Well stated @G8tr2mom.
I have a few comments on this subject. I think a lot of people do not understand the importance of the Alumni family status. When a kid grows up in the Gator family it is a tough pill to swallow for the ones that are qualified but don’t get admitted. The school wouldn’t be what it is today if it wasn’t for the gifts from the alumni. I think legacies should be well qualified to get accepted…maybe given a 50 point boost to their SAT to give a slight lean when applicants are very close. That being said, as Alums, my wife and I have been kind of disappointed with UF. We toured UF, USF, Florida Polytechnic, Alabama, Auburn, and a Service Academy. UF had the worst campus tour by far, the worst admissions website and process, and some of their facilities looked in pretty bad shape. Contrast that to Alabama. We had a two hour general campus tour followed by a meeting with an admissions counselor followed by a two hour tour of the engineering department which included a 3 family 1 hour meeting with the dean of the electrical engineering department. Alabama has less engineering majors than UF but their facilities were state of the art. As a Gator, I didn’t want to be so impressed. We also had a follow up email from our Alabama recruiter and my child was offered scholarships. We didn’t even get as much as a post card from UF. Another thing that bothers me about UF is the large amount of majors that don’t align with where the jobs are in the economy. What do you do with a degree in Medieval studies? I know UF needs some of these majors but as a tax payer and an alumni I don’t like subsidizing so many of these majors. Many of these kids graduate and have a tough time finding a job. On the other hand, Florida Poly has a great website, great admissions process and great majors for kids interested in STEM. UF has a great brand, a growing state which is leading to highly qualified applicants and a great Alumni network but I am slightly concerned with its direction. I feel for the kids that didn’t get accepted and congratulate those that did.
To be fair, the relative of the CEO at a company usually DOES get the job! That’s how life works, oftentimes.
There’s no point in berating disappointed parents whose dreams for their children enjoying a Gator College Life is crushed by a seemingly impenetrable and (at times) random admissions process. A.K.A. “holistic.” As in, Holi Cow, I can’t Believe So-And-So With Worse Stats Got In And I Didn’t!
I feel for the Gator Parents. If your kid has excellent stats, what a tremendous disappointment to be turned away.
@Extender UF does give a “slight lean” to applicants, when it’s close.
http://www.ir.ufl.edu/CDS/Main_cds2016-2017.pdf
See table C7 for the different factors consider by UF, and how much importance is placed on each factor.
The importance of the Gator Nation, to the university, means that being a legacy should have some weight. However, that has to be balance with a public universities mission to educate the best students in the state.
UA is a great school and option. For my DD14, it was one of her top 3 choices for engineering, if she hadn’t gotten into UF, she would have gone to UCF or UA). They also do a great job of marketing the school and pushing the “sale”. However, much of their funding is going to merit based scholarships (good for our kids), but not to faculty or research. Things you’ll not see in the 2 hour tour…
UF is by far better recruited for engineering students than UA. Far more companies recruit at UF, spend time on campus, sponsor design teams, and hire UF grads. UA recruiting will be more regional, while UF is more national.
UF has far more engineering faculty (272 tenure track faculty to 121 at UA), more experienced faculty (143 Full professors to 38 at UA)and does far more research ($70M a year to $21M). UF has far more labs doing research, and does an excellent job of placing students into graduate school.
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7250/screen/1?school_name=University+of+Florida
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7185/screen/15?school_name=The+University+of+Alabama
A student can do great at UA (or UCF, USF, Florida Poly), but the engineering departments are not comparable with UF’s. Choosing UA over UF (as an undergraduate) due to “FIT” and Cost makes perfect sense. Don’t choose UA because you think the engineering departments are comparable or because they send you more swag in the mail. 
My DS17 is looking at Georgia Tech and UF, but he’s most likely going to choose UF due to it being a much better Fit, and do to Cost (GT OOS tuition? OH NO!), even though GT has a stronger aerospace engineering department (ranked #2 behind MIT). Some other parent may choose GT and feel the extra cost is warranted. Each family has to make it’s own choice.
