No Fall Term for Some U. of F. students? How Do Students Feel About This Option?

<p>As a current college student, I wouldn’t mind a policy such as this. As in an incoming freshman, I probably would of been against this. </p>

<p>I think if U of F did implement such a policy they would address a lot of concerns. It would not make since for a college under this policy not to have the same courses in the fall as in the spring especially some courses have to be taken in sequences. </p>

<p>Internship wise, from my personal experience and talking with representatives It is easier to get an internship in the fall or spring when they are not as many applicants. Generally the quality of applicants are greatly increased during summer months.</p>

<p>My best friend is actually an incoming freshman at UF next year. He’s going for the spring, not the fall. Personally, I think it’s terrible to make freshman come in the spring. It’s so much harder to make friends, get involved, etc… Then. Everyone has already adjusted, nobody’s interested in helping you, nobody’s gonna go out of their way to befriend you because they already have their group. I think the idea sucks, and I wouldn’t have gone to UF had I been accepted with this condition (though I may have had I been accepted for the fall outright). Overall, the idea of starting in the spring is very unappealing to me.</p>

<p>That being said, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea for students already enrolled. Taking a semester off can always be good if you use it right. I get why UF would do this, and I think it can be helpful, and while I’d prefer not to do it, it could be a great thing for some people. And btw, they’d have to do a summer term anyway, every state school in Florida requires it, so this option isn’t too bad.</p>

<p>The thing is, the word “forced” is used, which makes this sound bad immediately. However, as someone who knows over 100 people that go to UF, this isn’t the case entirely. I have never seen such a popular summer session like UF’s before. I’m down for summer and, literally, there may be 15 people I know of who are actually in town and not doing summer session (many are taking orgo…). There are students totally for this semester off. Take a hard Summer C semester and relax in their pimped out apartment for a semester (not many people live on campus after freshman year) or they’ll just help rushing/pledging for their fraternity/sorority. I feel like this is actually a very good option for UF students or at least for those I know. The Fall IS the best time of year in Florida (imo). Probably most people’s summers…</p>

<p>This doesn’t sound all that different from what happens at a lot of co-op schools, except that the students are on their own to find those fall co-ops/internships. </p>

<p>I think starting in the spring is a bit weird, but if it were happening along with 2000 other freshmen in their cohort, there wouldn’t be the issue of “everyone else” being settled in. There’d be lots of other kids settling in with you. Also because it would be expected for students at a certain stage in their education to be on campus during the spring/summer semsesters, I would assume that the appropriate classes would be offered. (Co-op schools get this right; I see no reason why UF couldn’t/wouldn’t.)</p>

<p>I do think that it’s better to have a cohort that stays together on the same schedule than to have everyone taking different semesters off, and ending up “off-stream” from your friends. (This is in response to Sally’s suggestion to have more fluid scheduling.) Of course it should always be possible for a small number of students to “switch streams” if an opportunity presented itself for a different “off” semester than the one the student was scheduled for.</p>

<p>There will NOT be a cohort of 2000 freshman. There will be 250 freshman a year and 300-500 transfers a year for 2000 total students once they get this going. They are referring to this as a cohort but are not planning on 2000 freshman at a time.</p>

<p>This policy will kill fall rush and will make no one want to go to this school. The SEC is filled with many fine schools and this one is honestly no loss.</p>

<p>Folks this looks like a plan to increase undergrad enrollment. If your not interested in this type of enrollment, apply for the more traditional admissions, there’s nothing to say it is going away, nor that they plan to decrease the more traditional enrollment. If you apply and this is what they offer, you just select another school.</p>

<p>@futurevpfinance: i believe they already selected the 2,000 students… so u need not worry about being included in the experiment.</p>

<p>UF needs to come up with an incentive for students to attend spring/summer. Not only would there be no stigma to attending those sessions, there might actually be a draw. Free parking perhaps or great professors. Guaranteed football tickets the following year.</p>

<p>There has to be a guarantee that there is no compromise in the quality of the education - same resources available on campus.</p>

<p>At the same time, UF could use this program to build a sense of community rather than deplete it. For example, everyone in the business school could do a spring/summer together. Or everyone in a certain entering year. (Similar to Dartmouth)</p>

<p>Hope that the administration at UF will think of it from the student’s (aka customer’s) point of view, and not just their own.</p>

<p>bff, you’re absolutely right – UF needs to make this attractive to the customer, and you have some great ideas for how to do it.</p>

<p>The Spring-Summer experiment is just another bone-headed idea borne from the desire to run UF like a diploma mill rather than as an institution of higher education where the exchange of ideas is the driving force. UF is tumbling down, down, down. Bernie Machen already has a policy in place that requires students to graduate in 120 or 124 hours (based on their degree program) regardless of completion of that degree program. This policy forces incoming students with AP/IB/AICE/Dual Enrollment credits to count those credits toward graduation or to drop those credits and retake those courses at UF. For example, if an incoming freshman has 33 AP credits and enters a 120-hour degree program, that student has to finish the program in 87 hours (3 years) or graduate without a degree. When you reach your limit of allowed hours, you’re out. Can you imagine having to take gen eds just to mark time while you work your way through an engineering or fine arts program of study. Sheesh. I’m a Gator three times over and strongly recommend that top students pick another institution of higher learning. I know my kids (both NM students) are going elsewhere. The Gator legacy in my family ends with me.</p>

