How generous is the University of Florida to Out- of State students?
Mississippi Resident
Can I get Scholarships from them?
Major: Engineering
African American first generation
Parent income 26,000
Act score composite 31 reading 34 science 27 math 29 English 33
gpa:3.7
Not very. Don’t expect a full-ride or anything close.
You’d likely qualify for a bit of aid, probably a few thousand a year.
This website shows the cost of attendance. It’s an estimated 45k a year for an OOS student.
The best OOS scholarship they award is $20,000 a year, but that’s only given to small handful of students. Like, really small.
It’s very very difficult to get an OOS scholarship that will cover full costs considering that the highest is only 20k, so you’d have to get a large combination of scholarships. Even for in-state students, getting a full ride is almost impossible.
The full ride scholarships for in-state students are reserved for people who are National Merit Finalists, and that, combined with the Florida Bright Futures program for in-state students doesn’t give UF a need to give out that many scholarships. I have a friend who had great stats (4.8 UF GPA, 1530 SAT, ~20 AP and IB classes, etc.) and he still didn’t get anything major from UF. It’s a little different for OOS Students, but the website says it’s a pretty limited program as well. (Copy pasted this paragraph from an older post).
However, some guy on here claims that his son with a 4.7 UF GPA and 1510 SAT qualified for the 20k scholarship, but didn’t give much detail on his EC activities and etc.
Your GPA isn’t really that special for UF. Make sure you recalculate it first, but unless you took around 17-19 AP/IB classes + All Honors classes to recalculate your weighted GPA into a 4.5, your GPA is below average. Keep in mind, this is solely for admissions only. A 4.5 recalculated GPA will probably be their average next year, but simply having the GPA to get in doesn’t guarantee it’s a good enough GPA to get one of their prized scholarships.
Coursework is heavily factored into GPA. I don’t know what you took, perhaps you exclusively took AP classes from 10th grade and beyond, or perhaps you only took 6 total.
Your ACT score is slightly above average (Average this year was 30), but a 31 alone isn’t enough to get you that 20k/yr scholarship.
I don’t know what your extracurricular activities are, but from what I’ve heard, scholarships are a mix of stats and EC activities, where both have to be pretty strong in order to be considered.
You can probably try for a few small scholarships here and there, but getting anything major is unlikely. Assuming you don’t get any of the major scholarships and are just relying on the financial aid they give you, you’re still going to graduate with a mountain load of debt, possibly over 80k+.
I believe you could also declare residency in Florida to get in-state tuition, but it’s a weird process and you have to declare financial independence from your parents and everything. I’m not really familiar with the whole thing so you’ll have to look more into it. Anyways, even if you do this, you don’t have access to the debt-saving scholarships that are only available if you graduated from a Florida HS, so you’d still end up paying a lot.
It’s not really worth going into huge debt just to get an undergrad degree here, lol. We’re a good school, but we’re no Harvard or MIT.
However, check out USF. I know it’s not as highly ranked, but it’s still a good school and they’re typically very generous with OOS aid and scholarships. The highest scholarship they award is 12k a year (tuition is 17k a year for OOS), and is obtainable by getting a 29 on the ACT.
Or check out Florida A&M. Same engineering school as FSU, but many more scholarship options.
Use UF’s Net Price Calculator to get a sense of your cost.
https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/ufl
UF does award a few OOS scholarships (tuition discounts), but it’s not many. They also will award some grant maoney based on your “need”.
They award 3 level’s of OOS scholarships. Here is the amounts and how many students where awarded the scholarships.
Alumni: $8,000 a year, awarded to 52 students
Sunshine: $16,000 a year, awarded to 47 students
Gator Nation: $20,000 a year, awarded to 38 students.
It’s fairly cheap to apply to UF ($30 + cost of sending test results), so you could apply and see what awards they may offer. 
UF uses the coalition App, which can also be used at several other schools.
Other Florida schools (FSU, USF, UCF, etc.) are much more likely to offer you substantial merit awards. USF and UCF have very strong engineering programs, while FSU would award you a OOS tuition waiver (bringing tuition down to $6,300 a year) plus a freshman scholarship (last year, it was $9,600 over 4 years).
Mississippi State University is a good in-state option, so you should be using it to compare to your OOS options.
Lets compare MSU to USF and UCF:
US News Rankings:
MSU: Ranked 176, undergraduate engineering is ranked 105
UCF: Ranked 176, undergraduate engineering is ranked 91
USF: Ranked 159, undergraduate engineering is ranked 119
Graduation Rate (6 year):
MSU: 60.4%
UCF: 69.2%
USF: 67.2%
AVG High School GPA:
MSU: 3.28
UCF: 3.81
USF: 3.86
Median SAT:
MSU: 1,106
UCF: 1,175
USF: 1,168
UCF and USF are more selective schools. UCF’s engineering department is the largest (143 tenured faculty and awarded 1,154 BS degree’s in engineering, in 2016), while USF (118 tenured faculty and 510 BS degrees) and MSU (114 and 549 BS degrees) are about the same size.
