At most public flagships that publish the split, out-of-state applicants get in at a lower rate than residents, and sometimes far lower. UNC Chapel Hill admits 38.0% of in-state applicants but only 6.6% from out of state. UT Austin admits 35.9% vs. 7.5%. A few run close to even, and Miami University (Ohio) actually admits out-of-state applicants at a slightly higher rate. The chart above shows every school's split, and the details follow.

A public university's published acceptance rate is a blend of two pools that don't behave the same way -- and at some schools, "blend" is generous. Residents and nonresidents aren't applying to a slightly different version of the same school; at the widest gaps below, they're closer to two separate admissions processes sharing one headline number, the same pattern already documented at public medical schools.

This only shows up where a school actually discloses it. Unlike overall acceptance rate, which every school reports to the federal government, an in-state/out-of-state split isn't required anywhere -- it only surfaces when a school chooses to fill in the optional residency table in Section C1 of its own Common Data Set. Below are real, sourced examples from schools that do.

The biggest gaps: two states legally cap out-of-state seats

The two largest gaps found both trace to the same root cause -- a state law, not just a soft institutional preference:

  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: in-state applicants were admitted at 38.0%, out-of-state at 6.6% -- a 31.4-point gap, the largest found. UNC is bound by a state mandate capping out-of-state first-year enrollment at roughly 18% of the class, which structurally throttles the out-of-state admit rate no matter how strong that applicant pool is (Fall 2024 entering class, UNC's own Common Data Set).
  • University of Texas at Austin: in-state 35.9%, out-of-state 7.5% -- a 28.4-point gap. Texas's Top 6% law guarantees admission to in-state students who finish in the top 6% of their high school class, mechanically inflating the in-state admit rate against an out-of-state pool competing for the remaining seats on pure selectivity (Fall 2025 entering class). Self-reported 2026 results showed the same split: see UT Austin accepted vs. rejected applicants. For 25 more publics, see big public university accepted vs. rejected applicants.

Four more schools show large but state-law-independent gaps, all favoring in-state applicants:

What UNC's cap looks like from the applicant side: in our tally of self-reported 2026 results, out-of-state UNC admits were ahead of non-admits on GPA, SAT and course load all at once -- see UNC Chapel Hill accepted vs. rejected applicants.

North Carolina isn't the only state that legally restricts nonresident enrollment at its flagship this way -- the University of California system caps nonresident undergraduate enrollment at 18% system-wide too, per a policy its own Board of Regents approved (Regents Policy 2109), though the UCs don't publish a comparable acceptance-rate-by-residency split to confirm the same gap shape there.

Texas out-of-state acceptance rates: UT Austin vs. Texas A&M

Texas is the only state here with two flagships that both publish the split, and they land very differently for out-of-state applicants (both Fall 2025, from each school's own Common Data Set):

  • UT Austin: out-of-state 7.5% vs. in-state 35.9% -- nonresidents were admitted at roughly one-fifth the resident rate.
  • Texas A&M: out-of-state 41.3% vs. in-state 54.2% -- a real gap, but A&M's out-of-state rate is more than five times UT Austin's.

Both schools run under Texas's automatic-admission law, and that guarantee only applies to Texas residents -- so an out-of-state applicant never benefits from it at either school and competes only in the holistic pool. The thresholds differ, though: UT Austin used its own top-6% cutoff for fall 2025 (dropping to top 5% for fall 2026), with automatic admits capped at 75% of the in-state class, while Texas A&M still uses the original top 10%.

UT Austin also has a hard legal ceiling that A&M doesn't. Texas Education Code §51.803(j) says a university using that lower automatic-admission threshold -- which, under the same section, only UT Austin can do -- may not offer admission to first-time undergraduates who aren't Texas residents beyond the number needed to fill 10% of its first-year enrollment capacity. That's the source of the "90% Texas residents" figure you'll see quoted elsewhere, and it counts international applicants as nonresidents too. Texas A&M has no equivalent cap, which goes a long way toward explaining why its out-of-state rate is so much higher. If you're applying to Texas from out of state, the published overall acceptance rate at either school overstates your odds -- at UT Austin, by a wide margin.

Near parity -- and one real reversal

Not every public flagship shows a wide gap. Three schools land close to even, and one runs backwards:

  • University of Washington: in-state 45.7%, out-of-state 42.2% -- a 3.5-point gap (Fall 2025).
  • Penn State University Park: in-state 62.5%, out-of-state 59.2% -- a 3.3-point gap (Fall 2024).
  • Miami University (Oxford, Ohio): in-state 80.4%, out-of-state 83.5% -- out-of-state applicants were admitted at a higher rate, by 3.1 points (Fall 2024). Miami relies heavily on out-of-state tuition revenue and, unlike the schools above, has no legal or funding structure pushing it toward a resident preference in admission itself.

The pattern across all ten: schools with a genuine legal cap on nonresident seats (UNC, and UT Austin under Texas's 10% nonresident cap) show the widest gaps; schools that lean on out-of-state tuition to fund the budget show little gap or none at all.

Two major flagships don't disclose this at all

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of Alabama both have the optional residency-breakdown table available in their own Common Data Set filings and leave it blank -- neither publishes an acceptance rate by residency anywhere on their official sites. That's a real, worth-noting gap in transparency, not a sign the split doesn't exist internally: both schools clearly track applicant residency (Alabama reports an enrollment mix by residency separately, just not an acceptance rate), they simply don't disclose the admissions-side number publicly.

What this means for you

  • A public university's overall acceptance rate may not be your real number -- if you're applying out-of-state to a school with a legal nonresident cap (like UNC) or a state automatic-admission law that favors residents (like Texas), your actual odds can run well below the published headline rate.
  • Check whether a school's official site or Common Data Set discloses the split before assuming its overall rate applies to you -- most schools, public and private, don't publish this at all, and a rate you find on an aggregator site without an official source behind it shouldn't be trusted.
  • A wide gap isn't automatically a red flag against a school -- at UNC and UT Austin, it traces to a specific state law governing public higher education, not an arbitrary preference, and the in-state rate itself reflects a real, achievable path for residents.
  • D.C. residents have no in-state public university system to fall back on (outside UDC), which is why DCTAG exists -- it pays the out-of-state tuition gap up to $15,000 a year, though DCTAG doesn't change admission odds, only cost. See what DCTAG pays at 25 public colleges.
  • The cost gap is often bigger than the admissions gap -- out-of-state students at UNC pay $49,593 in 2026-27 tuition and fees vs. $9,351 for residents. See the biggest in-state vs. out-of-state tuition gaps and out-of-state tuition at every public flagship.
  • Not every public school favors residents -- Miami University (Ohio) is a real example of a public school where the out-of-state applicant pool is actually admitted at a higher rate, driven by the school's reliance on nonresident tuition.
  • This is one more reason your reach/target/safety categorization needs to account for more than a school's overall published rate -- at a school with a large residency gap, your test-score comparison against the published middle-50% range still matters, but the admit-rate context behind it can differ sharply depending on where you live.

Sources