I attended UF in the mid 1980’s, and came from a small private prep school in Florida that had about 60 kids graduating a year. At the time, UF was considered an academic and financial safety school and most kids in the middle to upper half of our class got in. In a class of 60, we had 12 kids attending UF, and two going to FSU. The two attending FSU were at the bottom of the class, and had been turned down at UF.
This summer we received a mailer from the high school school with details on their current crop of graduates. They still number around 60, but in 2015 only 3 kids went to UF, with about a eight going to FSU. There were also alot more kids going to schools like USF, UCF, Alabama and Mississippi which would have been unheard of in my day. Things have gotten much more competitive in the past few decades.
Good luck to everyone applying this year.
Just wandering around Gainesville and the UF campus, and watching our son in his first year there, I can believe it OP. You see partying and carrying on, but you also see many intense-looking students.
Last weekend, during family weekend, we visited our son’s dorm on Saturday afternoon. Son’s roommate was sitting at his desk studying (!). Saw many students hanging around the dorm looking like they were working on stuff.
Ummm I rarely saw anyone studying on Saturday when I was in college. 
Yes this is anecdotal.
With my older son’s class (went to private lower school), it seemed like the intense academic students went to UF.
In our homeschooling circle, I knew one family with a student accepted to UF and this kid was a math genius with probably 60+ DE credits.
I also attended UF in the mid 1980’s and I was at best an average student.
I see a few trends have driven how competitive admissions has grown over the last 15 to 20 years. First, the population in Florida has almost doubled to 20 million folks, since I attended school in the mid 80’s. Couple that with the fact that far more kids now attend college and earn degrees (jobs are far more likely to require college degrees, than they did in the 80’s), and we end up with far more applicants for UF.
Next, Florida’s public high schools have gotten much better at preparing students for college. The state has become a huge sponsor for AP classes (the state funds the test and pays bonuses to teachers that have students pass an AP test); we’ve seen an explosion of IB and AICE programs (the state also funds these programs), and duel enrollment is much more common.
This link leads to several spreadsheets with UF admission data since 1989:
http://www.ir.ufl.edu/factbook/admiss.htm
From 1989 to 2001, the number of applicants fluctuate from a low of 10,731 (1991) to a high of 14,441(2000). The admission rate was from 71.8% (1993) to 60.7% (2000).
By 2015, the number of applicants are over 30,000, with Fall admit rates down to 46%.
Looking at the 1997-98 Common Data Set (that’s as far back as I can find it), the middle 50% for enrolled students GPA was 3.5 to 4.1.
In 2015-2016, the average GPA was 4.2 to 4.5.
Not only do far more in-state students now apply to UF, but they are also far more competitive.
Same situation in NC. I went to UNC Chapel Hill in 1976 and would never get in with my GPA and SAT. I’d be going to UNC-Wilmington or Appalachian State, maybe to NCSU.
One of the big factors is demographics. Florida now trails only Cal and Texas in population. (2015 estimates). NC has moved ahead of Michigan and New Jersey. But flagships like UF and UNC, and UVa and Georgia, have not increased student bodies in proportion to these population rises. So they’ve become selective, and the overflow winds up at schools like UNC-W and UCF and USF The so-called directions are getting students who’d be at flagships in other slower growing states.
Also, I know that in NC at least, the in-migration from other states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, etc.) tends to be more highly educated than our native population. (And more educated than those staying behind).