

But the newest freshman class might win on wits.

The University became more selective in its admissions process for the class of 2016, which saw nearly 100 fewer students enroll than in the previous year.

But more factors played into the lower number, said Steve Farmer, vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions.

Farmer said the acceptance rate dropped from 31.4 percent to 26.6 percent due to the popularity of the Common Application, which was in its first year of use at UNC, and fewer spaces for accommodating new students.

After the University enrolled 35 more students in the class of 2015 than it aimed to, it compensated by lowering its target number for the class of 2016, Farmer said. The eventual number of freshmen who enrolled — 3,928 — even fell 32 short of the 3,960 UNC officials aimed to welcome.

Farmer said although admission to UNC was not dramatically tougher for North Carolina residents, the competition for out-of-state-students was much stronger.

One ramification of the selectivity is that the class of 2016 has much stronger credentials than incoming classes in the past, Farmer said.

From the class of 2016, 91.2 percent of students reported scoring 4.0 or higher on a weighted 4.0 grade point average scale, and the average SAT score was 1938 out of 2400.

But Farmer said he is never happy to turn prospective students down.

“We don’t come to work everyday to turn people down,” Farmer said.

“There are schools that like to brag about how selective they are,” he said. “We don’t ever do that type of thing.”

Farmer said he suspects UNC’s class of 2017 might be slightly larger, but the admission rate will continue to drop further in the future.

Some UNC professors said they do not think there will be much fluctuation in class grade distributions as a result of the growing selectivity.

Chemistry professor Gary Pielak said not much will change because he grades his class relative to the average.

“The University is one of the few meritocracies left, so if students get better, we should make our classes more challenging.”

Patrick Conway, department chairman in the economics department, also said he did not think grade distributions will change with the new class.

“We’re always happy to have quality out-of-state- students come to Carolina, but I don’t imagine that we’ll notice a big change in the grading distribution because I think the students I’ve had in the past have been very good,” he said.

“But these will be very good as well.”

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