<p>I dont think my school ranks. When I viewed my student record page it showed that I was in the top 10%, out of a large number (which makes me believe that is the county's total number of students). </p>
<p>My school is very competitive (an IB school), with many students taking extra classes online on FLVS and leads to much higher GPAs. My rank would likely be much lower in the school's rank.</p>
<p>Thanks for any information</p>
<p>bugger - do you know if UF counts the FLVS courses in its gpa calculations?</p>
<p>I think the county rankings are important only so far as UF needs to be geographically diverse with its admittances. They could probably fill the whole freshman class with qualified students from the Dade-Broward counties, but because it is a taxpayer supported school, with taxpayers all over the state, they don’t. So if you are top 10% in the Dade-Broward counties, that may not mean as much as if you are top 10% in some rural panhandle county.</p>
<p>Yes they’re counted into the GPA. Most of my highschool courses were through FLVS.</p>
<p>bugger - I am not sure if what I was saying is clear so maybe an example will help.</p>
<p>Let’s say Miami-Dade county has 25k public high school seniors and Broward has 20k, which from what I can research is about right. So between the 2 counties, that is 45k public high school seniors. The top 10% of public high school seniors in those counties is 4.5k students. </p>
<p>UF’s freshman class size is capped at around 6.6k. So they could fill about 70% of their freshman class with the top 10% of Miami-Dade and Broward countie’s public school students. And that isn’t counting all of the private and home schooled students.</p>
<p>Now let’s say you are from Dixie county, with 1 high school with about 100 seniors. The top 10% of that county’s high school seniors is 10 students. UF could accept all 10 without making a dent in their 6.6k freshman class.</p>
<p>Because UF wants a geographically diverse student body (at least geographically diverse within Florida), the importance of your county rank in determining your admission chances depends on the number of high school seniors in your county. UF isn’t going to fill 70% of the Freshman class with the top 10% of students from Dade and Broward counties when the Miami-Dade + Broward population is only about 20-25% of Florida’s population. </p>
<p>I searched for a demographic break down of UF freshman by county, but I couldn’t find one. My guess is they do it roughly proportional to population for the larger counties and for the smaller counties, it probably depends on how many high school seniors apply to UF from that county. So if Miami-Dade + Broward have 20-25% of the population of Florida, then you can expect about 20-25% of the UF freshman from those counties, which is about 1300 - 1600 students or 3-3.5% of the public high school seniors in those counties. If all 10 of the top 10% of Dixie county’s public high school apply, they are probably all getting in unless they have a really bad SAT or something else like a drug conviction. </p>
<p>This means that it is harder to get into UF from the larger counties, not only because of demographics, but because the larger counties have higher incomes and higher property values, which means more money from taxes to fund better schools, which means more students in IB, AP, dual enrollment and parents on average have more money for SAT/ACT prep courses, which equals higher scores.</p>
<p>So when someone says they were admitted with certain test scores, GPA and class rank, you really need to know what county they are from as well as their race (which we all know is a factor regardless of whether or not the schools will admit it) in order to know how applicable their stats are to your situation. I think this is why the admissions decisions sometimes seem random to people - people aren’t taking into account county of residence and race when they try to analyze their admissions chances compared to others who have been admitted or denied.</p>
<p>do you have any proof of this? i agree wholeheartedly that it makes sense why that would make it easier for smaller counties to get easier access, but i’m not sure thats necessarily true.</p>
<p>is there a state mandate, or some kind of empirical confimation? for my own curiosity.</p>
<p>I see what you mean Atacom, and it does make sense. I never knew that the county had that much of an influence on one’s admissions. My county is quite large as well, but I figure most people dont apply to UF or get rejected either way. But it is kind of too late to switch counties now, if I would consider that.</p>