@GatorDad305 - The school must load all the information into Naviance. All of my son’s PSAT, SAT and ACT scores are in it. The teachers enter their LOR’s into it and the school has a copy of the transcript and GPA loaded. All applications (except MIT?) are attached to it. This is why we are able to get accurate and useful information about who applied where, when and what their stats were. It can be highly illuminating and very discouraging at the same time. The UF recalculated GPA’s are not available through Naviance.
@Anisqoyo so when you say the cut off at your school was a 4.45… you said thats not UF recalculated… what is it recalculated approx… a lot lower or slightly lower. cause a 4.45 is the mid range isn’t it? middle of the 50%. but if you are saying the actual UF calculated gpa is lower than 4.45 then thats good that they got in
I have no official knowledge of the process but it took me 30 seconds online to find several providers of admissions software, including some big names. To save time, money and work hours, it would only make sense to automate parts of the process. How that’s done would be complete speculation on my part.
One more thing about the number of applicants, which seems very daunting to all of us. UF is getting an additional amount of proportional revenue from having more applicants, so it should be able to spend the same amount of time on each application as in year’s past. They just need to hire more staff or take additional time. To suggest that the school can’t scale up is unfair, too. (By extending decision day by two weeks, perhaps they have chosen to just work their people harder for two more weeks.)
@jhmoney I do not think that it is helpful to try to compare UF recalculated GPAs at one school to the averages posted by UF, or to other high schools for that matter. Every high school is different in the amount of Honors and AP/IB classes that they offer. So, you cannot say that one school having people get into UF with a UF recalculated GPA of less than 4.45 is “good” or “bad”. Someone could take the hardest courses offered by a high school and get straight As and have a UF recalculated GPA of 4.0 or 4.1. So, UF does not penalize students at those schools and pit them for admission against students at schools where a student could have a 4.8 UF recalculated GPA. They look at the grades and course rigor in comparison to what is offered at their high school.
So, if you are trying to get a feel for whether your student’s GPA is competitive for UF, it is best to compare to his/her peers in his/her high school.
@fl1234 that makes sense to compare at your school. like she is 15th out of 565… but at some point they all need to be compared to the rest of the population since the sample size at the school level is so small. for example . if a school had 600 kids in the graduating class and did not offer that many AP, AICE, etc, i can t imagine that they would accept the same amount at a school that offers a ton of AP… so lets say the school with no AP’s had 20 kids with 4.0… how can you accept all 20 as compared to the 20 at the school with ton of AP’s and had straight A’s… has to be some sort of penalty. although not fair to those kids? They can opt for Dual enrollment? not sure how they cant be compared to the rest of the population… yes i understand they first compare to the kids at their school. but at some level and in mass quantity they have to be compared to the general population? i don’t envy the admissions people at all but it sure would be great to know how they aren’t penalizing kids with minimal AP’s even thought not their fault? thats why they keep everyone guessing 
.
PS: its no secret that the schools with the higher level of classes get significantly a higher percentage accepted… how is that not penalizing? thoughts?
@fl1234 cant wait for all this to be over
@jhmoney I don’t agree with your premise that their GPAs have to be compared to the wider population and I was not aware that it is well known that schools with more AP classes have a higher % accepted. Where did you get this data? It might be true, I don’t know, but that may not necessarily be the reason. Maybe students at those schools have a higher likelihood of succeeding or have a higher track record of success? I am sure that the % accepted varies school by school, but I am not sure that the rigor of courses available determines the %. UF knows all of these Florida high schools very well and has years and years of history to go from.
It is still my opinion (based on anecdotal information) that UF has a pretty good idea of how many people from each high school (looking at it another way, % acceptance) that they want to accept each year and it stays pretty consistent each year, with some small variability year to year. That is why I say that it is best to compare GPA to peers rather than the wider population. To compare to the wider population, standardized tests are more appropriate, and as stated by UF, is secondary to grades/GPA/rigor.
Agree with you regarding this being over. I am going through this for the second time and feel much better about it this go around. But that is because my first was in that bubble zone, whereas my second is at the top of the class. Nobody is lock, but the confidence level is much higher this time…
@fl1234 I agree with you. maybe a higher likelihood of succeeding, but I bet there is some correlation of the school and rigorous classes etc… again making the assumption because there are schools that literally get nobody accepted… I can’t imagine they do not have 2-3 kids that are on equal footing… but again no info on that just a hunch…
Agree with you that UF has an idea based on past history and success at a high school… why the numbers aren’t exact they are close… so if a school got 35 kids accepted then they will get something close up or down…
have a question… I hear everyone saying nobody is a lock which I totally agree on. But if you are being compared to the kids in your school (much smaller pool) why aren’t kids a lock. .for example a kid ranked 15/565 versus a kid who is 35/565… why would that kid not be a lock… I can see versus 30,000 other kids… but when compared to a small pool?