<p>^^ Good point about the shortcoming of getting shoved out early. Students in their developmental years shouldn’t be rushed through college while they are maturing into adulthood; what’s the rush? I don’t care how one slices it, but two or three years in undergraduate college, just because of college credits earned in high school, is not the same as a full four year college experience.</p>

<p>We read this earlier and were considering applying as an OOS student. This scenario is not appealing at all for us.</p>

<p>Not sure where you got that information colmomto but I can tell you with 100% certainty that I know someone with 135 hours in a 126 hour program who transferred in as a junior and is still staying the summer and fall semester to finish his engineering required classes so he’ll have even more credits by the end and he is most certainly not being forced to graduate without his degree. (He’s been offered full financial aid for next year as well.)</p>

<p>Why is this option a problem? UF is giving opportunities to students to enroll at the university that might have otherwise been deferred from the Fall semester. This is a win/win situation for these students and for the university.</p>

<p>For undergraduate students UF, with its Satisfactory Academic Progress policy, can cut off financial aid at 150 attempted credit hours; most other Florida state universities have caps of around 180 attempted hours. If a student comes to UF with a lot of dual enrollment credits, they count as attempted cr. hrs. toward total. (I don’t think AP credits counts though toward 150 cap) What this means is a student who shows up with a bunch of dual enrollment and then maybe changes declared major after say a year at UF–they could end up with no financial aid their last semester or two at UF. Too tight a window!</p>

<p>[Academic</a> Progress : UF | Office for Student Financial Affairs](<a href=“http://www.sfa.ufl.edu/additional/academic-progress/]Academic”>Satisfactory Academic Progress | UF Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships)</p>

<p>@ lizard:
Although each university develops its own poilices, it’s a Florida law which establishes that students are required to pay an excess hour surcharge equal to 50 percent of the tuition rate for each credit hour in excess of 120 percent of the number of credit hours required to complete the baccalaureate degree program in which the student is enrolled. Assuming that a bac degree program requires 120 credits, that means anything over 144 hours will have a surcharge attached - but there are some exceptions, including credits earned through an articulated accelerated mechanism (e.g., Dual Enrollment, AP).
The “surcharge” was introduced by the 2009 legislature in SB 1696, and incorporated into section 1009.286 of the Florida Statutes; excerpts related to the surcharge are as follows:
1009.286 Additional student payment for hours exceeding baccalaureate degree program completion requirements at state universities. –
(4) For purposes of this section, credit hours earned under the following circumstances are not calculated as hours required to earn a baccalaureate degree:
(a) College credits earned through an articulated accelerated mechanism identified in s. 1007.27.
(b) Credit hours earned through internship programs.
(c) Credit hours required for certification, recertification, or certificate programs.
(d) Credit hours in courses from which a student must withdraw due to reasons of medical or personal hardship.
(e) Credit hours taken by active-duty military personnel.
(f) Credit hours required to achieve a dual major taken while pursuing a baccalaureate degree.
(g) Remedial and English as a Second Language credit hours.
(h) Credit hours earned in military science courses that are part of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program.</p>

<p>^That Florida law doesn’t apply to me because I began college in summer 2008 and I’m grandfathered with old rules. The new law applies to students starting college in 2009 forward. All the different school, federal, state, private lender rules and guidelines can conflict–it’s a tangled web. I won’t get hit with any surcharges and will have 176 cr. hrs. at the end of this summer term at my university. I’m scheduled to get two different bachelor’s degrees and a minor next spring term and will end up with over 200 undergraduate cr. hrs. If I had just done one degree I would have been on street in two years at 19 years old–I wanted to be on campus four years! I had to petition my university for some variances from rules, but there is more than one way to skin a cat in college.</p>

<p>Back on topic of this thread, most students are not going to like missing the opportunity to attend college in fall when football is going, and things in general on campus are at their peak.</p>

<p>hsb1104 - I was an academic advisor at UF and am now retired. UF uses critical tracking courses to determine if a student is “on track” to graduate “on time”. When advisors start awarding credit hours for AP/IB, etc., a student can quickly get “off track” and, thus, be forced out of a major because it will be impossible for them squeeze in all courses needed to graduate in the time frame set forth by each degree program. All it takes is for a student to be 2 semesters behind in critical tracking courses and advisors must drop them from their current degree program. Good luck to that student in finding a new major because chances are they will be behind in critical tracking courses for other degree programs, as well. </p>

<p>There are exceptions, of course, and transfer students often fall into the “exceptions” catagory. Students attempting a dual major also are given “extra” time to complete their coursework.</p>

<p>My son was accepted to UMD-CP but would not get housing until the spring. This is something the U is doing to spread the kids out more during the year. He isn’t going so it was not an issue, but he was not happy with the situation, and that did take the school out of consideration. He was WLed at another school that a classmate who was accepted was assigned to go overseas for the fall term and start on campus in the spring. Again, would have been a deal breaker for my son.</p>

<p>But I see the why the schools want to do this. Dartmouth has a system where it requires kids to take a summer session or two in order to keep the school population level during the entire year. </p>

<p>I think a real deal breaker would be if Bright Futures cannot be fully utilized in terms of UF. They had better take this up with the state.</p>