Struggling with UCF vs. UF

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Florida
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<p>Ryan82 - As a member of the UF Honors Program myself, I’m going to disagree with your generalization that UCF Honors College is better than the UF Honors Program. Sure the UF Honors Program is a two year program, but in those two years, the UF Honors Program is truly a powerhouse in providing the intensiveness of a liberal arts college in a huge research university. The opportunities are always there, but you have to understand and find them yourself at UF. Looking over the myriad of UCF Honors letters and brochures I received my senior year in high school, I feel like those same opportunities are spoon-fed to you at UCF.</p>

<p>Again, this is not to say you can’t be successful at either university. I have several friends over at UCF honors who are immensely successful. This, for me, is a matter of personal “feel” and preference - something that I think joefrommiami should settle by visiting the campuses and taking specialized honors tours of the campus.</p>

<p>Here is the link to the UF Afternoon with Honors tour - [University</a> of Florida Honors Program - Afternoon With Honors](<a href=“http://www.honors.ufl.edu/webforms/visitors/Default.aspx]University”>http://www.honors.ufl.edu/webforms/visitors/Default.aspx)</p>

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<p>UF isn’t UT Austin???</p>

<p>I have to agree with roffles, but I do think UF may climb UT Austin (not that it matters) in the next rankings by usnews. UF, UTA, And Penn-St are all ranked the same. UF is harder to get in to, but they are pretty much on the same level.</p>

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<p>I am familiar with both the UF Honors Program and the UCF Honors College. </p>

<p>I attended UF Honors Visitation Day and Afternoon with Honors. </p>

<p>The only benefit to the honors program at UF is you get to room at Hume. Period. It’s not a liberal arts college by any respect. At most you can take about 1-2 Honors classes per semester. Moreover, you don’t even get priority registration for classes, only honors classes. (That really bothered me since every other honors college I’ve been accepted to gives priority registration for ALL classes)</p>

<p>Granted, there are some research opportunities, but if that isn’t your thing, I don’t see how UF’s 2 year program is superior to UCF’s 4 year honors college.</p>

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<p>School is what you make it. You can be a hard-working, motivated student anywhere. My two oldest kids are at UF and MIT. A colleague’s two kids are at UCF and MIT; the UCF senior won a Rhodes Scholarship. No one asks me where I went to grad. school 30 years ago (admittedly, I’m self-employed). You should make your decision based on your feelings; many grad. programs in the sciences will pay YOU.</p>

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<p>Thats true, at the end of the day its really about how hard you worked. If you work hard at any decent school your going to be fine. If you work hard at your first job out of school your going to move up. Ten years later your going to get hired on what you did after school, not what you did before and during school. Its all about making the most of your opportunities and showing people you know what your doing. I would say go to UCF and work hard. Your final degree is the one that matters if any matter in the long run, and if you work hard you could go anywhere for grad school. Good luck</p>

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<p>Ryan82 - I’m going to assume you’re a UCF Honors student. You can take as many honors courses as you want per semester at UF, the only restriction is that you can only register for one honors course per day so everyone can have a chance to get a seat in the honors course they most want.</p>

<p>I understand your point that UCF offers a four year program compared to UF’s two year program. My only question is - what are you doing in those four years that necessarily “better” than two years at UF? This is a broad statement, but at UF, most of the upper division (junior and senior year) courses are small in terms of class size anyways, so the supposed benefit of having a small honors class for upper division is unnecessary. Also, I just looked at the upper division courses offered by UCF honors here <a href=“http://www.honors.ucf.edu/documents/handbook09.pdf[/url]”>http://www.honors.ucf.edu/documents/handbook09.pdf&lt;/a&gt; on page 4 for the University Honors (UH) four-year program. I found that essentially all those “upper division” courses are core courses students take their sophomore year at UF depending on their major.</p>

<p>Let’s put UH aside, and focus on UCF’s other offering - Honors in the Major or HIM. This program is available at pretty much every university as requirements if a student wants to graduate cum laude, magna cum laude, or summa cum laude. Maintain a good GPA, do some research or “capstone project”, and graduate with honors.</p>

