Alum Ryan Allis Named a Top Tech Power Player

Ryan Allis, a 2006 Economics major, has been ranked #6 on PeekYou's latest list of the nation's most influential young technology executives under the age of 30. Ryan is co-founder and CEO of iContact, an email and social media marketing platform. Ryan took the company from his dorm room at UNC to nearby Research Triangle Park, where he now leads over 200 employees. Last year the company had $38 million in annual sales.

Ryan is committed to socially responsible entrepreneurship and iContact utilizes the 4-1s Corporate Social Responsibility Model in which they give 1% of payroll, 1% of employee time, 1% of equity, and 1% of product as part of its social mission. Ryan is also the Board Chairman for Nourish International, a non-profit organization which teaches entrepreneurial skills to college students and uses the net profits from student ventures to invest in social entrepreneurs and community-based organizations in the developing world.

Read the full story about the PeekYou ranking and visit Ryan's website to learn more about him.

2012 Essay Questions for First-Year Applicants

Although the first-year application for Fall 2012 admission isn't ready just yet, we have finalized the essay prompts we'll provide for applicants. So if you want to get a jump-start on your application, you can begin thinking about your essays over the summer.

On the application, we'll ask you to provide two essays:

Essay 1. Choose one of the prompts below and respond in an essay of 250-500 words. (These are the essay prompts provided by the Common Application.)

1. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
2. Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.
3. Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.
4. Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music,science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.
5. A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.
6. Topic of your choice.

Essay 2. Choose one of the prompts below and respond in approximately 500 words.

1. What’s your latest discovery? What do you hope to learn next?
2. Tell us about a time when you failed. How did you react? What if anything did you learn?
3. Tell us about a time when you struggled to convince someone of something you believed to be right. How did the process go? What was the end result?

We hope these prompts will inspire you to write an essay that expresses your unique voice and helps us understand your personality and passions. (And what do we think makes a good essay? We've posted some advice about essays on the blog in past years, so check it out here and here.)

You may have noticed that some of the prompts above come from the Common Application. Yes, that's right, this year we'll be accepting the Common Application. We'll also continue accepting applications through the College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC). You can choose to submit either the Common Application or the CFNC application--whichever is more convenient for you. We'll have more details on our website in the coming weeks and the first-year application will be available in early August.

In the meantime, good luck on your essays!

Final Waitlist Update

Today we released final decisions for the remainder of the first-year waiting list, so all students should now be able to view these decisions on their MyUNC. In all, we offered admission to about 200 students from the first-year waiting list this year, most of whom were North Carolina students. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have many extra spaces for out-of-state students.

For those of you we were not able to admit, we wish you the very best of luck at your chosen schools. You are outstanding students and we wish that we had room for you here. But we know that you will do extraordinary things wherever you go.

For the third year now, we are offering a small group of our waitlisted first-year students the chance to participate in a sophomore-guarantee program. If you are chosen for this program, you will receive a letter in the mail this week. Read the letter carefully as it explains the program and tells you what you need to do to accept a position. If you do choose to join the program, you will be guaranteed transfer admission for Fall 2012, given you meet the program requirements. Your decision to join this program is not binding, so if you decide you are happy at your chosen school, you are under no obligation whatsoever to transfer to Carolina.

And even if we weren't able to offer you a sophomore guarantee, we hope you'll keep in touch with us if you are interested in transferring to Carolina in the future.

Thank you all for remaining on our waiting list. We are honored by your interest in Carolina, and we wish you a wonderful summer and an exciting first year of college. Please just let us know if you have any questions.

Advice for Enrolling Students

If you're part of the new class of students joining us this fall, you probably have a lot of questions about getting ready for Carolina. Your Orientation session will hopefully answer most of them, but there are also some great resources online that can help you connect with fellow students and ask your specific questions.

Carolina Advice is a site created by current students to answer new students' questions. "First hand advice from former first-year students who have stood in your shoes."

And you may well have already found the UNC Chapel Hill Class of 2015 Facebook page, but if not, join the conversation!

Any other online resources for new students that you all have found? Let us know in the comments!

Waiting List Update

To all of the students who have remained on our waiting list, thank you for your patience. We know how difficult it is to wait, and we are working hard to finalize decisions as soon as possible.

Transfers: We have now made final decisions for all transfer applicants. If you were on the waiting list, you may now log into your MyUNC to view your final decision. Letters will follow within the next few days. Because we had such a strong response from our admitted students, we unfortunately ended up having almost no space for waitlisted transfer students.

First-Years: We have not taken any further action on the first-year waiting list, though we hope to have more news soon. We promise to have final decisions to you by June 30, if not sooner.

Resolving the waiting list is difficult, particularly because every student on the waiting list is a student that we would love to have here. Again, we thank you for hanging in there with us. Please let me know if you have questions.

A Second National Championship in Collegiate Journalism

For the second year in a row, Carolina has finished first overall in the Intercollegiate Competition of the Hearst Journalism Awards, often called the Pulitzers of college journalism.

December 2010 graduate Arkasha Stevenson won the individual national championship in photojournalism, and senior Margaret Cheatham Williams of Charlotte won the individual national championship in multimedia.

Read more on the Journalism School's website.

Photo by senior Margaret Cheatham Williams, who won the individual national championship in multimedia. See more of her work.

Plan Your Perfect Visit to Carolina

Summer is college tour time! We get the chance to meet so many outstanding students during the summer--students who travel from near and far to tour our campus and learn about our community.

If you're planning to visit colleges this summer, we hope Carolina is on your list. The very best way to find out if Carolina might be the right fit for you is to step onto our campus, talk to current students, and picture yourself here.

Our office offers student-led tours and information sessions daily during the week. You can also sign up to attend a class on the day you visit.

But what else should you see and do during your trip to campus? You could spend days here exploring our campus and the surrounding communities of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Durham. Since you probably don't have days (and possibly only a few hours) to get to know our campus, we want to be sure you get to see the things that interest you most.

We asked our Admissions Ambassadors (the friendly students who lead our campus tours) for their ideas about what prospective students should see and do during a trip to campus. We compiled their recommendations online to help you plan your own Perfect Carolina Visit. Check it out.

If you need any help as you plan your visit, please just ask. We hope to see you in Chapel Hill soon!