University of North Carolina at Asheville

Carnegie Foundation Classification

Baccalaureate Colleges — Arts & Sciences

General Characteristics

Highest offering	Master's degree
Calendar System	Semester
Years of college work required	N/A
Variable Tuition

Special Learning Opportunities

Distance Learning
ROTC — Army / Navy / Air Force	— / /
Study Abroad
Weekend College
Teacher Certification

University of North Carolina at Asheville Introduction

Located in the southwestern corner of the state, the University of North Carolina at Asheville is located in the city of the same name, within Buncombe County. Also known as UNC Asheville or simply UNCA, it is the only one of the 16 institutions making up the University of North Carolina system to be designated as a liberal arts institution; it is a member of the national Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.

Established in 1927, the school was originally known as the Buncombe County Junior College; after several changes in name and jurisdiction, by 1969 it adopted its current name, having granted the first bachelor’s degree three years earlier.

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University of North Carolina at Asheville Academics

UNC Asheville has a strong academic reputation based on an interdisciplinary approach and a wide offering of program areas. The school was ranked third in the list of the “Top 10 Best Value Public Colleges” published by the Princeton Review in 2008. Essentially, the school hews to the liberal arts model and does so with an excellent student to faculty ratio (14:1) and with very rigorous academic standards.

UNC Asheville has around 40 academic departments (with a degree of overlap between some), with programs of study leading to a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Science, or Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree. In addition, there is one graduate program at UNC Asheville: Master of Liberal Arts. The school’s most popular majors include Environmental Studies, English Language and Literature, and Psychology.

Students seeking extra academic challenges at UNC Asheville will find fulfillment in the Honors Program the school offers, which includes courses in a variety of areas of study and includes a mandatory upper-level Liberal Studies course.

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University of North Carolina at Asheville Unique Programs

One of the unique opportunities that students (as well as faculty and community members) will find at UNC Asheville is to be found at the Key Center for Community Citizenship and Service Learning, or just the Key Center for short. The Key Center is deeply involved in bringing positive changes and developments to the Asheville area and its residents, and it coordinates the efforts of faculty members, students and community members towards this end on a variety of issues of importance. Students will be particularly benefited by seeing the theories they study in the classroom actually put into practice, giving them a real-world perspective to enhance their classroom studies.

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University of North Carolina at Asheville Admissions

The admissions process at UNC Asheville is fairly simple and facilitated, with the option of applying online. The school does maintain a fairly high degree of selectivity in its admissions practices, as the average high school GPA of UNC Asheville is considerably above the 3.5 mark.

The school’s early application deadline usually falls towards the middle of November, with early applicants learning of their status by mid-December (the early application option is not restrictive, as happens with other liberal arts colleges). Regular applications must be submitted by the middle of February, with such applicants learning about their status by early April on average.

The minimal requirements which UNC Asheville demands of its incoming freshman applicants to be considered include a high school diploma from an accredited institution; four units of math at the high school level (surpassing Algebra II); three science units that include biology, physical science and one lab class; two social studies units, with at least one focusing on US history; and finally two foreign language units (with one having preferably been taken in the last year of high school).

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University of North Carolina at Asheville Financial Aid

Financial aid distribution is at forty-two percent scholarships per grants and fifty-eight percent loans per jobs. In the same way, need based financial aid distribution is determined through Academics, Job Skills, Leadership, Minority Status, Music/Drama and State/District Residency. Financial aid for students is readily accessible at this school. If you are not a need based student, non-need distribution for financial aid is determined by Academics, Alumni Affiliation, Art, Athletics, Job Skills, Leadership, Minority Status, Music/Drama and State/District Residency. Financial aid forms are FAFSA.

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University of North Carolina at Asheville Students

The university is a Public, Liberal Arts College, University, Four-year, Coed, where 63 percent of the applicants were admitted, Regionally accredited and College Board member. Furthermore, the student body consists of eighty-four percent in-state students, sixteen percent out-of-state students, zero percent part-time students, sixty-two percent women, thirty-eight percent men, less than one percent american indian per alaskan native, two percent asian per pacific islander, two percent black per non-hispanic, two percent hispanic, eighty-nine percent white per non-hispanic, one percent non-resident alien, four percent race per ethnicity unreported, twenty-five percent in top 10th of graduating class, sixty-eight percent in top quarter of graduating class, ninety-eight percent in top half of graduating class, sixty-nine percent had h.s. gpa of 3.75 and higher, nineteen percent had h.s. gpa between 3.5 and 3.74, eight percent had h.s. gpa between 3.25 and 3.49, three percent had h.s. gpa between 3.0 and 3.24 and one percent had h.s. gpa between 2.5 and 2.99. University of North Carolina at Asheville offers Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. Additionally, it is part of an Urban setting, Small city (50,000 – 249,999) and Commuter campus. The school’s size is approximately three thousand, one hundred and twenty-four degree-seeking undergrads, four hundred and seventy-two first-time degree-seeking freshmen and thirty-seven graduate enrollment.

Students should note the housing policies: Guaranteed On-Campus Housing For All Undergraduates, eighty-seven percent of first-year students live in college housing, thirty-four percent of all undergraduates live in college housing, Coed Housing, Men’s Housing, Women’s Housing, Special Housing For Disabled Students, Wellness housing (alcohol/drug/smoke-free), one-MAY deadline for housing deposit and one hundred and twenty-five dollars amount of housing deposit. Further, the university has many unique facilites such as botanical gardens, Jewish studies center, arboretum, environmental quality institute, distance learning facility, music recording studio, National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), astronomical research institute, National Climatic Data Center. This school features the Urban setting, Small city (50,000 – 249,999) and Commuter campus. Remarkably, the school is located 130 miles from Charlotte, 200 miles from Atlanta.

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University of North Carolina at Asheville Athletics

The mascot of UNC Asheville is “The Bulldogs,” and the school’s competing colors are blue and black/white. The sports teams at the school are the following: baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s tennis, track and field, women’s volleyball, and cheer/dance.

UNC Asheville’s sports teams all compete in the NCAA’s Big South Conference of the Division I. A few of the more memorable sports accomplishments in the school’s history include the 1984 NAIA National Championship of the women’s basketball team, and the 2006 men’s basketball victory in the Big South Tournament.

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