<p>UF just picked the kids that were ranked the highest (top 30)… disregarding sat score and ecs… atleast for my school</p>
<p>@ALandeta1
I completely disagree. If that was the truth I would be crying tears of joy instead of getting depressed and being unable to sleep. Not only was I among the top students, but I was also regarded as a student having one of the best ECs. Instead they picked a bunch of URMs who barely ranked/not ranked top 10% with lower test scores and poor ECs.</p>
<p>well the smart kids at my school without a good rank got rejected. Dumb kids that cheat and have good rank got in. just my school. and by looking at the ppl that got rejected most had good sat score and bad rank… bad being not in the top 5%</p>
<p>Can you guys please speculate if I have plausible reasons to appeal? Other than statistics, I have also done several important things regarding to my extracurricular resume.</p>
<p>I think to have any chance at an appeal you better be an outstanding student. And I mean really high scores, hard classes, tons of ECs, great GPA, etc.</p>
<p>I am so sorry that you have to go through this. UF can be extremely rough with admissions, I honestly cannot find any rhyme or reason to it. I have two friends that have an 1120 on the SAT and are in average or low classes, and they got in. I have a friend with a 1300 and a bunch of APs, one of the best kids in Drama, she got rejected. Another friend with a 1350, a ton of hours spent working as an intern at a hospital, IB, and she did not get in.</p>
<p>I’ve heard UF has a really good yield rate, so I think the reason they accept such random people is because they want kids they know will come to their school. Outstanding students look like they use it as a safety, even though you didn’t.</p>
<p>Once again I am sorry, Florida kids really put so much on UF and want it so bad. Best of luck with the appeal. Make it clear Florida has been your dream school your whole life.</p>
<p>Johns91</p>
<p>I know this seems like the worst thing in the world right now. But if UF rejected you - maybe they are the one’s that are losing out. They chose to take less qualified students to boost their stats. Is that really the school you want to go to? Perhaps this is just fate telling you to look again at the schools who realized your potential and accepted you. Maybe one of them is the school you are truly meant to go to. You are looking at this as your loss - I think it is the Gators loss.</p>
<p>johns91~
Can you please post DETAILED info on your stats - GPA (UW and W all years), classes (honors, AP), all test scores, rank, EC’s, leadership, location, ethnicity so we can better evaluate your chances for appeal?</p>
<p>They look only at NEW information that was NOT on your previous application.
Examples:
If your class rank went up (hopefully into the 10% range)
Your SAT score went up past the lowest 25%
Any national or state awards.
Etc.</p>
<p>They are not looking to look over your application once again.
They already rejected it.</p>
<p>The odds are unfortunately totally against you.
Good luck.</p>
<p>I’d say 300 community service hours counts as new information.</p>
<p>johns91: I am a UF alumni and I teach high school senior in Florida, so most of my students apply to Florida as their number 1 choice. Every year I see kids who I never thought had a chance get in and kids I was sure of be rejected. Some years I wonder if UF is just low in their “dumb as rocks” admissions and need to get more of less qualified students, but I also know of how some of those students pad their applications and make themselves look a lot better than I know them to be. </p>
<p>I know you are feeling really down now, but please pick yourself up and try to understand that the admissions committee has certain reasons for their decisions and it could have absolutely nothing to do with you as a quality student. Although, with your specific information regarding community service I would file an appeal. I have heard of both successful appeals and not-successful appeals, but it doesn’t hurt to try. And as I always tell my seniors right before decisions come out - sometimes not being accepted is a message that that is not where you are supposed to be. You may not want to hear that right now, but it may prove to be true a few years down the road. And finally, when I talk with former students who are currently at UF I always get the same. Classes are large and many are weed outs, but the parties are great. Personally I think more money is being put into the graduate programs than the undergrad programs, but it probably depends on your major. Remember, there are a lot of good schools in Florida. My daughter, who is a senior, will not be going to Florida - her choice.</p>
<p>Hello everyone,</p>
<p>First of all, I would like to thank all of you for assissting me through these hard times. I’ve started gaining interest in other colleges, particularly FSU’s honor program, even though I haven’t been accepted yet (my statistics qualify nevertheless).</p>
<p>Despite my other options, I still feel UF is the place where I’ll be the most happy, and therefore, I am not willing to give up on that just yet.</p>
<p>Now some of you said, “maybe you are not just meant to go to UF.” Although I appreciate and respect your viewpoint, I tend to disagree with this statement. If there was anything that I learned from my life experiences, it is not to give up on anything until it’s completely out of hands. I believe that there’s no such thing as a fate; I create who I am. For this reason, I’ll try to do whatever I can to get into UF.</p>
<p>Now, I’d like to summarize the new information which I’ll be sending along with my appeal:
- 300 community service hours (0 to 300)
- 4.7 Senior UF GPA (there were some mistakes in my senior year first quarter grades on the transcript that went to UF which are fixed now)
- Higher cumulative GPA
- A better ranking (I was already in the top 6% when I applied to UF. Now it’s around 5%)
- New significant extracurricular achievements (Not any awards, but still important)
- Good recommendation letters (According to my research, UF accepts recommendations in appeals)
- A nicely written statement of appeal which expresses my personality and situation stronger than my original application essay. (I already wrote the draft even though I’m not sure what is expected in the appeal statement just yet)</p>
<p>I’m sorry if I’m unclear in my statements but I don’t feel comfortable revealing personal information for identity preservance.</p>
<p>Any help is appreciated,
Thank you.</p>
<p>not giving up until its out of your hands is a good viewpoint in some cases…just do not think being stubborn is a substitute for being wise.</p>
<p>trying to appeal is certainly valid; the challenge is that you do not know WHY you were not accepted in the first place. Remember, they already said no based on everything they already saw, and that’s when they had a lot of open spots, now they have a lot less.</p>
<p>If you got bumped because they needed to have X% URMs…well…you are out; its racist, its wrong, but that’s life.
