It’s striking looking at the applicants by Florida county in that map. The large South Florida counties have thousands of apps each and many Florida rural counties have 20 or less. And that’s just applicants. I’d like to see an admitted and enrollment freshman breakdown by county.
It seems UF is failing in its mission at geographic and racial diversity especially among rural counties and African Americans. 5% African Americans in the freshman class is a pretty sad state of affairs.
The jump in Sunshine and Gator nation scholarships is huge. But…I wonder how many of those were offered to NMF kids who also received the Benacquisto? My son was offered the Sunshine award and was told by Financial Aid to accept both…the Sunshine was applied first, then the Benacquisto arrived and the Sunshine was REFUNDED to UF. So UF looks like they gave out a 64k scholarship, but they didn’t actually spend a dime. Hate to question it, but it is such a discrepancy from past years and I would hate for merit kids to have unrealistic hopes for $$. The number of NMF scholars didn’t jump as much as I thought it would with the OOS Benacquisto. I think about 40 more?
We are happy to have the Sunshine as a back up just in case something goes crazy wrong with the OOS NMF Benacquisto deal.
Off topic, my Gator freshman is having a wonderful year and despite the cold snap today it is still a good 40 degrees warmer in Gainesville than here in WI.
Thanks for the link! Love looking at all the numbers.
In the “Top Feeder Schools in Florida for Freshman Population” page, they really mean number of applications, right? Not number of Freshman that attend from that school?
I am only familiar with Plant High in Tampa. It has 2,500 students, so about 625 seniors. The graphic says they have 225 of whatever this category is . I can see 36% of the seniors applying to UF, but not 36% of the seniors attending UF or even being accepted.
What am I missing here?
@fl1234 I read that as applicants, not acceptances.
The supplement section was very easy and short, with no additional essays. It basically asked for applicants to list/describe their EC’s, work experience, etc., and then asked if there was anything else an applicant wanted the admissions committee to consider. Really just straightforward and simple.
On the other hand, if one was applying to the honors program, an essay was required for that.
@fl1234 and @GatorDad305 that is 100% kids who applied…Spanish River (listed in the document gets about 60-75 kids in each year. which is as far as high as top 12-15% range of the class of about 620 kids…
@amsunshine so how would the supplement discourage the kids up north from applying? its not like a 250 word essay
I totally agree it would not discourage anyone from applying.
@Lat8erGator1 - I don’t know how UF can be held responsible for students that don’t apply. There is only so much they can do and forcing students to submit an application isn’t an option. Perhaps the responsibility lies within the local school districts that don’t, or can’t, prepare their students for a rigorous academic environment like UF strives to offer. Compromising a merit based education system to accommodate people who don’t meet the standards for admissions isn’t the answer. That only punishes those who made the commitment and delivered the necessary results - and those in the private sector who hire these students after graduation.
There are all sorts of people and institutions that can be held accountable for the alleged inequities you’re seeing, but UF would be way, way down the list.
@Mamareeb Agree with what you are guessing about the Gator Nation/Sunshine scholarships and Benacquisto. My son is OOS and was given the Gator Nation scholarship and he also gets Benacquisto. He accepted both, since like you said, it’s good to have a back up in case something goes wrong wtih Benacquisto (and for insurance against the unlikely event that they don’t continue it for OOS students while he’s still attending).
Also, he received a National Merit corporate scholarship, and the number they give in the report is for students who received a UF college National Merit award. There is at least one (mine) and probably more who received a corporate NM award which made them eligible for Benacquisto but they did not receive the UF college NM award because students can only accept one type of NM award. So that was my long winded way of saying that this report doesn’t actually show how many NM finalists are attending UF. It shows how many accepted the UF college sponsored award. (unless I’m reading it wrong)
And just for extra data–the only reason he looked at UF is because of the Benacquisto scholarship. It is not really a school on the radar where we live (New England) but he fell in love with it when we visited and though he was accepted to all the schools he applied to (including one Ivy and another highly ranked private school), he chose UF for the money, weather, and quality of education. I would love to spread the word up here about what a great school it is, and I’m also interested in seeing if the number of OOS applications increases with the Common App.
@SE1619 My D is another corporate NM recipient. We also wonder how many total NMFs are in her class.
@SE1619 I’m interested in what you are saying about the Gator Nation possibly acting as a “back up” in the case where the state might defund the Benacquisto. From what I understand, the Gator Nation scholarship (and Sunshine, etc) act as basically partial OOS tuition waivers. Is that your understanding? So, if the Benacquisto was defunded – would OOS students with Gator Nation scholarships still be on the hook for the instate COA?
@amsunshine I don’t think that the Benacquisto will be defunded while the current kids are there (hopefully!), but the Gator Nation scholarship is $20K which basically would make him have to pay about what an in-state student pays. It would be better than no scholarship, but obviously not as good as the Benacquisto. I believe that if the Benacquisto were to be defunded and that UF did not grandfather in current students, then yes, the students would have to pay the full price unless they had another scholarship (in this case, the Gator Nation).
This is just my understanding of how it would work. I did speak to someone at UF who said to accept all offered scholarships and while they do not stack, the student could stay eligible for one scholarship even if they lost eligibility for the other (requirements are slightly different), hence the “back up”. She also said that they don’t anticipate the Benacquisto being defunded for OOS students, but she did not guarantee that and also did not guarantee that UF would grandfather the current students in.
Sorry this is so wordy–I hope it makes sense.