<p>Beginning this year, the University of Florida will hold all prospective students to a single application deadline, abandoning a multiple deadline system that officials say has unfairly disadvantaged some applicants.</p>
<p>UF's current system offers students three application deadlines that span from October to January. But students can only apply for one of the deadlines, and they only compete with the pool of students who have applied for that same deadline. The result has been that applicants who were rejected under one deadline might have been admitted had they applied at another time of year.</p>
<p>"We think people are really disadvantaged by it," UF Provost Janie Fouke told trustees at a meeting Thursday.</p>
<p>No vote was needed, but the trustees agreed with UF's decision on admissions.</p>
<p>Under the new deadline, all applications will be due by mid-November, and students will receive acceptance and rejection letters by mid-February.</p>
<p>UF officials have long maintained that there's no real way to predictably "game" the admissions system, but there's little question that students and guidance counselors have thought long and hard about the most strategic time to apply. Urban legend or not, many believe it's advantageous to apply for "early decision," which allows students to apply in October only if they commit to come to UF if they're admitted.</p>
<p>Early decision programs have generated a lot of controversy of late, in part because they are perceived to disadvantage low-income students. Students who apply for early decision in October do so before they're sure of the level of financial aid they will receive. That's a deterrent in some cases for students of modest means, and top-tier schools like Harvard University have recently discontinued their programs in light of concern about shutting out low-income students.</p>
<p>Carlos Alfonso, a UF trustee, said he was concerned about how early decision might disadvantage poor students.</p>
<p>"That was a big crack on early decision," he said.</p>
<p>Alfonso, who heads UF's Educational Policy and Strategy Committee, said the committee members all supported moving to a single application deadline. The multiple deadlines have created a kind of "gamesmanship" among applicants, who all end up calculating which deadline seems most advantageous, he said. The new system will allow admissions officials a chance to compare students on an "apples to apples" basis, instead of having a different standard depending on the strength of a given pool, he said.</p>
<p>UF's early decision program has become increasingly popular among students, growing from 10 percent of the university's total applications in 2000 to 20 percent of its total applications in 2006.</p>
<p>For universities hoping to manage the application process, staggering application deadlines has its advantages. For one, multiple deadlines prevent the admissions office from being flooded with a large stack of applications all at once. At UF, that stack of applications is huge. UF now receives about 25,000 applications, and only 6,600 seats are available in the freshman class.</p>
<p>Even though UF will be getting more applications at one time, the university will be taking longer to notify students of acceptance or rejection. In light of that, Fouke said she didn't foresee the need for additional staff in UF's admissions office.</p>
<p>For those who fail to meet UF's new November deadline, the university will still take applications that will be accommodated on a "space available" basis. Fouke says this will allow the university to meet its enrollment goals in the event that the number of applications dip.</p>