<p>Oh yeah, the benefit of Honors Housing is the same too: Hume is analogous to Towers III.</p>

<p>Besides the two major offerings at UCF Honors, there’s extracurricular opportunities too, but these can be found at UF as well - “Honors Congress” at UCF is merely “Student Honors Organization” at UF, and “Peer Ambassadors” is simply “Honors Ambassadors” at UF. Both programs offer centers for prestigious scholarships that extend through the a student’s junior year (typically the time a student applies for a prestigious scholarship). Sure there’s seminars at UCF for Honors students all four years, but are seminars really going to make the Burnett Honors College the one difference maker?</p>

<p>In joefrommiami’s struggle to decide between UF and UCF, I pointed out that in either university, one can be successful, but you can’t beat having a top 10 pharmaceutical college on campus to help you gain entrance into other top 10 pharmaceutical programs. There’s plenty of mobility among the top 10 of programs across the country for undergraduate students hoping to apply to grad school. And I’d have to agree with parent2noles - UF and FSU are currently the top two programs for chemistry in the state of Florida as well. UCF isn’t even on the map.</p>

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<p>*“Hume is comparable to Towers III”, not “analogous to”.</p>

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<p>Actually I am a high school Senior who is likely going to end up at UF Honors since it is my financial safety; I just don’t really get the big deal of the whole honors program and wasn’t impressed compared to UCF and other peer schools (UGA).</p>

<p>I’d pick UF over UCF not because it has a better honors program (it doesn’t),but because it is an awesome campus, it is the best university in Florida, and it offers the traditional fun state school experience.</p>

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<p>parents2noles wrote: The best chemistry programs in Florida are UF and Florida State. UCF is not even on the map in this area, even if they are throwing money at you. They are giving money away because they lack the quality programs present at the primary schools.</p>

<p>Ok, this is good info.</p>

<p>What is your basis for stating this? Is it simply your perception (and I’m not discounting that, simply noting it) or is there something quantitative that can be pointed to?</p>

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<p>“Orlando > Gainesville in terms of internships”</p>

<p>Hello UF has the best career resource center in the USA (according to Princeton Review).</p>

<p>Also having 53,000 students doesn’t matter when your endowment is so small.</p>

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<p>Internships, as opposed to co-ops, are usually over the summer so there really isn’t any geographic restriction. When my son was an undergrad at UF he, in fact, interned in Orlando.</p>

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<p>ssobick is right regarding UF’s placement department. But I think the point of the OP was regarding opportunities locally in Orlando vs. Gainesville.</p>

<p>Tell me why I should be concerned about endowments? Obviously a long-established school like UF is going to have more endowments, so I’m less impressed by this.</p>

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<p>With regard to why FSU and UF are better choices than UCF for chemistry you should consider a few factors that I suggest are durable:</p>

<ol>
<li> Performance of the department in terms of accomplishments and external ratings.</li>
</ol>

<p>Both FSU and UF have a number of notable or even remarkable accomplishments in chemistry. FSU has the synthetic Taxol (an anti-cancer drug, especially used in treating breast cancer) development that still leads the state of Florida in commercial royalties I think while UF contributed to the Sentricon termite system that is considered one of the best in the business. Both FSU and UF also have graduate ratings in chemistry, physics, math that span years, attesting to university commitment to the sciences. This is not by accident and speaks to the worth of the department in these fields. UCF has little or none of these accomplishments.</p>

<p>Graduate students will be your teachers to some extent as lab assistants, teaching assistants, tutors or whatever. Better grad students go to well rated departments. All this creates an environment where the culture is demanding and you work harder, but you get a better education in my opinion.</p>

<ol>
<li> Academic traditions of the university to include the academic culture.</li>
</ol>

<p>Maybe one universal way to ferret out the efforts of an American university to achieve generally accepted standards of quality in academia is whether or not the university has a chapter of [Phi</a> Beta Kappa](<a href=“http://www.pbk.org/infoview/PBK_InfoView.aspx?t=&id=8]Phi”>http://www.pbk.org/infoview/PBK_InfoView.aspx?t=&id=8), the original academic honor society. You will come to learn that academia can be very traditional when you apply to different graduate programs and colleges like med school, law school and even pharmacy school. Believe me when I say a graduate accepted into PBK will be accepted faster and more often than an equivalent student without a PBK key. From Harvard to Florida Gulf Coast University, PBK matters in terms of opening doors. FSU earned the first chapter of PBK in Florida around 1935 while UF earned the second chapter in Florida in 1938. To date, UCF does not have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

