Can someone who has been accepted- of knows someone who has been accepted- into UF describe their qualifications (GPA, course overview, extracurriculars, SAT/ACT, volunteering, etc)? Thanks
Also, I’ve heard UF is a holistic university. How does GPA compare to extracurriculars, volunteering, etc? Thanks
speaking from the experience of my son and his friends who applied this past year, I think there must be a strong emphasis on GPA. One of his friends who was not accepted had strong extracurriculars - sports, student council and clubs, a lot of community service, and a SAT of about 1320, but his unweighted GPA was only about 3.5. Don’t know what his weighted GPA was but he was in mostly DE and AP classes.
@andrew345 On the contrary, my friend who had a 3.5 GPA got in with a 28 ACT while only being a member of a few clubs. The essay wasn’t what got him in either. Trust me, I read it and it was really cheesy and generic. Standardized test scores aren’t seen as comparable to GPA, and the Common Data set they published shows that they regard the SAT/ACT as less important than GPA.
His weighted GPA got recalculated into a 4.3, since he took like 17 or 18 AP and IB classes. They seem to really place an emphasis on course rigor as well.
They also published this on their website:
“Please note that the University of Florida considers classroom performance an excellent indicator of college coursework success, and therefore places more emphasis on grades and the challenge of the high school curriculum (including the senior-year schedule).”
@RCGator Maybe your son’s friend didn’t take as many AP classes. Do you know how many his school offers? Schools who don’t offer as many seem to be at a disadvantage when it comes to the amount of students UF takes from there.
I think it really depends on where in the state of Florida you live and whether you are in public or private school. In south Florida public schools you don’t hear of very many, if any, students getting accepted with a 3.5 GPA. They do use a holistic approach so students should have more than just good grades and test score when applying.
@loulou13 I’ve heard that they establish quotas based on how many students they can accept from a certain county, so I guess the population requirement just favors less populated counties. Even then, I think it’s more based on the particular school rather than just being a part of that county. Here in Alachua, 2 of our feeder schools require their students to have a very rigorous curriculum that allows some kids to take up to 22+ AP level classes, and they seemingly send the most kids to UF (including the 3.4-5s). Other schools here might have a majority of their kids only taking 6-7 AP classes, so having a 3.5 GPA there would make admission to UF highly unlikely.
Then again, there’s probably a lot of these schools scattered around South Florida as well, I don’t really know. The whole geographical location thing is pretty confusing to me and I doubt anyone knows how they really consider your location, but apparently it’s flagged as “Important” under their Common Data Set. shrugs
@andrew345 I think the best way to calculate your chances would be to talk to the people at your school who got into UF and get a general idea of what their stats were like. Some schools send 90% of their kids to UF, some send 5%, so knowing that some stranger with a 3.5 got accepted/denied doesn’t help that much.