Thousands of high-school sophomores apply to North Carolina’s most prestigious high school annually. One of the most influential factors on whether a student will get into the NC School of Science and Mathematics, however, is determined before admissions professionals even look at their applications.
NCSSM opened in 1980 as the country's first public boarding high school with a STEM-focus. Juniors and seniors who attend are taught only by teachers with advanced degrees, take advanced classes like aerospace engineering, hallmarks of cancer, or cryptography, and earn guaranteed admission to the state public university of their choice tuition-free.
NCSSM is part of the 17-campus UNC System, and in many ways the school’s admissions process mimics that of a selective college, except for one aspect: the school is required to use the North Carolina Congressional map to determine which students they admit or deny.
It is a unique process that gets especially tricky when state legislators frequently gerrymander maps for political purposes.
Building a ‘geographically diverse’ class
One goal of NCSSM’s admissions process is to create a "geographically diverse" class where students are only compared to those who have similar educational opportunities as them. The system is a kind of regional affirmative action, designed to give an admissions advantage to students from rural areas who may be disadvantaged by a lack of access to advanced teaching, courses, and resources.
N.C. School of Science and Math Chancellor Todd Roberts said there's talent in every zip code, but sometimes the opportunities students have are very different.
"If you're in the Triangle for example, you may have different courses that you can take at your high school; AP courses," Roberts said. "In a more rural part of the state, you just don't have those same options. And so, it's an opportunity to ensure that talented students have the ability to get this education and continue to grow in their pursuit of STEM."
NCSSM's calculated admissions process involves a lot of dividing and balancing.
North Carolina has 14 congressional districts, or at least it has in recent admission cycles. These areas work as a blueprint for administrators, who split up student applications based on which district they live in.
Students only compete against others in their same district for a limited number of seats. In a given year, that tends to be about 340 spaces on NCSSM's Durham campus and 150 at its Morganton location, relatively evenly split by gender.
Administrators have about 2.5% of wiggle room for how many students they accept from each congressional district. On the low end of the range, they'll enroll 26 to 27 students and on the higher a max of 43 students per district.
Even with that balancing, however, some students' odds of getting in differ significantly depending on which district they live in.
Differences in competitiveness
Let's say there are two strong applicants to NCSSM. Both are sophomores in high school. One lives in Randolph County and the other in Orange County, maybe within an hour or so of each other.
Mathematically, the student in Randolph County is five times more likely to be admitted than the student in Orange, and likely with fewer academic credentials, like the number of AP courses taken.
Randolph County is in the 9th congressional district, which had about 110 applications this past admissions cycle. Students there have about a 1-in-4 chance of admission into NCSSM, which follows the average odds across all congressional districts.
The 4th congressional district had nearly 800 applications, including from Orange, Durham, and parts of Wake counties. Students in that district only have about a 1-in-20 chance of being admitted to the NCSSM.
"Just based on sheer numbers and the formula that we have, they're going to be some congressional districts that are going to be more competitive," said Chancellor Roberts.
Rules can change
Roberts and his team are also working with a formula that keeps changing. In the last five admissions cycles, legislators have changed the congressional map three times.
The 2023 congressional map, which guided the two most recent admission cycles, significantly impacted the competitiveness in several districts.
Legislators moved portions of Wake County into the 4th congressional district, which swelled its applications from about 250 to nearly 800. The same happened in the 6th and 8th congressional districts (Triad and south toward Charlotte, and along the South Carolina border, respectively), which doubled the applications.
Some parents are concerned that legislative redistricting may, in some cases, be hurting the same students NCSSM's mission sets out to help. On a public Facebook page for parents of NCSSM students, multiple public comments have been posted about this unintended consequence of gerrymandering.
Carl Ryden commented in April 2024 that he applied and was accepted from Wayne County back in 1987, but doesn't believe he would have gotten in under the admission map in use at the time.
"State legislators have divided up urban “blue” counties like Wake, Guilford, and Mecklenburg and “bundled” those with rural “red” counties to optimize the number of “red”-leaning CDs," Ryden wrote. "The unfortunate consequence is that kids in Wayne County now compete directly with kids in Southern Wake County. If I were applying today from Wayne County, I likely would not get in; even with a second campus and more beds overall."
"The really tragic irony here is that the representatives who were trying to marginalize the voting power of others actually marginalized access to opportunity for the people they directly represent," the comment continued.
Since Ryden made that comment, the Congressional map has changed twice, and Wayne County students would no longer compete against those from Wake County.
When reached by WUNC, Ryden admitted to the posts but declined an interview. He noted that he believes the NCSSM admissions department “works tirelessly to ensure that NCSSM looks like NC by reaching out to and recruiting kids from all NC counties.”
Ryden also said that he is an alum and North Carolina resident, and his comment doesn’t represent any official viewpoint of NCSSM or its board of trustees.
In a Chancellor's Report presentation last year, administrators told NCSSM trustees they anticipated the 2023 map change would lessen student representation from Burke, Cleveland, Durham, Gaston, and Orange counties.
Shaping future class admissions
Roberts, the NCSSM Chancellor, said the variability of each congressional district is sometimes challenging to explain to parents. A student could attend an open house as an eighth grader under one map, he said, and be applying under a completely different one by the time they reach their 10th grade year.
"When a congressional district map changes, it usually is at least a year before we implement the new map. It often happens when we're in the process already and we don't change midstream," Roberts said. "And so, it lags a little bit, but it does change what the applicant pool is."
Though the majority of the congressional districts, Roberts said, are pretty consistent over time regardless of the map.
Roberts became chancellor 16 years ago and has seen applications increase every year he's been at the NC School of Science and Math. In that time, he said he's thought about other models that could ensure the same level of "geographic diversity" like prosperity or education zones.
"As the pool continues to increase, we as an institution will probably look at; are there options to do this that keeps the same intent," Roberts said. "Any changes would require legislative action anyway. In general this, the model we have, has served the institution really well. We get amazing students every year from pretty much every county in North Carolina, which is a core value of this institution."
Administrators will evaluate next year's incoming class, once again, under a new congressional map. It'll likely influence students' odds from districts 1 and 3, as legislators chose to redistrict ten rural counties.
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