Has anyone heard anything new on Florida Poly? I’d also love to hear from a student or family who attended this past inaugural year. How did it go? My rising senior is still considering FP, and we’re hoping that they get accredited soon. I’m also wondering about merit aid and its availability.
They hope to be accredited by the end of 2016 (2 years from startup). The paper work has been submitted, now it’s a case of waiting for the accrediting organization (SACS, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the same folks that do UF, FSU, UCF, etc.) to accept the paper work (which can take months) and then setup a site visit.
The last Florida public university to be accredited, FGCU, started in 1997 and was accredited in 1999. So 2 years sounds reasonable.
Looks like accreditation has been delayed. 
@SouthFloridaMom9 is your Senior still considering attending?
@saffysmum, no, even though they did give him some additional scholarship $$. My husband is still nervous about the accreditation issue. Our son has good stats and can go several different places on full tuition scholarship (thankfully). We feel like Florida Poly is too big a risk. It’s unfortunate because I like what they’re trying to do and their size.
@SouthFloridaMom9 my daughter has a former classmate that is a sophomore at Florida Polytechnic and he loves it. I though was surprised when I found out where he was going because like your husband the lack of accreditation does, to say the least, as a parent make me nervous :-SS
@saffysmum - I’ve heard of several students who are happy there! It does look really neat.
Late response, but I would like to add my two cents: I visited Florida Poly a solid year ago and it really is an exceptional college. They had a world-class designer (who graduated from Valencia, which was really cool) work on campus design; it’s a really magnificent sight. Even though this is a brand new school, they have world-class education - most of their teachers have PhD’s and they college worked with Cisco, Microsoft, and other companies to get advice on how to get their grads into their workplaces and designed their programs around what companies like Microsoft looked for when hiring. They also have a 3D-printing room with at least 25 printers and a lot of other things the STEM people would freak over.
The tuition isn’t much, surprisingly - ~$5000 in-state (can’t vouch for that right now - that was a year ago). They plan on having no more than 5000 students so that their classes can be kept small. Honestly, this school is so stunning in every aspect, the only reason I’m not going to it is because I’m not interested in STEM. This is definitely a college that anyone interested in STEM should look into.
Accredited yet?
@pinklinks -what caused you to visit? Just curious.
Read somewhere that accreditation is not going to happen until at least 2017 now . . . something about the timing of the accreditation entity visits.
oops cross-post @carolinamom2boys! 
Thanks @SouthFloridaMom9 . Have a DS19. Keeping options open, but expensive for OOS.
@SouthFloridaMom9 It was part of a county program - Orange County (OC) TIPS. It’s very similar to Duke TIP, except not at such a prestigious scale - 7th graders in the top 10% of their class take the SAT (with tutoring) and after there’s a 4-day “summer camp”. We toured a college each day (Florida Poly, FIT, UCF, and Stetson; this year, they added Orlando Tech) and had high school/career planning. The program itself was very fun and I’m actually volunteering this summer during the program 
@carolinamom2boys Currently Florida Poly is awarding a $5,000 “Financial Aid” scholarship to every full time student. Once the school is accredited, I expect they will switch to a more common (for Florida publics) merit based scholarship scheme, which may include OOS tuition waivers and merit. It’s worth monitoring, especially after the school gets accredited (and they can switch scholarship schemes).
That sounds really neat @pinklinks!
I hope Florida Poly succeeds. Love the concept.
Thanks @Gator88NE . I’ll keep an eye out for DS19