UNC Student Stores

This is the place to come for all things Carolina. If you're a Tar Heel fan or know someone who is, you should be able to find everything you need here. This place is called "UNC Student Stores" plural because there are multiple stores inside. They include a mini mart with food and drink ("The Pit Stop"), a pharmacy, and a post office. The stores are intended for students (e.g., books, laptops, school supplies), alumni and fans (e.g., UNC apparel, gifts), employees (e.g., hospital scrubs, lab equipment), anyone really.

My wife and I stopped by to pick up some temporary UNC logo face tattoos for a game. I haven't been in many college bookstores. I remember Wake Forest's store being very small, but that was decades ago. The one I'm most familiar with is Georgia Tech's (my alma mater). The two bookstores are similar in size (both large, two stories), inventory, and amenities. For example, there's a cafe on the second floor here, where we saw several students studying. Tech's is similar with a Starbucks. Tech's bookstore is much newer, the current one built in the mid-2000s. From the outside, Carolina's bookstore looks many decades old (I'm guessing it was built in the 60s).

North Carolina is one of the top-selling and best-known brands in college athletics, so it wasn't surprising for me to see the vast selection of apparel and merchandise here, from niche books to cool collectibles. They even stock UNC logo lululemon clothing. I can't imagine many universities offer logo'd lululemon apparel, but UNC does. It's certainly a cool store if you're a UNC supporter.

UNC Student Stores is located on-campus, across the street from the landmark Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower.

We parked for free in the adjacent N8 - Undergraduate Library surface lot on a Saturday. UNC employee permit parking (N8) is required to park in this lot during business hours: Monday-Friday, 7:30am-5:00pm. I believe it's free and open to the public otherwise, except for probably game days. The lot is small. It has about 40 parking spaces and the spots are narrow.

UNC student store has an amazing selection of tarheel gear! Parking is a tad esoteric.

Enjoyed the random stroll to the student store. I mean...inflation, the brand, and college itself make the prices higher than normal. A hoodie I wanted cost over $100 bucks...can't even be mad at it, lol.

Love the levels, and each one was fully stocked of everything UNC! Check them out if you are in the area!

Very helpful and friendly staff. And the selection of Carolina merch is vast. Really fun to peruse the racks and find exactly the gear or accessories that fit your style perfectly.

Lots and lots of UNC merchandise! However, it's very expensive and not reasonable. $135.00 for a sweatshirt? Really? While we enjoyed looking around on our short stop at the campus bookstore we only purchased 2 magnets because that was the only things that were actually affordable and didn't have Nike all over it.

Man, I was NOT expecting 3 floors of beautiful Carolina blue clothing! It was overwhelming! I was on a trip and wanted to find a Carolina T-shirt. What better place to go, right?
Well, I didn't find the right shirt for me, and here's the breakdown: there were a TON of shirts in a size small. The larges were almost impossible to find. The same could be said for women's shorts. I found several cute shorts... but not a single size large. On two huge floors of clothes.
I will add that I avoided any of the Nike branded logos. I am not interested in being a walking billboard for the athletic sponsor, and those swooshes were obnoxiously placed in prominent places on every basketball themed item. Lots of nice looking Tshirts and sweatshirts, but it felt like a Foot Locker, not a college bookstore. I wanted to support Carolina, not Nike.
Finally... for a quick in-and-out t-shirt purchase there is absolutely NOWHERE to park. My friend dropped me off and drove in circles adding to the Saturday soccer game traffic until I was ready to be picked up.
Would I recommend the campus store? Of course. Do I have high hopes that you'd find your size? Not at all. But it's worth a shot. And I ended up with a visor I really enjoy because it's one size fits all and not covered in Nike logos.

All the Tar Heel goods you can imagine can be found in here to purchase. But prices are quite steep compare to non Tar Heel goods or even other Tar Heel goods you can find off campus.

I'm a new student here at UNC. I've been to the student store before I started going here when I was visiting the area, and I always thought it was nice. Which it is; it's clean well laid out, and visually appealing. However, now that I'm a student here, my interactions with student stores have been less than pleasing.

To start, it's very hard to find an actual physical textbook. For most of my classes the student store sent me an email prompting me to buy "digital access" content which included e-text versions of my textbooks. I didn't love this, because I'm big on having a physical book I can write in. I simply decided that I would just purchase the physical book, but upon looking for the book on the stores website, I was left with the impression that they did not have the physical book and therefore I bought the digital access version for pretty much all of my classes.
So once you purchase this "digital access" content, you don't automatically have it. You're given temporary access while your purchase is "verified" by student stores. This took OVER A WEEK. Over a week to give me DIGITAL CONTENT. The same thing occurred for my few physical books. It took them 8 days to complete my order. That's not acceptable if you're in a class where you use your textbook daily (ie like EVERY college class). So, if you decide to buy a book from here, DO NOT use the online pickup service, just go find it in the store yourself.

Finally, student stores advertises that if you drop a class you can get your money back for your book. This is NOT true in all cases. Since I was under the impression that they did not have the physical book for my Political Science class, I bought the digital delivery version. When I dropped the class, I decided I would go about seeing how to get my refund (I had proof of dropping the class of course). However, I was then informed that I couldn't get a refund on digital content. This was INFURIATING because I hadn't wanted the digital version in the first place (I got it because I thought it was my only option) and then I couldn't even get my money back when I dropped the class. Absolutely ridiculous.

I work at UNC Chapel Hill so I'll wander over to the Student Store every now and then to grab lunch or just to browse. There's a large food court with a number of eateries, including a Wendy's. The store itself has just about everything a college student would ever need, with one of the three floors devoted entirely to books and magazines. You can also find plenty of UNC gear and there's a snack shop right inside the main entrance. It's also cool how they offer free flu shots to staff during Employee Appreciation Day in October. Nice place!

Anything "UNC" you could possibly want is in this store. Sweats, shirts, caps, kids' wear, shorts, exercise gear, etc., etc. You can find some of this stuff cheaper elsewhere, but not the selection. TONS of Carolina gear to be had here!

One of the floors has textbooks; the UNC apparel store is on the second floor. The ground floor appeared to be arts and/or computer-related.

"Parking" for this store should be listed as "non-existent"...other than two metered spots in the very small parking space next to the building. Otherwise, I saw no parking.