Just wondering how the University of Florida Heavener School of Business works as far as Freshman Admissions. Some
schools have direct admissions such as Indiana Kelley or Ohio State Fisher. At other schools freshmen get admitted to the University as a business major and once the prerequisites are met including a certain GPA, the student can apply for the specific upper division major. The website is not very specific with this information. Just wondering if anyone knows this information. Daughter applied to UF and has already be admitted to Ohio State and UGA. For some reason or another UF Heavener Business school is not always listed as one of the Top Options as far as some rankings which is kind of strange considering the school in general is now ranked 42 in the country by US News. Just don’t hear much about it. She likes the idea of being a direct admit to the program vs going through another competitive process a few years down the road assuming that would be the case. Any insight? Thanks
Your daughter would be a business student. She would need to take the right tracking classes and maintain an appropriate GPA, if she does that, she would move through the program, there is not a separate application for upper division Business
@Melissa96 Thank you for your reply. Would you know the GPA requirements? Familiar with recruitment and placement?
On the GPA requirement, you can find it online, but here is the one for the Management major: Note that they also require that you stay “on track” by taking the correct number of critical tracking courses each semester.
https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/business/majors/management.aspx
You may find the UF graduation survey results of interest. Scroll down and select a major to review the results.
@Gator88NE Interesting. If I am understanding this properly, it seems that the student is required a 3.0 gpa on all the core tracking business classes in order to be able to get into their major. Perhaps this is where the Direct admit vs the traditional way comes into play. Clear benefit to be a direct admit to a program . Not sure whether the survey looks very positive for say Marketing majors
Another interesting note is that for some reason or another, you never hear Heavaner in the same conversation as some of the other National Business programs. Maybe for the instate students is the place to go, but generally speaking, you just dont hear much about their business school other than UF being a high ranked, competitive, and in many cases the number 1 choice public University in the state of Florida
A couple of points…
The 3.0 GPA requirement for your core classes isn’t difficult to achieve. Even direct admit programs have minimum tracking GPA’s.
What’s more of an issue (for Finance and Accounting majors specifically), is the minimum grades they must achieve in critical classes to continue on with their major.
Two of the tougher tracking classes are ACG 2021 (Introduction to Financial Accounting) and ACG 2071 (Introduction to Managerial Accounting). Accounting majors have to pass both with a minimum grade of a B to continue on to ACG 3101 (Financial Accounting and Reporting 1). If they haven’t earned the B(s) they can’t continue on with the major.
That requirement has caused many a student to switch majors. 
Once again, even most direct admit programs will have such requirements, especially in accounting or finance.
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UF’s accounting and finance programs are selective, but they are also very well recruited. Here’s a link showing the participates at the huge fall career fair (Career Showcase):
https://ufl-csm.symplicity.com/events/students.php?mode=list&cf=CSFall17
http://www.alligator.org/news/article_3c6f6e08-a30b-11e7-8d8e-37446ca62a01.html
Next point, about 83% to 85% of the undergraduates are in-state kids. Florida is a huge state (21 million folks) with a growing economy. Family and jobs tend to keep students in-state. Still, some majors tend to migrate out of state (about 30% of finance majors go OOS, about 50% of Industrial engineering majors, etc.).
Then, when comparing salaries, take into account the cost of living. For example, earning $50K in Orlando is the equivalent of earning $73K in Boston.
http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx
Being in the south, UF tends to be under rated, especially by folks in the northeast. That’s changing, and that’s one reason UF is now ranked in the top 10 of public universities. The same with Heavener, which is slowing creeping up in the rankings. Still, as I said, the school is already well recruited, especially for Finance/Accounting majors (in Heavener).
Reputation takes time to improve. Indiana’s Kelley or OSU’s Fisher have been around for a long time (feeding graduates to the Midwest), and they are not going away. However, the jobs have been moving south and out of the Midwest, which is one factor leading to UF’s rise.
But that’s neither here nor there. Kelley and Fisher are great programs, you would select UF over those schools, because of cost (UF is a no brainer for in-state students), issue with direct admit programs, or simply because you prefer the south over the Midwest.
@Gator88NE You are a wealth of information. Thank you so much for answering my questions. We used to live in Florida and we are fortunate enough to have been able to have purchased Florida Pre Paid back in the days. We currently live in Georgia and our daughter was accepted to UGA as well as OSU. Waiting on Florida, but leaning towards OSU after securing an amazing scholarship All good options for sure. I was just not able to find a lot of information on the UF school of business and you have been able to provide all these answers. All good schools with good academics and spirit. It will not be an easy decision if accepted to UF. Just happy to have some options.