<p>My daughter attended an outstanding scholars weekend at University of Florida.
Here are her words</p>
<p>The program started off very informative. Even though I already knew most of what was presented, I understand that it was probably very helpful to those who knew nothing about UF. As soon as we went to the “student panel,” it all went downhill. This is the impression I got: when the parents were there, it was more professional. But when it was just us students, it was “party time.” Many of the so-called “scholars” who attended the program were very loud and disrespectful to the speakers. I couldn’t hear half of what was said. A few times, the UF students tried to get them quiet, but it didn’t seem as if they were being too assertive. When the panel was over, it was announced that there would be a party. My heart sank. Not all rising seniors like partying. Plus, I didn’t travel five hours to party; I traveled so I could learn about the school. </p>
<p>Dinner was next, and the lines were so disorganized I found it impossible to get any decent food. It seemed like the only way you could get food was to push through people. As a result, I ate a measly bowl of cereal for dinner. Later, the party started. It consisted of extremely loud rap music (of course -_-) and an unbearably hot room. I left the party to hang out in the game room, where they had told us we could go if we didn’t want to party. However, I was soon told that I had to go back downstairs. In a nutshell, I spent the rest of the night alone in my dorm. The next morning, one of the student helpers was very rude to my roommate as we returned to Broward Hall’s lobby. She asked if we were supposed to turn in our keys, and he replied sarcastically, “That’s what checking out is.” After we checked out, we learned much more information, and it was a breath of fresh air after the events of night before. I enjoyed the college fair as well.</p>
<p>The “Amazing Race” is what ruined the second day for me. For those of you who don’t know what that is: we were given a sheet with a list of five checkpoints as well as a few bonus checkpoints. Each one was a clue about where on campus the checkpoint was located. Whoever visited all checkpoints and returned with slips from each one won the game. First of all, we didn’t get to meet with all our teammates beforehand. The had told us that we would have to do that ourselves, but how could we identify and gather our teammates when there were so many people? Anyway, my team almost won, but we ended up failing at the end because my team didn’t know we weren’t supposed to go to the bonus checkpoints. When we realized this, we were already very far from where we were supposed to return. We finally arrived back a while later, and by then none of the other students were outside. One of the helpers was outside, and she informed us that the others had gone inside to have ice cream and were now waiting on the parents to come out. I was crushed; no one had even worried about us or cared whether something had happened to us. In addition, the ice cream was gone. </p>
<p>At the end, the speaker told us we would each receive a T-shirt as a prize. There were separate tables for each size T-shirt they had. This was, as well as the program as whole, very chaotic. To get a T-shirt you had to be rude and push in front of people. Why would I want to go to a school were I have to fight for things as simple as dinner and a T-shirt? After I waited for a long time to get a medium T-shirt, they ran out before I got the chance to get one. Even though I was there before many others, they gave T-shirts to the most aggressive people and not the people who politely waited. The same happened when I moved on to the large T-shirts, and finally I barely managed to get an extra large.</p>
<p>As a whole, it seemed as if the people who ran the program didn’t care about us students as individuals. Many of the helpers were unfriendly, unhelpful, and kept trying to win us over with all the “school spirit” talk. Any idiot knows that UF has a lot of school spirit. I don’t want to waste time and money only to have that shoved down my throat over and over again. When I attended War Eagle Day at Auburn, the staff and students seemed to genuinely be happy we were there and they seemed like they were putting a lot of effort into their program. At Auburn, I felt welcomed and respected.</p>
I am so happy for him, but he still has 6 months and 5 AP classes to get through before heading off to college. Any advice??</p>