Federal data: Women admitted at higher rates at most UNC schools

Women who applied to universities in the University of North Carolina System were admitted at higher rates than men at 10 of the 15 system campuses included in a new analysis of federal education data, with rates essentially even at four others.

The gap was widest at North Carolina State University, where 46% of the 22,777 women who applied were admitted for fall 2024, compared with 38% of the 21,260 men, federal figures show.

The divide at NC State has grown in recent years. Across the full 2001-2024 period, women’s admission rate averaged about 1.1 times men’s, according to the new analysis. By 2024, the ratio reached 1.22, the highest in the system. Since 2016, NC State has also admitted more women than men in raw numbers — a reversal from earlier years, when more men applied and slightly more were admitted.

“More data are needed to know whether this phenomenon is due to unequal college readiness or discrimination at admissions offices,” Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, told Carolina Journal. “Women applying to North Carolina’s universities could have higher high school GPAs and standardized test scores. Unfortunately, those data are unavailable.”

The analysis, published Aug. 12 by researcher James Nuzzo, drew on admissions records that universities report each year to the US Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Nuzzo examined the number of men and women who applied and were admitted to each UNC System school from 2001 — the earliest year available — through 2024.

Nuzzo’s previous reporting found that women were admitted at 1.5 to 2.5 times the rate of men to major technical universities, while some Ivy League schools favored male applicants.

Across the UNC System, the differences were mostly modest. Outside of NC State, no university’s female-to-male admissions ratio exceeded 1.10 in 2024, and most system schools admit well over half of all applicants. The University of North Carolina School of the Arts was the only campus to admit men at a higher rate than women last year.

Women made up the majority of applicants at nearly every UNC System school in 2024, ranging from 51.7% at NC State to around 70% at North Carolina Central University and North Carolina A&T State University.

As Carolina Journal reported in February, women outnumber men on UNC System campuses by a growing margin — about 202,000 women applied to system schools in the 2024 academic year, compared with about 129,000 men. A Martin Center policy brief traced the gap to the pathway from high school to college rather than to rejection rates.

Other data show that men are increasingly skipping a four-year university in favor of workforce training. Enrollment at vocational and trade-focused public two-year colleges nationally has grown by almost 20% since 2020, reaching 871,000 students by spring 2025, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That pathway skews heavily male: Women made up only about 14% of the nation’s active registered apprentices in fiscal year 2024, US Department of Labor data show, meaning roughly six in seven apprentices are men.

Title IX, the 1972 federal civil rights law, generally prohibits public universities from discriminating on the basis of sex in undergraduate admissions, though undergraduate admissions at private colleges are exempt.

In his earlier report on technical universities, Nuzzo wrote that lopsided admissions ratios “suggest that those universities might be implementing sex quotas or weightings in their admissions processes,” a potential violation of federal law. He was more cautious about North Carolina, writing that women “might have stronger applications than their male counterparts,” or that admissions staff might be exhibiting bias.

The Martin Center’s February brief recommended that competitive UNC schools return to requiring standardized tests, on which boys tend to outperform girls, as a counterweight to high school GPAs, where girls hold the advantage. As Shannon Watkins, a research and policy fellow at the center, wrote for Carolina Journal in March, the center also called for ending women-only scholarships and expanding career-oriented pathways in fields that draw male students.

“Federal data: Women admitted at higher rates at most UNC schools” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.