After Carr's mother took a job as the assistant to the headmaster at Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Carr received a scholarship to the school. After four years at the school, Carr was accepted into Brown University, but could not attend due to a lack of funds, so he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). At UNC, Carr was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and wrote at student newspaper "The Daily Tar Heel" and graduated in 1973.