Five Reasons to Apply to Carolina by January 5!

We hope that you are enjoying your much-deserved winter break. As a reminder, if you haven't already applied for first-year admission to Carolina, our final deadline of January 5, 2012 is just days away. You still have plenty of time so why not make a New Year's resolution to apply to Carolina?

Need another reason? We'll give you five. Carolina students not only set high goals for themselves, they possess the initiative to make them happen. With the approach of the New Year, we thought you might enjoy learning about how five of our current students have made their dreams come true.

1. Brittany marches in the band and does research in the Alaskan Arctic.
2. Camille interns for the White House and starts an organization to help young women.
3. Stewart leads a grassroots environmental campaign.
4. Reed starts his own record label.
5. Teon manages the men's basketball team.

These are just five of the countless Carolina students who are making their mark on the world in their own way. Read about more students.

If you applied to Carolina already, we thank you for your application, and we are enjoying getting to know you. Once you do apply, please be sure to login to your MyUNC account to check the status of your application. If you did not received an email from us with your MyUNC registration instructions, please email us immediately.

We wish you the best as you set your own goals for a happy and prosperous New Year.

UNC Researcher's Work Named as 2011 Breakthrough by Science

A study led led by Myron S. Cohen, M.D. of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named the 2011 Breakthrough of the Year by the journal Science.

Dr. Cohen led a study known as the HIV Prevention Trials Network 052 which evaluated whether antiretroviral drugs can prevent sexual transmission of HIV among couples in which one partner has HIV and the other does not. The research found that early treatment with antiretroviral therapy reduced HIV transmission in couples by at least 96 percent.

Read more.

Early Action Update

I get a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in my RSS feeder every morning and this one came up a few days ago. I thought it might make you all laugh. If you're feeling stressed about college applications or impending AP exams, just remember: Few of us are prodigies, but at the very least we can all say that we're potty-trained.

We're working hard to review the applications of our Early Action candidates. We ended up receiving just under 13,000 applications for Early Action, which is slightly less than the 14,000 that we received last year for our first deadline. We think the decrease is mostly due to the fact that our deadline was two weeks earlier this year. We won't know until after our final application deadline on January 5 how many applications we'll get in all. In the meantime, we're continuing to read and re-read your applications carefully and thoroughly. We're on schedule to release EA decisions as planned by the end of January.

Today we are withdrawing the applications of approximately 200 students whose early-action applications were never completed (e.g., missing a teacher recommendation, transcript, test scores). We've attempted to contact these students by both phone and email, but please double-check your MyUNC account to make sure we aren't missing any materials from your application. If you have any questions about the status of your application, just give us a call.

Please just let me know if you have any questions!