If its because you “forgot” to add in community service hours that really represent your commitment to something then that’s good, however, if you are just documenting a lot of disjointed hours at beach cleanup, baby sitting whatever…that does not mean much.
GPA not an issue…
get your backup college lined up as I do agree with most others, UF is a good school for Florida but its not that much better than say USF.</p>
<p>johns91,</p>
<p>D’s friend got in last year but was turned down from honors program (because they had way too many qualified students and couldn’t accept all). Anyway, he looked into it and discovered his transcript was in error. Two classes were not on it. This actual error (which you say you had as well on your transcript, an error which corrected works in your favor) made the difference for her friend. He won his appeal into the honors program. Also, keep in mind … if you go from 0 to 300 community hours listed they may very well want proof not just your word for that because that’s a HUGE jump. If they accept recs you might want a letter from whomever you did the community service with or a guidance counselor who can attest to that increase. However, I did hear from someone who tried to appeal from my D’s school last year that UF did not like that fact that all the community service was done in senior year w/o a clear cut level of committment throughout.</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>It’s ok to not give up, but if it does become out of your hands, make sure that you have the ability to let go. That will become increasingly important later in life. My D got rejected from UF, but the school had moved down the list and she didn’t give it a second thought. We’ve seen a lot of very qualified kids get rejected from their top choice in state schools, at Ohio State, University of Illinois, Minnesota and several more. The economy stinks, schools are inundated with a higher number of applications, and they still need to look at their yield stats and how that would affect their rankings, so they somehow have to guess the kids who they think really want to attend. A kid with very high stats will be suspected of going elsewhere if offered. I hear that UF has a high number of kids who drop out because they weren’t ready for the work. I think that kids that return for sophomore year, like yield, is another stat that figures into the rankings, so I am surprised UF doesn’t do a better job of accepting more higher stat kids. But I am sure there are other factors involved that I am missing. </p>
<p>At any rate, life keeps going past a UF denial. Concentrate on what you want to do with your life more so than the school itself.</p>
<p>I had already self-reported my community hours in my original application, but they haven’t been recorded on my transcript by the time I sent in my app due to some complications. I did not do these hours between the time of my UF app and now; I worked for these hours over the course of two years, and it has definitely shown my commitment to something.</p>
<p>Should I call the admissions office to make sure they haven’t done any error in my application? or should I get my counselor to call them for me?</p>
<p>If I do call, should I kindly ask for the reason behind the rejection?</p>
<p>do not ask why…
keep in mind they probably have a LOT of people asking “why???”
and that well over half of all requests get told “sorry”…</p>
<p>if you think you have a valid case present that, if you are fishing, well, good luck.</p>
<p>I would most certainly not call the admissions office asking if they made an error in your application process.</p>
<p>Good luck and please let us know how the appeal turns out.</p>
<p>Well contrary to the few advices given to me, I went ahead and called admissions anyways. It turns out that they have miscalculated my GPA by leaving out some classes which I retook due to my poor performance early in high school. They also told me that community service hours record on transcript is irrelevant as long as it is self-reported in the application.</p>
<p>I’m gonna have to write a statement of appeal, which will include a request to consider these classes along with my senior GPA.</p>
<p>So even if I have a very little chance of success, there’s some hope after all.</p>
<p>johns91,
I’ve been a UF student for 8 years now, and just wanted to share one of my experiences with you. When I was in law school, I applied to be a “student ambassador” (one who leads the new students around orientation). As part of the application process, I was required to complete an activity with fellow prospective student ambassadors. That activity involved forming an imaginary “admissions committee” and choosing which types of students to admit to our school from a list of prospective entrants. The list actually had 6 prospective students, but 3 that I remembered looked something like this:
- Student A
- Valedictorian of her class. 4.0 uw GPA. 1500 SATs.
- Plenty of ECs
- UF is not her first choice
- student B
- top 10% of his class. 970 SATs
- first in his family to go to college (potentially)
- loves UF (does the Gator Chomp in his sleep)
- Student C
- 3.6 uw GPA. 1250 SATs
- single mother of 2 children
- wants better education to support her family
The verdict: Although some of us argued in favor of Student A, as a group, we decided she has the credentials to get into another school and would probably be happier elsewhere. So if we could only take 2 students out of the 3, we would’ve taken students B & C even though they may seem “less qualified.” Student B would probably take advantage of and appreciate the opportunity to attend UF than would Student A. As a public university, our low tuition is probably much more manageable to Student C than if she had to go out of state. We simply wanted to offer her an opportunity at UF.</p>
<pre><code>When I applied for UF’s undergraduate program in 2002, I was Salutatorian of my IB class (4.0 uw/4.8 weighted (out of 5.0) & 1490/1600 SATs). Honestly, even though I’ve grown to love it here, UF was my “safety school” at the time. So if I were on the admissions committee and given the same choices under the same circumstances, I would’ve rejected … ME.
</code></pre>
<p>What I want to say is that you’re might not have been rejected because you didn’t have the credentials (although you should definitely make sure all your records are correct). I must say, however, when you appeal, make sure you look at the process from the perspective of the admissions officer. What exactly is it that makes your case compelling? If you were the admissions officer and you’ve rejected this applicant, what does it take to change your mind? I’m writing this because I was moved when you said you were devastated because, to me, it was completely sincere. However, if every applicant who was denied entry told me that he was devastated, it probably will have less effect.<br>
Just something to think about.</p>