Good Luck!
I agree with you concerning the tour. We have been on plenty of college tours over the years, and the UF tour was easily the worst. Some comments:
1 - The video at the initial presentation was mostly football and basketball highlights. We didn’t need to drive to Gainesville to see that. For most colleges, sports are at footnote at the end of the video presentation; at UF, sports dominated. This seemed to be geared toward the alumni parents in the audience, not the students.
2 - At most colleges, the adcom spends time talking up the school to get people to apply and, once accepted, to enroll. The adcom didn’t seem to have much interest in this. She did give some specific pointers in what UF was looking for in successful applicants, but there was little talk about academics, placement or other items that are normally the topic of these discussions. Instead, it seemed like she spent most of the time talking about how hard it was to get in and that people shouldn’t be disappointed if their kids were not accepted.
3 - The Cicerone that gave us the campus tour was a nice guy, but a terrible guide. We started the tour with what seemed like a forced march that ended up at the football stadium. It was at that point that he gave his first speech, and we could barely understand him due to his accent. The rest of the tour was the same. A silent march followed up with indecipherable, out of breath speech.
The attitude of the admissions department is that UF is the best school in the state, it is a bargain and the students are going apply anyway, so their major task is to act as a gatekeeper and cushion the blow of rejection. Very disappointing.
We kicked off our tour by getting chased around by a parking attendant at the garage near Reitz. 
Then we had a freshman tour guide. No offense but what does a freshman know? In fairness we did have a couple of upperclassmen as well but the first-year seemed to do most of the talking.
If we had gone by the tour DS would have never gone to UF. 
It does get better, and he loves it. I agree that UF doesn’t have to put on the whiz-bang tours and they know it.
[QUOTE=""]
but she has excellent grades, impressive resume and a solid essay.
[/QUOTE]
I am struggling with the emotions of betrayal after more than 23 years of alumni association membership and financial support of our university. How do you proudly wear your UF gear and cheer on the team when you feel let down? Do you continue donating to UF? <<
if she really was well-qualified to be admitted and was not, and i had invested so much time and $$$ to UF, i personally would feel incensed and betrayed, and would stop my support. i would instead begin supporting the school that valued your daughter’s accomplishments. your feelings about the situation make complete sense to me. frankly i am even surprised you are still considering donating to UF.
@MomofThree95 Was your D17 accepted to UF?
@SAD1010 Yep, she was, but her daughter does have other options…
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/20300518/#Comment_20300518
@VeloxS, you’re a little smug for someone who I would call a newbie. So you just received your acceptance letter from UF and you think you’re in a position to refer to those who are posting here as whining? Get over yourself. So you were accepted to UF, lucky you. I’ve got news for you buddy, I am a legacy and to be honest, that’s not what infuriates me about my child not being accepted to UF. What pisses the living daylights out of me is I’ll bet my child’s qualifications beat yours any day of the week. When you attend one of the most challenging high schools in the country and you are able to beyond succeed on every level, and you are not accepted to UF, but of course, hear from some who have been accepted and are, based on academic standards and test scores, are less qualified, you would be angry too. There are no guarantees on any college acceptance, but an applicant who does not gain admission should never have to be left scratching their head as to why others less qualified on paper gain admission. My child did not put all of theirs eggs in the UF basket and have been fortunate to have been accepted to other schools with higher rankings than UF. The other in state school my child has been accepted to is FSU. My child and our family loved Tallahassee and the campus. My child is wise beyond their years and informed me that they were turned off by UF during our campus visit. Other schools talked about how you will enter their school as a freshman and leave as a senior who has been developed professionally and personally. The UF Admissions Officer talked only about students wanting to be accepted to UF because they are the Gators. Ok. are you going to anything for my kid or is my kid there for you? My child is lucky and has other options, but as their parent who has watched them carefully construct an impressive array of accomplishments through the last four years and worked diligently and painstakingly, he should have been admitted,
It is funny how an old CC thread comes back to the surface. I am the original poster. I was certainly upset and angry that my daughter wasn’t accepted at UF in 2013, but over the years since I’ve learned how competitive college admissions have become. DD13 has thrived at Auburn. She will graduate in May with honors and has been accepted into a PhD program at another university in the SEC.
