S23 is in a unique position. He goes to a boarding school (in the US), but his school doesn’t offer any AP or honors or dual enrollment courses. At the same time, he will qualify for in state tuition at Florida universities as I moved to FL a few months ago.
Will he be competitive at the University of Florida with a GPA of 3.95+ with no honors or AP courses?
The admissions folks say they take in to consideration these circumstances. It would be bad if they offered them and he didn’t take them. Hopefully, he gets a good SAT score, just in case.
No he’s not.
Very very common. And every AO knows that
Last year the average student offered admission had a recalculated GPA between a 4.4 and a 4.6. We definitely admitted students with a 3.9 and we definitely denied students with a 4.6. We are looking for students who have taken advantage of the opportunities available at the high school they attended and evaluate students on that basis.
Your son is not expected to take courses that are not offered in his HS.
FWIW each HS sends a school profile which details (among other things) the level of coursework offered, the grading system etc. So admissions officers will know for a fact that AP/honor/dual enrollment classes are not available at your son’s HS.
This is the correct answer.
FWIW, it is becoming trendy for students to self-study for AP courses. Particularly, to show spike/passion. The easier APs (I won’t list them for fear of being abused :)) are doable for your typical standard strong student.
Thanks everyone, especially @Melissa96 . I was mainly concerned because of UFlorida’s middle GPA being 4.4-4.6.
@skieurope I worded it poorly. I didn’t mean that he was unique in that his school didn’t offer APs etc. I meant that he was unique in that he was eligible for instate tuition but had never attended a Florida school. Perhaps unusual would be a better term than unique.
FWIW college admissions officers are not impressed by self-studying for APs. They want to see how a student can do in a class, not how well he/she can cram for an exam.
I’m in the same boat. I go to a renownedly difficult and small HS, but it’s OOS and we have fewer APs and a lot of AP-equivalent classes (APs are looked down on and they want to ban them bc it’s viewed as teaching to the test). It’s impossible to make our GPAs equivalent via simple adjustments bc the “ average” is a top 1% student/test taker for admission. So we have lots of kids with lower GPAs (well well below 4.0 uw) go to Ivies bc our GPAs are disinflated.
I love UF. I’m worried because the number of people who have applied to UF from my HS in the past is very very small. Can the AO really know the school as well or is UF more quantitative?
You can assume that every single AO knows what the easy AP’s are.
Except there are better ways to show passion. AO’s are not impressed by self studying (cramming is the better word) for a 3 hour exam. While there are exceptions when it might show passion, e.g. the HS does not offer calc-based physics, let’s be real, that’s not the exam these self studiers are prepping for.
Faculty often aren’t impressed either.
would you say the majority of those students with a 4.6 that were not admitted came from out of state? (that would make more sense) It would be heart breaking for a student with a 4.6 in state (which is almost perfect grades give or take) to not be admitted? im assuming the majority are out of state? any guidance is appreciated. thx for your inside info as always… 
At the risk of making you more nervous GPA is just a number and doesn’t tell us nearly enough about an application to make a decision. I’m sure there were both sets of students were denied with that number.
Son was in similar position years ago. His private school considered all their courses “honors” (but they did have AP classes) so did not list them as such but put it in their school profile. They considered that sufficient.
The problem is that the initial run through of the thousands (53K last year) of UF applications is by computer that does initial adjustment of grades and the computer doesn’t know your son’s school doesn’t have APs or honors courses available. He can be kicked in that initial run. You should personally contact the admissions department at UF to bring your son to their attention if you really want to go there.
In my son’s case his school after discussion with UF admissions actually went back and retroactively marked all their classes as honors so this wouldn’t be a problem since many of their students did apply to UF and other Florida schools.
Thanks @gouf78 ! We have a tour at UF in a week. I’ll see what ds thinks and then discuss with his school’s college counselor if he plans to apply.