You should also apply to either UCF or USF (USF will offer slightly better financial aid, UCF is larger), as well as UF. USF offers Chem Engineering, while UCF offers Aerospace engineering. MSU offers most of the programs offered at UCF/USF. UF offers engineering programs not offered at any of these three schools, like Nuclear, Materials, Biomedical, etc.
Other than look at UF, FSU, UCF and USF for “Florida” schools, you can look at other OOS schools, such as the University of Alabama,
Good Luck!
Thanks a lot
COnsidering your profile, you’re better off applying to “holistic” universities such as Lafayette, Bucknell, or even Olin.
@“Jivy Kemsy Yemsy” -
UF is not generous whatsoever with OOS scholarships. It is not a great option for you.
A couple of things based on your profile.
1 - Merit starts to ramp up once you get to a 32 and higher. Given your low science and math and strong reading and english, I would retake the ACT and seriously prep for your low area. A 32 will get you full tuition at schools like UA Huntsville and AUB.
2 - Mississippi State could be your safety. It is a solid school, and with the current ACT score you will qualify for a $4,500 scholarship, and you would be 100% guaranteed to get in.
http://www.admissions.msstate.edu/freshmen/money-matters/scholarships/academic-scholarships/
3 - @MYOS1634 is correct in that you should look at “holistic” schools that meet full need or offer targeted scholarships for URM’s. For many schools, a low income black male from the Deep South interested in STEM is the Holy Grail. The only thing that would make you more attractive to these schools would be if you were first generation college student. Many schools will also waive the application fee for families with your income.
Here is a list of schools that claim to meet 100 percent of need.
Amherst College (MA)
Barnard College (NY)
Bates College (ME)
Boston College (MA)
Brown University (RI)
Bryn Mawr College ¶
Bowdoin College (ME)
Bucknell University ¶
California Institute of Technology
Carleton College (MN)
Claremont McKenna College (CA)
Clark University (MA)
Colby College (ME)
Colgate University (NY)
College of the Holy Cross (MA)
College of Wooster (OH)
Colorado College (CO)
Columbia University (NY)
Connecticut College (CT)
Cornell University (NY)
Davidson College (NC)
Denison University (OH)
Dickinson College ¶
Duke University (NC)
Dartmouth College (NH)
Emory University (GA)
Franklin and Marshall College ¶
Franklin W. Olin College
Georgetown University (DC)
Gettysburg College ¶
Grinnell College (IA)
Hamilton College (NY)
Harvey Mudd College (CA)
Haverford College ¶
Harvard University (MA)
Johns Hopkins University (MD)
Kenyon College (OH)
Lafayette College ¶
Lehigh University ¶
Macalester College (MN)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA)
Middlebury College (VT)
Mount Holyoke College (MA)
Northwestern University (IL)
Oberlin College (OH)
Occidental College (CA)
Pitzer College (CA)
Pomona College (CA)
Princeton University (NJ)
Reed College (OR)
Rice University (TX)
Saint John’s College (NM)
Saint Olaf College (MN)
Scripps College (CA)
Sewanee: The University of the South (TN)
Smith College (MA)
Stanford University (CA)
Swarthmore College ¶
Thomas Aquinas College (CA)
Trinity College (CT)
Tufts University (MA)
Tulane University (LA)
Union College (NY)
University of Chicago (IL)
University of Notre Dame (IN)
University of Pennsylvania ¶
University of Richmond (VA)
University of Rochester (NY)
University of Southern California
Vanderbilt University (TN)
Vassar College (NY)
Wabash College (IN)
Wake Forest University (NC)
Washington and Lee University (VA)
Washington University, St. Louis, (MO)
Wellesley College (MA)
Wesleyan University (CT)
Williams College (MA)
Wheaton College (MA)
Yale University (CT)
You will have to do some research on which ones have engineering, and use the net price calculators to figure out which schools will give you the most money. Unless the family has significant of assets, tuition, room and board might be close to free.
4 - Some public universities have scholarships targeted at URM’s. For example, the University of Wisconsin has a full tuition scholarship available:
https://provost.wisc.edu/csp.htm
4 - There are a variety of outside scholarships that you would qualify for based on minority status and family income level. The Gates Millennium Scholarship Fund is one of them.
5 - CC has a wealth of information regarding scholarship and application information. Someone like @juillet will be able to better steer you in the right direction.
Good luck!!!
May I throw in an “out of the box” suggestion for Florida - FAU (Florida Atlantic University) in Boca Raton (southeastern Florida).
My son’s best friend is in engineering there, and they are trying to “up” their stature in that area. They do offer OOS scholarships but they are based on the applicant pool for that year so they are competitive to a certain extent (i.e., not automatic like some schools). I am guessing that you would have a shot at some level of OOS scholarship.
FAU is a great little campus in a beautiful area of southeastern Florida. Granted, it’s a hike from Mississippi (travel costs).
Just throwing it out there for your consideration - you had some great suggestions above ^^.
@sushipanda - my DS was the one offered the 20k Gator Nation scholarship. In addition to his stats he had all 5s on his 8 AP tests and he had many good ECs.