University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In brief

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, founded in 1789, is the flagship and oldest campus of the 16-university UNC System, and it is often considered the oldest public university in the country. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #35 in the United States and #105 in the world. It admitted 15.3% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1460 and a median ACT score of 31.

Its 13 professional schools include the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Where UNC’s influence is strongest

UNC’s influence is led by law and history, with strength across the humanities and social sciences. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Law and history: #30 in the US each
• Education: #35
• Philosophy: #36
• Sociology: #37

Within those fields, UNC is a national leader in several specialties:

• #2 in the US: textual criticism (only Princeton Theological Seminary ranks higher)
• #3 in the US: abnormal psychology (behind Harvard and Syracuse University)
• #8: oncology nursing
• #10: public education

By comparison, UNC sits further back in engineering (#79), earth sciences (#81), and social work (#108).

How we measure influence: these ranks come from the citations and recognition earned by a school’s faculty and alumni in each discipline, not from surveys or admissions statistics. See our methodology.

Notable people

UNC is associated with nine Nobel laureates, among them the physicist Peter Higgs, the chemists Aziz Sancar and Peter Agre, the biochemist Oliver Smithies, and Gertrude Elion, a pioneer of chemotherapy, and with the Turing Award winner Frederick Brooks. Its alumni and faculty also include the novelists Thomas Wolfe and Walker Percy, the historians Shelby Foote and C. Vann Woodward, the geneticist Francis Collins, the journalist Charles Kuralt, the actor Andy Griffith, and President James K. Polk. Our full lists of UNC’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is UNC hard to get into? Yes. It admitted 15.3% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 690–750 on the SAT reading section and 700–780 on math.

What does UNC cost after financial aid? Tuition is $9,095 for North Carolina residents and $45,228 for out-of-state students in 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $6,761 in 2024–25; it ranged from about $2,212 for incomes below $30,000 to $24,276 for incomes above $110,000.

How do UNC graduates do? 91.1% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 97% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $81,094.

What is UNC best known for academically? By our influence data: law, history, education, and philosophy, plus textual criticism, where it ranks second in the country.