<li><p>Sports: How dedicated are Gators to the sports teams? I love sports, and I follow college football and college basketball religiously. Naturally, I am aware of UF’s prestigious football program, and I am aware of their recent basketball prowess under coach Billy Donovan. Do most students attend games? Are there popular road-trips to away venues in the SEC?</p></li>
<li><p>Food: When I visited as a junior, I didn’t get to check out the different places to eat. I went into the Student Union and saw Wendy’s and a couple of other places (don’t remember). Where are some good places to eat? Are there good places for pizza, wings, late night delivery :)… How are the dining halls?</p></li>
<li><p>Housing: For an incoming freshman who likely won’t qualify for the honors program, which dorm would you suggest? Are there drastic differences between the best and worst dorms?</p></li>
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<p>Any info would be appreciated, sorry for the long post. I am just very curious, and from MA (so I don’t know as much as the Florida kids).</p>
<p>1) I'm not a Gator, but I live in Tallahassee, and I am a Seminole.</p>
<p>UF is one of the best sports Universites in the country, if not THE best. They're good at everything, even the off-the-radar sports, college baseball, swimming (Ryan Lochte, the guy who goes two spots before Mike Phelps on the USA Olympic Relay team swims there), track, and soccer.</p>
<p>UF is probably second only to UTexas-Austin in quality of sports programs...but even that is arguable.
And...as for campus atmosphere, if you don't like football in the fall at Gainesville, you are probably somewhere else on Saturday. The only thing Gator fans don't like about football are Seminole fans.</p>
<p>I currently go to UF and if you are looking to go to a school where sports are big UF is the place to go. We are good in everything and the major sports games are always sold out. The basketball team has a very loyal following and the games are a lot of fun. Our baseball team went to the national championship game last year. And as for the football games there is no stadium in the country better than the swamp. The games are insane.</p>
<p>We have a few threads on "best" dorms here. This one has a lot of information. For the others, just click on the word's "University of Florida" at the bottom of the UF post page to bring up the old posts. </p>
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<li><p>Sports are huge, every football home game is jam-packed, we break records for attendeance nearly every year. Basketball is jsut as huge, especially this year with the gators in the top 5 in the national rankings. Road trips to FSU and the Orange Bowl are huge. However, it's tough to go to away games outside of Florida since it's a long drive from G'ville to anywhere. </p></li>
<li><p>Food is relatively easy to find. All around UF there are restaurants, if you have a car dining options expand even more. On campus there are fast food places like Wendy's, Taco Bell, and others. The food at the dining halls isn't too great, if you have a meal plan it's good to use it, but it only fills you up, after a few weeks it gets tiring. You can always order pizza, cheap stuff at hungry howie's, leonardo's is excellent. There area lot of wings places, I personally like wing stop. You can order from nearly any place since they all deliver to UF. Dont' worry about quality of food, as long as you have a few bucks you can fill yourself up.</p></li>
<li><p>I wouldn't say any of the dorms are very good. For a freshman the whole point of a dorm is to meet people. They're over-priced in my opinion, and you can get a decent apartment off campus for the same price. If you can get lakeside, where the athletes stay, then you're good. Beatty towers are old, but the suites provide interaction. Hume I say is the newest but the most over-priced. Yeah, some of the dorms are really bad, I don't know which are the worse, but go and visit and see what they're like.</p></li>
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<p>Other stuff: The people are all cool, it's really social. The greek life is quite prominent here, and there are parties everywhere. Everyone is in good shape, most of the girls are hot, I'm sure most of teh guys are as well. The athletic facilities are awesome, the campus is quite nice. There are a lot of clubs, you'll finda niche if you come here.</p>
<p>Actually, I would say DON'T go for Lakeside. It's not as social as some of the other dorms, and it's way far away from classes etc. It's a pain having to wait for the bus every day just to go to class. It's extremely overpriced and utilities are separate. If you want apartment-style living, just move off-campus.</p>
<p>EDIT: The above poster might have been referring to Springs - Lakeside isn't really an athlete dorm.</p>