@G8tr2mom THIS is exactly what I felt when my daughter was rejected. She began going to Gator Club parties with us when she was 6 months old. She bled orange and blue. She jokingly said when she chose Auburn that she could still wear her cute orange and blue clothes.
@Wien2NC I have not donated to UF since she was rejected.
@gecco2001 I feel for you. It’s so hard to see your child disappointed.
@SAD1010 Yes! DD17 was accepted to UF for Fall majoring in Computer Engineering. We’ll be heading to “Florida Days” next month to help her decide where she’ll go. She hasn’t heard from all of her choices yet. Exciting times in our household!
@BirdieB Thanks.
You must have been on my tour. Top it off with my highly qualified (by their own metrics) daughter being rejected, and I wonder if UF is really thinking through the relationships with parents and applicants. Frankly stunned, and I really, really feel for all the children of Alumni who were rejected. Onward.
When I read the stats of some of the kids not admitted, sometimes I think it is secret plot by UF admissions to push highly qualified kids to FSU.
@MomofThree95 Congratulations!!
My husband and I have 4 UF degrees between us but when my kids applied, I never assumed they would get in. No matter how qualified I believe they were. UF clearly uses a holistic method and it is nobody’s safety. We had a different experience with our tour, but it was the Honors tour. We felt the tour guides were engaging and that the director and assistant director of that program took a lot of time speaking to the students. I hope that your kids find a place they love where you feel they are appreciated. For one of mine, that is UF.
[edited] Nevermind
Tour issues aside, pretty much every single person our son interacted with at UF - from the homeschool admissions adviser, to the college of engineering, to the registrar and bursar - all have been top notch. We have never had any problems with any of that stuff. Several UF staff people are on our family FB page and often provide lots of helpful info.
I’m not sure how UF should manage the legacy side of it. We were surprised when our son got in last year and really didn’t know much about the Gators, other than I had heard for years how hard it is for homeschool students to get in, and that it was a great school.
I can understand more, now, how upsetting it would be for alum parents when their kids don’t gain admission, especially with highly qualified students. Gator Nation really is a thing. People grow up part of it. It has to be tough.
We have some relatives of relatives who are from Gainesville, and even though they did not go to UF for the most part - they are still die-hard Gator fans. I never understood it until now.
@madredos - sidenote . . . Carolina was my dream school as a kid, and I didn’t get in from OOS. It crushed me at the time. But it all worked out for the best! I appreciate your post so much!
Presumably at some stage if universities gave strong preference to legacies the numbers would work out such that only legacies are admitted unless they are continually increasing the size of the freshman class? Seems fair for legacies to get the nod if all else is equal but no more than that…
The issue here is not so much preference for legacies, but fact that the holistic methods that the admissions department employs produces highly variable admissions results. According to UF, 50 percent of the admission decision is based on grades and tests, and 50 percent on everything else. Since UF does not accept letters of recommendation and cannot legally consider race, this means that the essays and geographic representation within the state are the two biggest factors driving 50 percent of the admissions decision.
As everyone knows, grading essays is highly subjective. The adcoms have no idea if the applicants even wrote their own essays, or how much help they received in crafting them. To place equal emphasis on an essay as four years of grades and national test results leads to outcomes where kids who are in the top quartile of accepted students are rejected in favor of kids from the same school with demonstrably worse academics.
This is a large state school, not Harvard, and frankly UF admissions should be more numbers driven instead of relying on the whims of a small coterie of admissions counselors who can’t even be bothered to read LOR’s. If the school is going make such an issue about holistic admissions, at least do it right and accept letters of recommendation.