This will drive me to drink for he next 5 months… and I don’t drink lol
I say that nobody is a lock because I have heard stories about kids with incredible stats that get into Ivies and don’t get into UF. But, we don’t get to see their applications and don’t know their stories. You can search these boards in the Results threads and see some of those stories.
You know, not getting into UF is not the end of the world. It might sting for a while, but there are a lot of great schools out there and many people that are successful that went to less prestigious schools or no college at all. If someone wants to be successful, they will find a way to get there no matter what college they go to.
Two of the top kids at our high school last year chose UCF over UF. Both were Benacquisto and were won over by the honors college at UCF. So, yeah, not going to (or getting into) UF is not the end of the world.
I’m guessing that once the UF honors college gets going in two to three years, selectivity will go up even further, and there will be even more examples of top kids getting shut out.
@jhmoney @fl1234 I have been ruminating over this for the past couple days, and my conclusion (at least today) is that the process is much more complex than we want it to be. UF talks about “building a class” that contributes to the entire university community, and for this to be possible, it has to look beyond the standard measures, hence the holistic approach. But at the same time, all sorts of factors are also in play: diversity, fairness, yield, yield protection, quotas (sorry in advance.) It becomes a complex stew that may not taste exactly the same as it did last year. And then there are all the anomalies that emerge when you have 40k applicants - a kid gets into Georgetown (or Westpoint) but not UF … wait…what? We want our kids to get in because they appear to meet the objective measures (and because all our kids are amazing) but UF has created an objective and subjective system. That subjective part (and the unknown positive or negative effect) is what makes the process confounding.
@GatorDad305 I agree with what you are saying… when you say diversity & Quotas are you referring to race, ethinicity & Sex etc? which I do believe there are… they just publish they do not have quotas etc or consider any of that? anyway it will be over soon and like you said… its not the end of the world if they do not get in! 
My experience is that some stories of students with great stats not being admitted often have a fatal flaw that is excluded from the conversation. I personally know a mother who would drone on about how her high stat son ( which we was 4.5 GPA & 34 ACT) was not admitted into UF. She of course omitted that he had been arrested for drug dealing and was currently on probation. I know not all cases are this extreme but in the words of the late Paul Harvey, there is often a “rest of the story”.
@FlaParent I agree 100%. I hear all these stories second hand about kids who has better grades and SAT scores and someone else got in. I too believe there is the “rest of the story”. Like did they really have that SAT or that gpa. . Then I remind myself. Outside of SAT OR act which is all equal. But when someone says oh my kid had a 4.x gpa. 99% of the time it’s not the recalculated gpa and not all counties in Florida calculate the same way. For example. I told my friend that my daughter who is in palm beach had a 5.0 gpa(not recalculated). And my friend from Broward said. Well that’s not going to cut it for UFI was like. She took all high level classes and had 2 B’s. Well we then realized Broward county gives a 5.0 for a B in AP. Palm beach gives a 4.5. Broward also gives B+ grades. Palm beach does not. This gpa’s (non calculated) are about .5 higher in Broward . So 5.0 in palm beach compared to 5.5 in Broward. So when you hear a kid had 4.9 non calculated gpa what does that really mean In palm beach that’s awesome. In broward it’s not so awesome. Are there some anomalies. Yes. But not the amount you think you hear. No way no how. And people tend to inflate both sides of the numbers when they share a story.
At most schools, the rank is based entirely on gpa (or weighted gpa). Those top kids may not have a high test score or ANY other activities. They may not get bright futures because they didn’t take a foreign language or do the community service. We had 6 who were NMF but I don’t think any of those were in the top 5, maybe even the top 10.
The Val went to UF, and I’m sure he didn’t have any trouble getting accepted, but he wasn’t NMF. The Sal walked across the stage clinking and clanking because she’d received every medal, had every cord, available (but I don’t think NMF). Two different ways of ‘doing’ high school.
@twoinanddone not sure I follow ? Yes of course the kids at #1 or 2 or 3 might not be NMF. But not sure what that has to do with the topics we are discussing ? My daughters school all 4 NMF are top 10. But not sure how this is relevant to what we are discussing. Unless I missed a thread ? Please clarify