See: [Phi</a> Beta Kappa Society :: Phi Beta Kappa Society](<a href=“http://www.pbk.org/infoview/PBK_InfoView.aspx?t=&id=11]Phi”>http://www.pbk.org/infoview/PBK_InfoView.aspx?t=&id=11)
What does this tell you about the academic culture at a school? </p>

<ol>
<li> Opportunities for meaningful research as an undergraduate.</li>
</ol>

<p>While UF would be a fine school to attend to study chemistry, here I will describe what my older daughter did who also confronted your choices, except she only applied to Florida State and the University of Florida, where she was accepted to both. She was interested in med school and wanted to study biochemistry. She met with university representatives and kids from both schools. FSU persuaded her that the research opportunities as an undergrad would be better in Tallahassee than Gainesville in a number of ways, including being able to conduct research at the Mag Lab (the [National</a> High Magnetic Field Laboratory](<a href=“http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/about/overview.html]National”>http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/about/overview.html), one of the few national labs in the US) and university support. She’s now in med school but was able to use the Mag Lab facilities, present her funded work at a national symposium (one of the few undergrads who presented work) and work closely with faculty in her efforts. Make no mistake, however, this was a LOT of very tough work, but she was passionate about her field and there you have it.</p>

<ol>
<li> Overall student composition.</li>
</ol>

<p>Almost any measurement shows you more accomplished students, both now and over time, at UF and Florida State. These would be your peers at least in some subsection. While diligent work can overcome much, if you simply don’t have the opportunities at hand and a willing group of faculty your efforts will accomplish less than if you had the resources ready at the right time and place. </p>

<p>Things that are likely not very durable or meaningful to an undergraduate are the university endowment, the dorms, the food, the local bar scene and local attractions. Academic areas like chemistry are serious business and you will work very hard and likely spend long hours with the books and in the lab. If this is not your cup of tea, then decide early and choose psychology, art history, marketing or other academic-lite courses.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

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<p>parents2noles, what a great response. I’ve printed this out so I can go over all your points more carefully.</p>

<p>Let me give you my honest observations about each of these…</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Performance of the department in terms of accomplishments and external ratings - you make great points. External ratings are a little hard to come by and, it seems, that too often it is simply “conventional wisdom” based on name recognition. That’s one of the reasons I keep pushing back on people on this board (and the UCF board) to provide quantitative information rather than subjective. I like your point about graduate students being better at UF/FSU and also the point about graduate programs. UCF offers PhDs in Chemistry, but not Masters? Odd.</p></li>
<li><p>Academic traditions of the university to include the academic culture - I’m not sure that the presence (or absence) of PBK is hitting home with me. It may less a function of the “academic culture” of a school vs. the age of the school which, in UCF’s case, is less than 50 years. I noticed that neither Georgia Tech or New College of Florida had PBK.</p></li>
<li><p>Opportunities for meaningful research as an undergraduate - This one if very important to me and, honestly, is one of the reasons I am seriously considering UCF. UCF, through its honors program, has promised me undergrad research opportunities. UF has said that undergraduate research opportunities are available, but there is no guarantee of participation.</p></li>
<li><p>Overall student composition - I TOTALLY agree with this. While UCF attempts to address this through its honors college program, the fact remains that the student population at UF and FSU are more accomplished as a whole than the student population at UCF. This concerns me.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I need to address the elephant in the room - scholarship. UCF is offering $40,000. That is not trivial. Someone earlier in this thread said that it felt like UCF was trying to buy them. I don’t view that as a bad thing. I appreciate that UCF wants me there and that they feel I can help improve their student population. (UF offers $4000 plus $1000 for summer enrichment. FSU is offering about $9000, I believe.)</p>

