Carolina Alumni Review - March/April 2009

Chapel Hill — but the counselors don’t necessarily push Carolina.

“There’s no other admissions office in the country that’s doing this,” Farmer said. “We know we’re in this for more than just ourselves.”

A student who had Carolina in mind might actually get steered to a private competitor with as-good or better financial aid, as was the case with one who wound up going to Harvard. But in the long run, Farmer, himself a first-generation college alumnus, said that such services will bring dividends back to Chapel Hill. The program, in its second year, is funded by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and other foundations, along with some UNC money; Farmer hopes that ultimately 50 UNC graduates will be working in it full time.

It’s a critical time to try to capture the top-ranked low-income students: The economic downturn that began to worsen about the time students were applying for 2008 admission is expected to keep some North Carolinians at home who otherwise might have looked at an out-of-state

school, but at the same time, it could hurt the University’s out-of-state yield. And the elite private schools will be trumpeting their relatively new no-loan packages.

“We have to find out what’s going to be the difference for these students [finan-cially],” said Herb Davis, associate director of undergraduate admissions.

A meritocracy

Among several lines that leap out from the report of the Art and Science Group’s study of students who have inquired about admission to Carolina is one that addresses ways to compensate should the quality of enrolling students drop:

“Emphasis on merit aid can offset about half of the negative effects of slippage in applications from top North Carolina students.”

The report goes on to say that a relatively modest amount of money put into merit scholarships could go a long way.

The students at the top of their high school classes want some recognition — obviously the Morehead-Cain and Robertson scholarships are limited to a select few,

The students at the top
of their high school classes
want recognition —
obviously the
Morehead-Cain and
Robertson scholarships
are limited to a select few,
but the others crave
acknowledgement that
the University knows
they are stars.
And, until recently,
‘modest’ had been
a charitable description
of UNC’s attention
to merit aid.

A New Home for Jewish studies

CAROLINA CENTER for JEWISH STUDIES

Carolina Center for Jewish Studies Jonathan Hess, Director Campus Box 3152 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3152 P: 919-962-1509 E: ccjs@unc.edu W: ccjs.unc.edu