Which is more selective for admissions, UNC Chapel Hill or Notre Dame?

Notre Dame is typically harder to get into overall than UNC Chapel Hill. Both are very competitive, but Notre Dame has a more nationally uniform applicant pool and is widely viewed as one of the more selective private universities in the country. UNC is also highly selective, especially for out-of-state students, but North Carolina residency changes the picture a lot.

For a North Carolina resident, UNC may feel more attainable than Notre Dame because UNC is a public flagship with a mission to serve in-state students. For an out-of-state applicant, UNC can become much tougher and in some cases can feel closer to Notre Dame-level difficulty, though Notre Dame is still usually seen as the more selective school overall.

The biggest reason these schools can seem hard to compare is that UNC admissions are shaped by state residency in a way Notre Dame’s are not. Notre Dame evaluates applicants from a single national and international pool, while UNC gives a significant advantage to in-state students. So the answer depends somewhat on who you are.

If you are a strong applicant from outside North Carolina, both schools should be treated as reaches or high reaches in many cases. If you are in-state for UNC, Chapel Hill is still far from easy, but it is usually the less selective of the two compared with Notre Dame. That makes Notre Dame the tougher admit in the broad national sense, while UNC’s difficulty varies much more depending on residency.