CHAPEL HILL - Growing enrollment at UNC-Chapel Hill could turn off top applicants if the university adds too many students or lowers the bar to get them, a consultant told trustees Thursday.

Campus leaders are carefully considering how to grow the student body while preserving quality. The Art & Science Group, a consulting firm with offices in Baltimore and Carrboro, presented findings of a study of how the university's size affects students' decisions to apply.

The survey uncovered some misconceptions among high school students who ask UNC-CH for application information. Nearly half think the university is bigger than its 28,000 enrollment, and nearly a third think it has multiple campuses.

The study predicts the reactions of prospective students to two enrollment levels -- 33,000 and 36,000.

Consultant Rick Hesel said that increasing enrollment to 33,000 would have negligible effects on the number of students who apply. Growing to 36,000 would have "modest unfavorable impact," the report said. The university could offset some of those negatives if it had a reputation for being generous with merit scholarships, the report said.

The report also warned against lowering admissions standards and said applications from top in-state and out-of-state students could fall 20 percent or more if the quality of enrolling students slips.

"It's going to be incumbent on all of us to work very hard to recruit the very highest-performing North Carolina undergraduates to our campus," Chancellor Holden Thorp said.

UNC-CH last year surpassed 28,000 students for the first time. But many high schoolers already think the campus has 33,000-plus students, the report said. N.C. State University has 31,100.

Academic quality is the university's biggest asset in recruiting top candidates, Hesel told the board, and perception of that quality should be maintained.

Schools such as Boston College, Georgetown, Yale and Princeton are more significant competitors for students than they were four years ago, the study found.

UNC-CH has succeeded in attracting applications from larger numbers of the state's top students, Hesel said. Just over half the students in the top 10 percent of their high school classes apply, and 62 percent of students in the top 5 percent of their classes apply.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.