Our story last week on a special faculty report that drew more attention to the connection between UNC-Chapel Hill athletics and what appears to be the worst case of academic fraud in recent memory cited an issue regarding the process of admitting athletes with subpar academic records.

The issue, as the report said, appeared to be the fact that Admissions Director Stephen Farmer had yet to reject a recommendation by a special advisory committee that reviews such athletes for potential admission.

"It appears that Admissions can override decisions of the subcommittee, though a recommendation by the subcommittee has never been overruled since Farmer has been director. What criteria or influences would be used in such cases?" the report said.

Jan Boxill, chairwoman of the Faculty Senate Council at UNC-CH, later contacted us and said that issue is a minor one, because the special advisory committee is made up of faculty members who are concerned about academics. The issue, she and authors of the report said, pales in comparison to the good work Farmer has done to ensure that athletes who have little chance of surviving the academic load at the university do not get admitted.

The report points out such efforts: "According to Stephen Farmer, his office and the Athletics Department have increased efforts to discourage teams from presenting candidates that represent exceptionally high risks in terms of their ability to succeed academically at UNC. There is evidence that these efforts are working. In addition his office is accumulating data on the academic performance of admitted students so that looking forward, they will have an approved basis for assessing and managing risk."

What will the impact be on high school graduates if the Wake County school board votes tonight to pull out of AdvancED rather than cooperate with the review team?

As noted in today's article, Wake school board attorney Ann Majestic said  it's a “gross generalization” to say in blanket terms that it’s a problem for high schools to lose their accreditation." Based on what some college admissions officials are saying, students may notice the impact if they apply to colleges outside the state that may not be as familiar with Wake.

Loss of accreditation can make it harder for students to earn admission to some colleges. It also could make it more difficult for students to take part in certain grant, scholarship and military programs.

As you may have read in today's paper, tuition bills are headed to public university students this week, and they may be a good bit larger than many anticipate.

That's thanks to a supplemental tuition hike signed off on just last week by UNC system President Erskine Bowles. University leaders are raising tuition very reluctantly, and say it's the sole source of revenue critical to the day-to-day academic operations of the campuses.

Though parents may not see it this way, the UNC system remains a good deal when compared with other public institutions. And it is that comparison that campus officials at UNC-Chapel Hill were trumpeting this week.

Speaking to campus trustees, Carolina Provost Bruce Carney pointed out that, even with a sizable increase, tuition and fees at UNC-CH this fall will be $6,665 for undergraduate North Carolinians.

Here's how that compares with the university's public peers. This is what many of the public institutions with which Carolina most often compares itself charges for their own in-state undergraduates.

• Virginia - $10,808
• Michigan - $11,837
• UCLA - $10,781
• Texas - $8,618
• Florida - $5,020
• Wisconsin - $9,050

"We remain a very competitive deal," Carney concluded. "We're still an incredible bargain."

It's good information and an interesting look at how costly comparable institutions can be. But does it matter to students and parents?

Here's the thing: Virginia's in-state tuition rate doesn't matter to a high school senior in North Carolina because he or she would pay the out-of-state rate to go to school in Charlottesville.

That's $33,774 annually, so if a North Carolinian was choosing between Carolina and Virginia and cost was a key in the decision, Chapel Hill would probably be the winning destination.

And those public peer institutions aren't necessarily the top competitors for the students also considering Carolina, said Stephen Farmer, UNC-CH's director of undergraduate admissions.

In fact, talented North Carolinians considering UNC often also consider several private institutions in North Carolina like Duke, Davidson and Wake Forest, Farmer said. Others, like N.C. State, Virginia, Appalachian State and UNC-Wilmington, are often in the mix as well.

Farmer doesn't expect Carolina's tuition hike to have a significant impact in terms of how many applications come across his desk.

"Tuition is so low for North Carolinians, we'd have to increase increase tuition a ton to really affect a kid's decision to apply or enroll," he said.

The college admissions game is both an art and a science. Each year, admissions officers at universities start out with a target enrollment goal - the number of new students they want to enroll for the next academic year.

From that, they offer spaces to a significantly larger pool, knowing that not all students will take them up on the offer.

Sometimes they hit the goal. Sometimes they go over, sometimes they fall short. While they use data and statistical modeling to help predict the numbers, they are, of course, at the whims of 17-year-old kids who decide on colleges for reasons ranging from academic reputation to the performance of the athletic teams.

But as Jay Price reports in today's News & Observer, the ongoing economic uncertainty has added a variable to this game, and admissions officer say they may end up with too many good students.

Read all about it here.

In today's News & Observer, a story about an alternat route to a degree at UNC Chapel Hill or N.C. State for those aspiring students who don't quite make the cut right out of high school.

Community college. Increasingly, four-year colleges are joining forces with local community colleges and forging direct links that, in fact, may provide an easier route for some students to eventually get their four-year degrees.

Read all about it here.

It's a busy time of year for Stephen Farmer, UNC Chapel Hill's director of undergraduate admissions. He and his staff go through more than 21,000 applications each year looking for the best candidates. 

(The first deadline to apply to UNC-CH passes tonight, Nov. 3, at midnight).

It isn't easy to get into UNC-CH. The university offered admission to 34 percent of the 21,507 folks who applied for this fall's freshman class. Of those, 79.1 percent were in the top 10 percent of thier high school classes, and the average SAT score of entering freshmen was 1301.

Farmer agreed to chat us up a bit about what universities look for and what applicants should be doing to increase their chances of getting that thick envelope in the mail.

Here's what he had to say:

1. If you're a high school senior and you want to get into UNC Chapel Hill, how stressed are you right now?