Out-of-State Acceptance Rates at 43 Public Universities: 9.6% at UNC, 73.7% at Binghamton

A public university's acceptance rate blends separate contests. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 37.0% of applicants from North Carolina were admitted for fall 2025, and 9.6% of applicants from other states. At Binghamton University it went the other way: 73.7% of out-of-state applicants got in, against 29.1% of New Yorkers.

Both sets of numbers come from the universities themselves. The Common Data Set, the standard report many colleges publish every year, asks them to split first-year applicants, admits and enrolled students by residency "if available". Many leave that table empty. Among the public universities whose filings we read, 43 filled it in with usable figures, 36 of them for fall 2025 and seven for fall 2024. (A few more filled it in with figures that don't hold together, such as columns that appear swapped, and we left those out.) The rates below are our arithmetic on the counts each university reported.

Where out of state is harder

At 15 of the 43, out-of-state applicants were admitted at least five percentage points less often than in-state applicants. They're ordered by the gap, widest first.

† Fall 2024 figures (2024–25 filing). \* Maryland reported in-state and out-of-state applicants only, so its out-of-state figure likely includes international applicants.

The widest gaps aren't at the most selective universities. Florida International admitted 80.2% of in-state applicants and 35.5% of everyone from other states; Tennessee, 72.8% against 35.1%. Among the selective ones, UNC's split is the sharpest. An applicant from another state got in at about a quarter of the in-state rate, and less often than international applicants did. Georgia Tech and Virginia admitted 10.1% and 13.0% of out-of-state applicants, against 29.5% and 23.6% from their own states.

Where it's about the same

At 18, the in-state and out-of-state rates were within five points of each other.

All but two admit more than half of both their in-state and out-of-state applicants. The exceptions are the University of Florida, which admitted 22.3% of Floridians and 20.5% of out-of-state applicants, one of the lowest rates on the list either way, and Ohio State, at 45.1% and 46.4%. Penn State drew more than three times as many out-of-state applicants as in-state ones (72,861 against 21,321) and admitted both groups at similar rates.

Where out of state is easier

At 10, out-of-state applicants were admitted at least five points more often than in-state applicants.

Five University of California campuses are here. Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Santa Cruz each admitted out-of-state applicants at a higher rate than Californians; at Irvine it was 47.5% against 21.9%. A sixth, Riverside, did too, by less than five points. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo shows the pattern more strongly: 62.1% of out-of-state applicants admitted, against 26.4% of Californians. Binghamton's gap mirrors Florida International's: 44.6 points, in favor of applicants from outside New York.

The enrollment line explains part of it

All 43 also split the students who enrolled. At every one, admitted out-of-state students enrolled at a lower rate than admitted in-state students, and at 39 of them less than half as often. UC Davis admitted 8,315 out-of-state applicants, and 417 of them enrolled, 5.0%, against 21.5% of the Californians it admitted. At Virginia it was 24.1% against 61.9%.

So a university that wants a given number of out-of-state students has to admit several times that many. The filings don't say why each one settles where it does. They do show that a high out-of-state admit rate and a small out-of-state class can come from the same university in the same year.

International applicants

Of the 42 universities that reported international applicants separately, 22 admitted them at a lower rate than both their in-state and out-of-state applicants, Virginia, Georgia Tech and the University of Florida among them. Six admitted them at a higher rate than both: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, Kansas, Utah and Houston.

What "in-state" means here

The form asks universities to report residency "based on known physical address at time of application." It's where you lived when you applied, not whether you'll be charged in-state tuition, which each state decides under its own rules. The price is its own question, and at many public universities the out-of-state price is a different number entirely.

The ones that don't say

Some universities you'd expect to see here don't give the split. Michigan's 2025–26 filing fills in its totals and leaves the residency rows empty, and Berkeley's notes that its state applicant data wasn't yet available. If a university you're considering isn't in these tables, look for the residency table in its own Common Data Set. Where that's empty, the overall rate is all there is, and it blends both pools.

Three of these universities also run binding Early Decision with deadlines still ahead: Virginia and Vermont on November 1, and the College of Charleston on November 2. Vermont and Charleston have a second round too, due January 15. If one of them is your first choice, put your whole list in and see, free, what its early round admitted and where your score sits. The answer across your whole list is the paid document.

Applicants, admits and enrolled students by residency are from section C1 of each university's Common Data Set: 2025–26, or 2024–25 for Clemson, Delaware, Ferris State, LSU, Maryland, UT Dallas and Utah. Rates are our calculation from those counts. Early Decision deadlines are from the Common App's 2026–27 requirements grid.