<p>I have one son who is interested in the Univ. of Florida, and another who's headed for Bama. I was born and raised on the west coast, so I'm not as familiar with these schools as other people might be.</p>
<p>Please excuse my ignorance, but....How do the two schools compare?</p>
<p>For example, which one is more selective? Is one of them more of a "party school" than the other? How do the costs for out-of-state students compare? How do the two school's retention rates stack up?</p>
<p>Thank you for your time, and any info you might share!</p>
<p>I don’t go to UF… but I can tell you that UF is absurdly more competitive than Alabama. Here’s a comparison of SAT Scores, ACT scores, GPA, and admission rates.</p>
<p>UF: 570-670, 600-690, <unspecified>, 26-30 ACT, 4.14GPA, 41.9% admission
Alabama: 490-620, 500-620, 480-600, 22-29 ACT, 3.5GPA, 60.4% admission</unspecified></p>
<p>UF is ranked #53, Alabama is ranked #79.</p>
<p>Both are pretty huge party schools.</p>
<p>Alabama’s retention rate is 85%; UF’s is 95%.</p>
<p>OOS tuition for UF is $27,300; OOS tuition for UA is $20,500.</p>
<p>Getting in OOS to UF is TOUGH. Only 8% of the students at UF are not Florida residents.</p>
<p>Alabama is even more of a “southern” school than UF, meaning there is a huge emphasis on the greek system and I have heard it is largely segregated</p>
<p>For the entering class in Fall 2011, UF percentage of admitted students from over 29,000 applicants was approximately 38%. The mean GPA was 4.30, mean SAT was 1963 and mean ACT Composite score was 30. It is self evident that getting admitted to UF over UA is infinitely more difficult. Also, by state law UF can only admit 3% from out of state, and admission criteria for those out-of-state students selected is consistent with those sought by top LAC’s and schools in the top strata of the rankings.</p>
<p>@danielle2400, do you have a source on that 3% number?</p>
<p>also, @op: give some schools you’re familiar with on the west coast and we might be able to make a useful analogy.</p>
<p>Wow…I had no idea. This is not great news for S#2. Thanks everyone, I appreciate it!</p>
<p>^^ You should tell that to the posters on this board who applied OOS to UF as a backup and didn’t get in. One poster got into UVa OOS, Notre Dame, Boston College and more great schools and had great stats but got denied from UF because he was out of state.</p>