UF Board of Trustees Admissions Update (OOS recruitment)

The UF board of Trustees regularly gets Admission updates, usually from Zina Evans, the Vice President for Enrollment Management. Being a public institution, they are very transparent about most items, and publish the draft meeting notes.

See section 5.1 for the admissions update.
https://trustees.ufl.edu/media/trusteesufledu/agendas/UF-Board-Of-Trustees-Retreat-and-Committee-Meetings—September-5-6,-2019.pdf

They spent some time talking about OOS recruitment (keep in mind that these are draft meeting notes/summary). This may give you a sense of where UF’s thinking is when it comes to OOS recruitment.

Some points.

The board is thinking of 20%, but that’s not a hard number. They don’t have a specific target, and are still discussing it with the administration.

The Board of Governors 10% statutory cap is real and has to be considered. The state is getting close to the 10% cap.

In-state transfer students reduce the undergraduate % to 9 or 10%. It’s First Time in College (FTIC) that UF is trying to increase the OOS %.

At no point, does it seem, does the Board or administration bring up financial reasons for increasing the % of OOS students. It’s about school reputation (which leads to rankings) and improving the experience for the in-state Florida students, via increase student (geo) diversity.

The board goes on to discuss increasing the % of Pell grant admits, SAT scores, improving yields, and the honor program.

@Gator88NE Thanks for the information, this is very interesting. In order for UF to move into the top 5 publics, they are going to need to improve in this area.

I took a look at a couple of the public’s ahead of UF (UVA and Michigan) and their OOS applications, acceptances and enrollment are dramatically different from UF’s. Now, their state populations are much smaller than UF and so there is a different dynamic to deal with. But, when you look at the below stats, it is clear that their OOS numbers are what fuels their competitiveness in admissions.

OOS Applications:
UVA = 26K
Michigan = 53K
UF = 14K.

OOS Admit %:
UVA = 19%
Michigan = 19%
UF = 40%

In State Admit %:
UVA = 36%
Michigan = 41%
UF = 36%

% of Students that are OOS:
UVA = 33-34% (state mandated limit)
Michigan = 49%
UF = 18-20%

It appears, based on # of OOS applications, that UF has not been able to get the national respect and interest that its ranking should deserve. I assume that UF is actively marketing outside of Florida, but being IS, I don’t see it. My HS senior gets mail from all over the country, but nothing from UF. Which is fine for me, UF does not need to market much in my house.

So, it will be interesting to see what happens if/when the # of OOS applications increases, how UF and the state deal with the 10% SUS OOS cap.

It will be very interesting to see what the National Merit Scholar numbers are this year. I think UF will get a very big bump with the Benacquisto being offered to OOS NMF. UF did not mail anything to us here in WI, but UCF and FSU did.

Very interesting! My OOS NMSF just sent in an app last night to University of Florida. @fl1234 Is it true that the OOS acceptance rate is 40%? That looks very high!

@janiemiranda OOS acceptance rates are about the same as in-state. If you look at the numbers for UM and UVA above, they get far more applications from OOS students, than in-state, that drives down the acceptance rate for OOS students. That’s not the case at UF.

The same thing happen at GT, when their OOS application numbers spiked when they moved to the common app. Now GT’s OOS acceptance rate is ridiculously low, but the in-state rate is higher than UF’s rate.

If UF"s OOS application numbers spike, I would expect to see a decline in the acceptance rate, as UF tries to stay around it’s targeted OOS enrollment goal.

@Mamareeb What type of mail did you get from UCF and FSU? Where they targeting NMF?

Last year, FSU’s Out-of-state applications increased 41 percent with the acceptance rate for out-of-state students was at 19.5 percent.

@Gator88NE Thank you! Very interesting! After reading this I’m fairly optimistic for my daughter’s chances at UF.

@Gator88NE I completely agree with you. IS and OOS at UF are about the same % admit. Also, if UF keeps the same target for # of OOS students while OOS applications increase, the OOS % admit will decrease (as you stated happened for FSU) and it will be much more competitive for OOS students, and have no effect on IS students. That higher level of competitiveness and higher GPA/SAT statistics for OOS are what I would like to see at UF. At those other 2 schools that I mentioned, the OOS admits are what drives up their overall stats. I am not sure what the latest SAT/ACT breakout for UF OOS/IS, but I suspect that OOS is not pulling up the IS stats.

On the other hand, if UF decides to increase the # of OOS admits, it will become more competitive for IS as that has to come at the expense of IS students (all else being equal). This scenario would cause a lot of consternation across the state…

Let me expand on my example of Georgia Tech.

In last year’s Early Action (GT does EA and a later round of RD), the admit rate was only 20%.

However, it was 39.6% for in-state (higher than UF’s) and only 14% for non-Georgia residents.

If we see a sharp increase in OOS applications, it will have a small effect on the acceptance rate for in-state students, but a large on on OOS students. The overall acceptance rate would drop (like it did for GT).

Right now, UF is something of a hidden gem for OOS students, as compared to the other top 10 public universities.

The downside for OOS students? Cost ($28K a year in tuition). That’s why the OOS Benacquisto scholarship is such a fantastic deal…

We’re from Virginia. D was admitted to both the University of Florida and the University of Virginia but chose UF over UVA because it’s the better school for her major and minor (physical therapy and dance). D also received a nice merit scholarship from UF, so it’s actually much less expensive for her to attend UF. And most important – she’s VERY happy to be at UF!