<p>Does UF really do a holistic review. My resume and my essay are the best part of my application. My grades are 3.92 and sat at 1810, act at 27. Average but with very difficult courses. I have mostly ap / aice/ honors courses and come from a very difficult top 100 high school. Top 19% out of 715 in class. </p>
<p>Im hoping that UF pushes me over the edge after seeing that Im a well rounded person.</p>
<p>Help !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>kind of. not much we can do to help, you’re not a shoe in but you’re not under qualified either.</p>
<p>In actuality, your GPA and ACT scores are not average, but slightly below average.
Also, everyone’s essay and resume are excellent and everyone comes from a great
school. My point, it all comes down to GPA & ACT and that holistic B.S. is just B.S. !</p>
<p>Take the ACT again. My son raised his score from a 31 to a 34, with zero studying.</p>
<p>If you can get the ACT up to a 29, that would give you a better shot. As I am sure you know, it is getting harder and harder to get into UF.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem like a holistic admissions process would definitely help you, although you didn’t actually mention what is on your resume that is so impressive. I say this because many kids on CC have almost superhuman EC’s. E.g., concert pianist AND on the track team AND editor of the school newspaper. Stuff like that.</p>
<p>Right now, it would seem you are more in FSU range, because you are not in the top 10% of your class and your SATs are decent but not great.</p>
<p>Now, if you are a great quarterback…</p>
<p>I am taking the ACT again. Yes, you are correct that it is tough to get into UF but you must realize that the people on cc are not indicative of the high school population of people that apply to colleges. Most are top 5% in the country and are more than willing to provide every stat to prove it.</p>
<p>This is not completely the real world and if you believe everything you read on cc you would pack it up and not even apply to colleges. The very nice person who posted before you was more than willing to tell me how below average I was. My stats are 84 to 92 percent in the country. Maybe they arent good enough for UF but “below average” is really pushing the pencil a bit.</p>
<p>I would also like to correct him on another item. Schools are different and there are alot of schools that colleges look at favorably. I would even go as far as saying certain districts that colleges look at differently. Student A who has a gpa of 3.5 who matriculates from a certain school might be a much better prospect than student B who has a 4.0 and matriculates from a school that the college knows is much easier to do well in. </p>
<p>My 2 cents for the day.</p>
<p>But thank you dad for your CONSTRUCTIVE ADVICE, and my back up plan is FSU.</p>
<p>From what I saw last year, UF admissions generally work like this: Your grades and test scores get your foot in the door, but its your essay and resume that get you accepted.</p>
<p>I hope you are right!!!</p>
<p>Yes. They’ve rejected a 2300 SAT, high-UF-GPA applicant because he had great stats, but that’s about it. Academics is only half the battle. You’re fine.</p>
<p>“In actuality, your GPA and ACT scores are not average, but slightly below average.
Also, everyone’s essay and resume are excellent and everyone comes from a great
school. My point, it all comes down to GPA & ACT and that holistic B.S. is just B.S. !”</p>
<p>Agreed. There is a reason why the word holistic is spelt without the “W”.</p>
<p>It leaves lots of holes for Admissions officers to push the “already spoken for” spots.
Otherwise, you would be seeing a more open/transparent admission process.
SAT/ACT scores matter most for the common pool because they provide a uniform platform.
I don’t understand why the AP tests/scores are largely ignored since they provide a standard test too. Maybe the scale is too restrictivce on AP scores.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, when they get too many highly qualified applicants, they have to select by throwing darts. All you should hope for that your name is also on the dart board.
I am sure some don’t make it to the dartboard too. I wish they publish the criteria for getting on the dart board so that those students can look elsewhere.</p>
<p>Many magnet schools do this. They have a test for admission. All qualified applicants are then put thru a “lottery” for admission. At least, you will know whether you screwed up or if it was just bad luck.</p>
<p>My S’s gf had lots of extracurriculars, top 5% class rank, excellent gpa, but below average SAT and ACT scores. She was admitted last summer B. My suggestion is to try to get some more leadership positions for senior year. They usually hold elections at the end of Junior year for many honor societies that have officer positions. Your resume and essay are very important…I feel that these helped this girl overcome her low ACT/SAT scores and gain admittance (she was also first generation-hook). UF does look at the whole package. In 2006, my D(straight A’s, top 5% class rank, leadership, activities galore) was admitted to UF summer B, but declined by UCF based on her SAT/ACT scores! UCF knocked her out just because of her test scores, but UF looked at the whole package and admitted her. Try to remain positive and keep working on your resume!</p>
<p>@sunny:</p>
<p>Sorry, I have to disagree with this. You speculate that they randomly pick to fill what they don’t pick out on their first go-round and you wish for a listing of particular criteria… But the fact is that there is no set criteria. They want well-rounded students (as cliche as it is to say) because their ultimate goal is to have a well-rounded DIVERSE student body as a whole. An entire class of sraight-A 2400SAT students isn’t what UF wants.</p>
<p>I have been to UF twice now and listened both times to the admission dialogue. They have also been to my school and I attended. Unless its a big fat lie, they say that the holistic part of your app is 50%. I can only hope that it isnt bull because everyone has a story. </p>
<p>When you come down to it. Would you really want to attend a school that chooses people to go there by just their gpa and test scores? Why would you even need people to look at applications…just run the numbers thru a computer and sort. Poof…send these 11000 an acceptance.</p>
<p>Im not a superstar but I think I would be someone who would be very involved in the school and would do well there. I would also be someone who would stay and graduate which is somewhat obvious from my application, that I tend to stay involved in a few things with activities. I dont just have a bunch of unrelated items but you can see who I am from what I do with my time. </p>
<p>We shall see what happens, thanx for all the insights on this thread.</p>
<p>SeekingUniv
Yes. Not having a set criteria means lots of room for “external influences”.
If they review your application on day 1 you may be accepted but on day 10 you are not good enough … or vice versa.</p>
<p>All I am saying is they should publish their “minimum” criteria so that students you have “no chance” don’t build up hopes and spend their $10-100 on some other univ.
The minimum criteria should narrow the applicant to acceptance ratio to 1 : 2 or 1 1 : 4,
not 1:10, so they can good a job of reviewing the apps not spend just 15 mins for each app.</p>
<p>Makes me think they are just trying to generate employment for admissions officers with the money from high school grads.
As one of them put it, many of the apps take less than 5 mins to decide (yeah or nay) but some go into “discussion” mode.</p>