<p>My daughter was invited to apply for the Farmer Scholarship. We were sort of surprised because, although her SATs were high and FIT offered her their highest academic scholarship, she felt lucky to get that.</p>
<p>I was curious if anyone knew how many people apply for this. The scholarship requires 2 recommendations, and one of the teachers who would give my daughter the best recommendation will be DEVASTATED to find out that my daughter is considering anyplace but UF (the teacher's alma mater), to which my daughter has also been accepted. The teacher bought candy for all the kids (3) in her class who got into UF! UF is, indeed, tops in my daughter's intended major, which is also this teacher's area of specialization, but we feel my daughter may need a smaller environment. </p>
<p>My daughter feels like she doesn't want to ask this teacher for a rec if she only has a slight chance of getting the scholarship. Therefore, if they sent it to hundreds of people, she'd probably get a different recommender. If it was only sent to a handful of top students, she would suck it up and ask this teacher.</p>
<p>Doubt you’ll find anyone. This is a very new scholarship program and only one person gets it each year. I don’t know how many people FIT offers it to, but I doubt it’s that many. If your daughter gets the scholarship, it’s an amazing deal. I only qualified for a partial merit scholarship, which didn’t require me to do anything.</p>
<p>Also, forgive me, but her teacher is childish; only giving candy to people who were accepted to the school she likes.</p>
<p>It just occurred to me… if you search FIT’s site, you can find the names of the former Farmer scholarship winners. Maybe you could find them on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and reach out to them. A bit of digital stalking :)</p>
<p>Thanks. She applied for it and got her German teacher and counselor to write recommendations. I gathered they might not ask that many people about applying because a friend of hers who started their last year knew nothing about it, even though he got an academic scholarship and also, because no one hear seemed to have heard of it. If you go to the University of Miami or Rollins boards, there’s a ton of discussion of their high scholarships and who is applying. So it seemed worth it. Like you, she got a regular academic scholarship without doing anything. This is extra.</p>
<p>As far as the teacher, you’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean my daughter wants to get her upset when this is a teacher she’s used for many recommendations.</p>
<p>FIT doesn’t have a huge endowment yet, which is how scholarships are funded. From what I’ve read, the Farmer scholarship is the only fully funded scholarship and like I said, only one person gets a year. They give out a lot of smaller partial scholarships though.</p>
<p>I like FIT. I visited a couple other schools before visiting FIT. I expected the campus to be dead given that it was 1/10 the size of the others. But it’s surprisingly lively around here.</p>
<p>The Farmers scholarship comes with housing in Harris, which is good. Those are the new dorms, the old dorms are bland.</p>
<p>We get a football team next year. I’m excited! I’m a basketball and baseball fan as well. I only wish there was a more enthusiasm for sports on campus. The teams are pretty good.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you are from, but I’m from Deerfield. Melbourne was an easy adjustment for me since it’s very similar. It’s also nice not having to drive far to get back home on holidays.</p>
<p>Good info. She’s visited the campus twice to visit a friend who goes there when we were on the way from other things in the Orlando area (once, on our way from visiting UCF, which she didn’t care for at all because it was too big-feeling). To me, it seems nice, but my husband says it doesn’t feel like a real college. We went to UM, and to me it seems similar, just a little smaller. In addition to UF, she is considering Eckerd and New College of Florida. She likes that FIT has sports unlike the other two but isn’t as big as UF. FIT offered her a far bigger scholarship than Eckerd did (even without the Farmer, $20K vs. $13.5K per year), and money talks sometimes. It’s nice to feel wanted. I liked that the school had a smaller more personal feel to it. My daughter is smart but a little immature, and I worry that a school like UF would be overwhelming but, as I said, the other two didn’t have the same range of activities as FIT.</p>
<p>Definitely not going to be sports on the scale of division 1 school. We’re in division 2. Hoping they build a football stadium on campus soon. Still better than nothing.</p>
<p>The class sizes at FIT are nice. Many of my classes have fewer people than in high school. I think the classes at most other colleges are usually much bigger.</p>
<p>Yes, the small faculty: student ratio was definitely what made my daughter consider FIT. Her friend said he felt that the professors take a personal interest in students’ progress.</p>
<p>Update (in case anyone searches and is reading this next year). Daughter got notified that she was NOT one of the three finalists selected for the scholarship. They said there were 80 applicants, which is quite a lot. She is scheduled to visit Florida Tech on Friday. We need to decide whether we will go. She visited New College of Florida this past Friday and really liked it but is still leaning toward UF. New College was pretty near perfect, with small, interactive, intellectual classes, incredibly beautiful campus, HUGE dorm rooms. We both loved it, so if she isn’t going there, I’m really not sure if anything could turn her head from UF (The Farmer Scholarship might have).</p>
<p>Deciding is so hard. It would have been easier if she’d only gotten into one school. Gut-wrenching, but easier.</p>