UNC Wilmington acceptance rate and your odds of getting in

UNC Wilmington, a public university in North Carolina, reports a 64% acceptance rate and sits in the moderately selective band. In practice that means it admits more applicants than it rejects, so a strong application is judged against an applicant pool that is already self-selected.

Use this page to see what UNC Wilmington weighs, where it ranks among North Carolina schools, and how a profile like yours is likely to land. Admitted students post a 75th-percentile SAT around 1300, a useful checkpoint for where your scores sit, though it is a reference range and not a cutoff.

What are my chances at UNC Wilmington with a 3.1 GPA and a 1290 SAT?

About 83% (Safety), by CollegeCalcAI's deterministic model, for an applicant with a 3.1 unweighted GPA and a 1290 SAT, the middle of UNC Wilmington's admitted range, applying Regular Decision without a hook. A 3.4 GPA with a 1340 SAT comes out near 95%. Courses, activities, essays and the application round move the number; the free calculator includes them.

Estimates, not guarantees. Get yours with your real courses and activities. Assistants and developers can fetch this table from the free API: /api/v1/colleges/unc-wilmington.

There is no formula that guarantees a spot at UNC Wilmington, but the applicants who get in tend to do the same four things. Here is what the numbers say each one looks like.

UNC Wilmington admitted 12,856 of the 17,370 students who applied for fall 2023, which works out to 74%. 2,701 enrolled. Only about 21% of admitted students enrolled, so the school admits several students for every seat it expects to fill, which is why its acceptance rate reads higher than its selectivity feels. UNC Wilmington enrolls about 14,922 undergraduates in total, 63% of them women, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 17 to 1.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, IPEDS 2023 admissions and enrollment.

The middle 50% of admitted students at UNC Wilmington scored between 1230 and 1340 on the SAT (average 1287). On the ACT the middle 50% runs from 24 to 29. A score above 1340 puts you in the top quarter of admits and turns the test into an asset; a score below 1230 puts you in the bottom quarter, where the rest of the application has to carry more weight. UNC Wilmington is test-optional: scores are considered if you submit them but not required. Send a score at or above the middle of the admitted range; otherwise apply without one and let your transcript lead.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10.

The factors that carry the most weight at UNC Wilmington are rigor of secondary school record, academic GPA, and class rank. Solid grades in a challenging schedule do most of the work here, with the rest of the application providing context. These ratings come from UNC Wilmington's reported Common Data Set, so the full chart below reflects what the school itself says it values, not a generic guess.

UNC Wilmington's published cost of attendance, before any aid, is roughly $26,547 per year. Tuition and fees are $7,277 for NC residents and $24,152 for out-of-state students, a $16,875 gap that makes residency the single biggest lever on cost. What families actually pay is different: the average net price after grants and scholarships is $20,109 a year, and it ranges from $10,778 for families earning under $30,000 to $25,573 for families earning over $110,000. 24% of undergraduates receive a federal Pell Grant.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10. Net price is what students receiving aid paid after grants, by family income.

Ten years after enrolling, the median UNC Wilmington student who received federal aid earns $54,967 a year, up from $46,972 at six years. 71% of first-time, full-time students graduate within six years, and 88% return for a second year. Among graduates who borrowed, median federal debt at graduation is $19,500; 36% of undergraduates take federal loans.

Source: College Scorecard (U.S. Department of Education), release 2026-06-10. Earnings cover students who received federal aid.

Among the 38 North Carolina schools we track, UNC Wilmington ranks #11 most selective by acceptance rate. Schools like Duke University (6%) and Davidson College (13%) sit nearby, which makes North Carolina a useful frame for calibrating a balanced list. As a public university, residency matters: in-state applicants generally see meaningfully better odds than the headline rate suggests.

Applicants targeting UNC Wilmington often weigh Central Missouri, Elizabeth City State University, and Queens College (NY), which sit at a similar level. Running the same profile against each one in the free calculator is the fastest way to see where you are a reach, a match, or a likely.

Acceptance rate, application counts, admitted test ranges, cost, and outcomes reflect publicly reported federal data (U.S. Department of Education: IPEDS 2023 and the College Scorecard) and each school's Common Data Set; figures are rounded and lag the current cycle by one to two years, so confirm deadlines and policies on the school's own site. The typical-admit GPA and SAT are CollegeCalcAI's modeled estimates. Estimates from CollegeCalcAI are a planning tool computed by a fixed, transparent model, not a guarantee of any admission decision.