UNC v Wake Forest?

[CoupDeGlace]

your thoughts? in terms of prestige/rep/street cred

Wake Forest is far better in terms of student and faculty quality. I think the "man on the street" might be more impressed by the UNC name. The most troubling occurance at UNC is their money problem and loss of top faculty. It would be a concern for me in this rankings-obsessed world.

Why do you say student body quality is better?  Wake takes anyone with a pulse and a 160, so long as the GPA is over 2.0.  UNC is much more difficult to get into, and they tend to require a very solid GPA even with a great LSAT score.

UNC is so difficult to get into, in fact, that as of mid-March they still apparently have like 80-90% of their class left to fill...

I really like UNC, but the lack of coordination they've had in this entire applications process does not shine positively on the school. If they don't make some serious movement soon, they're going to miss out on a lot of applicants that will have accepted elsewhere.

They're both really good schools, one is a lot smaller than the other. One is public, one is private. I'm already in at Wake, I'd love to be able to consider UNC as well, but I have a feeling if I hold my breath waiting for my letter I'll die from asphyxiation.

[Temporary Relief Assistant Trailer Park Supervisor]

your thoughts? in terms of prestige/rep/street cred

Wake Forest is far better in terms of student and faculty quality. I think the "man on the street" might be more impressed by the UNC name. The most troubling occurance at UNC is their money problem and loss of top faculty. It would be a concern for me in this rankings-obsessed world.

Why do you say student body quality is better?  Wake takes anyone with a pulse and a 160, so long as the GPA is over 2.0.  UNC is much more difficult to get into, and they tend to require a very solid GPA even with a great LSAT score.

 

Wake's 25th percentile is 161

Ok, maybe it is more like 162+.  The point is, UNC is a traditionally stronger school that is more difficult to get into, and the only reason Wake's LSAT numbers seem decent is because the school is small and admits applicants with solid LSAT scores and brutal GPAs, while UNC rejects every non-NC applicant below a 3.5 GPA.

[donwario]

your thoughts? in terms of prestige/rep/street cred

Wake Forest is far better in terms of student and faculty quality. I think the "man on the street" might be more impressed by the UNC name. The most troubling occurance at UNC is their money problem and loss of top faculty. It would be a concern for me in this rankings-obsessed world.

Why do you say student body quality is better?  Wake takes anyone with a pulse and a 160, so long as the GPA is over 2.0.  UNC is much more difficult to get into, and they tend to require a very solid GPA even with a great LSAT score.

 

Wake's 25th percentile is 161

Ok, maybe it is more like 162+.  The point is, UNC is a traditionally stronger school that is more difficult to get into, and the only reason Wake's LSAT numbers seem decent is because the school is small and admits applicants with solid LSAT scores and brutal GPAs, while UNC rejects every non-NC applicant below a 3.5 GPA.

Point taken. UNC has been a stronger school in the past and currently has a lower admit late. But I'm not sure that I follow the argument about the current student quality though. First, Wake should not be penalized for choosing to have a smaller class. Second, while it is no doubt a cause of their lower LSAT numbers, I'm not sure that the UNC admissions policy to reject every sub-3.5 applicant is relevant to the straightforward question of which school has the better student quality. Wake's 25th percentile LSAT is 3 points higher than UNC and its 75th percentile is a point higher than UNC. Also, Wake's 75th percentile GPA is only .06 lower than GPA obsessed UNC. Wake also has a nearly 10% higher bar passage rate than UNC for the North Carolina bar.

As for teacher quality, there is no getting around the fact that UNC is hemorrhaging its best tenured faculty. In terms of teacher accessibility, the "student to faculty" rate at UNC is nearly twice as high as the ratio at Wake.

Even with all this, I think the "man on the street" would still be more impressed by a UNC degree than one from Wake Forest.

[DECONda]

UNC is falling but it retains enough old prestige to top Wake. Wake is an up and comer though in this dual.