We've passed our early action deadline, and now we're looking ahead to our final first-year application deadline on January 5, 2012. So if you haven't applied yet, you have just over two months to: 1) eat plenty of holiday turkey and pie--this is very important; 2) finish your Carolina application; and 3) oh yeah, school and sports and all the other things that you do. No worries! You can do it.
Some students worry that applying regular decision will be more competitive, or that we won't think they are as interested in Carolina and so be tougher on them. Nope. We really don't care which deadline you choose. We offer two deadlines to give students more options, and we trust you to choose the deadline that works best with your schedule. We work very hard to make sure that each applicant is considered within the context of our entire applicant pool, so early-action and regular-decision candidates are held to the very same standards. And we review applicants solely on the basis of the information submitted within their application, so demonstrated interest on the part of the student is a non-factor. While we are completely honored to learn that Carolina is a student's first-choice college and we love meeting students on campus or during our recruitment travels, those indicators of interest are not going to play a role in our review of their application. We want all of our applicants on a level playing field, so whether you apply first or second deadline you'll receive exactly the same review.
As a reminder, regular decision applicants must apply by January 5 and will get their decision by the end of March. All admitted students from both deadlines will have until May 1 to make up their mind about whether or not they'll enroll at Carolina. Let me know if you have any questions!