<p>I am going to re-visit (as in put myself on campus) UF and visit FSU (for the first time) as well before I make any decisions. (I’m visiting Auburn also.) I’m visiting with someone in the chemistry department at UCF later this month and will try to do the same thing at UF/FSU/AU.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for the info. I hope I didn’t sound argumentative in my responses. I’m just really trying to (for my own self, actually) state exactly where I stand on these various issues and see if there are angles that I haven’t considered.</p>

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<p>Joe you are approaching all this in a very mature and thoughtful manner. I’m sure no matter what option you choose, you will end up doing extremely well. Good luck to you.</p>

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<p>BTW, I don’t like anecdotal reports, but I will offer one anyway since you are asking about ug research. During my son’s jr/sr year at UF he did work for a start-up which ended up being published in IEEE Microwave journal. And over one summer, he interned for a major aerospace company in Orlando. So, ug research opportunities for him at UF were extremely good.</p>

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<p>I interned during my last two summers at UF (during undergrad) and worked on a two-semester research product with a major corporation for my senior design.</p>

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<p>Not argumentative at all. One thing you will learn if you attend UF or FSU is that folks will often challenge your assumptions and expect you to defend your positions. Feel free to discuss whatever you want.</p>

<p>With regard to Georgia Tech and New College, one reason why they may not have chapters of PBK is that they are essentially specialty schools. GT is an excellent college for engineering while NCF is a fine LAC. PBK demands well-rounded performance in a number of liberal arts areas that extend beyond math and chemistry or, additionally demand performance in math and chemistry. I submit that GT is weak in the liberal arts while NCF is weak in the sciences. FSU and UF are much more comprehensive universities and PBK fits well, or rather FSU and UF can meet the demands of PBK qualification.</p>

<p>One GT grad takes issue with demands of PBK [url=<a href=“http://academicvc.com/2008/10/18/phi-beta-kappa/]here[/url”>Phi Beta Kappa — Academic VC]here[/url</a>] but I maintain that achieving membership in PBK is worth more than the $40K UCF is offering as it will be listed whenever you apply for anything your entire life. Virtually everyone in national academia understands PBK but virtually no one knows about the Pegasus or whatever scholarship from UCF.</p>

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<p>On this money issue, I must point out that neither Florida State nor UF “buy” (yep, that’s what they call it) students to any significant degree these days. FSU years ago stopped offering big scholarship money as they correctly reasoned that $40K gets one national merit kid, but that same $40K could enable over four other stellar, though maybe not on one high-stakes test, students to attend. For years FSU had the most NM kids in Florida and finally figured out all that money was mostly going to (already) rich white kids (mostly girls), of whom they had plenty.</p>

<p>Essentially regional (we FSU alumni call them “directional” schools) schools trying to plump their academic image still go out and buy students as advertising, in essence. If this is your goal, to be a bigger fish in a small pond, knock yourself out. Frankly, I’d rather see Rhodes Scholars, which is an external measure of the student and the school. FSU just had another Rhodes finalist (darn, she didn’t make it): <a href=“http://www.fsu.com/Radio-News/Florida-State-s-Fourth-Rhodes-Finalist[/url]”>http://www.fsu.com/Radio-News/Florida-State-s-Fourth-Rhodes-Finalist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>parent2noles is just dominating the UF-UCF debate, with sprinkles of obvious FSU bias.</p>

<p>joe - as a Materials Engineering major at UF, I ran into the same conflict between what would have been a guaranteed research job at UCF as a first-semester freshman, and uncertainty at UF. When I decided to go to UF and go through my freshman year, I decided not to do research until the summer because there simply is so many other things going on your freshman year. I know students at both UF and UCF who do research their very first semester, and proceed to wreck their GPAs. At UF, I can tell you from experience that it’s not uncommon to see freshman doing research, but it is a fact many professors prefer to see a solid UF GPA after a semester or two of coursework. This isn’t a bad thing. You have many years (especially the summers!) to get the research jobs, internships, and co-ops. Also, if you want to graduate with honors, you’re required to submit an undergraduate thesis.</p>

<p>Don’t believe for a second that UF is somehow anti-undergraduate research.</p>