Your dissertation is getting too circuitous. It is giving me a headache.
Please give me five points to bolster why UF students behoove 45% acceptance rate, or 45% behooves UF students.
I will look forward to counter you, point by point.
As a florida high school senior going to ucf I have met several people choosing to go to other school when theyve been accepted into UF. Out of 300 people in our UCF group chat there was a count of 20 people who got into UF but are choosing not to attend. Which may not seem like alot but the thingd you guys are saying im sure you wont believe me You guys seem to be looking at school vs. School instead of which school would be better for a student. Most of you commenting are not current students. Its not about the name anymore buy more about how you would fit into the school. After touring both schools UCF remained st the top of my list. I was not a fan of their campus and loved how UCF felt like a college. Also, I am an elementary education major and UF being more research based, would not have been the best choice for me. I even know someone choosing FAU over FSU simply because she cant see herswlf enjouing fsu. The publisher of this post may rather go to UCF, be at the top, and have more fun than go to UF and be just anither student and have to work hard in her classes. Either way, being the NMS that she is she is most likely to get into a good medical school anyways.
@oldandwise
Just curious…at your son’s public school, how many are in each graduating class and where is it located geographically in the state.
And this is a sincere question…what is “gifted”…quantitatively? I hear that term and wonder what that really means. Thanks
Interesting data regarding actual choices between those admitted to both institutions on parchment site: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=University+of+Florida&with=University+of+Central+Florida
Harvard University vs University of Central Florida 
When students are admitted to two schools, they can only attend one. Which do they prefer? Compare colleges to find out.
Is your son still a premed? After viewing your lamentation posts in past make me hold off my acerbic graffiti. I can only commiserate your frustration.
The list of colleges that the 190 students from Florida’s top public school will attend is out. Again, the school is the only one in the state where all of the students who attend had to be classified as being gifted according to the state’s guidelines. The students are highly informed about the education offered at UF, FSU, USF, and UCF and their various honors programs, and their choices for college may be meaningful to an OOS who has a hard time getting a feel for the relative merits of Florida’s top public colleges.
Here is the breakdown of the selection among the four schools: UF – 39 students; FSU – 29 students; USF – 11 students; and UCF – 6 students. Once again a large percentage of the students going to FSU, USF, and UCF were not accepted by UF. (The list of colleges included the students’ names, so other students know who wasn’t accepted by UF.) In other words, more of the students might have selected UF if they had been allowed the choice.
Further supporting the position that UF is the school of choice by highly informed students in Florida is the selection of colleges by its 26 NMFs. Of the NMFs, 7 chose UF and one chose FSU. None chose either USF or UCF.
This statistic may be the most meaningful because these students almost certainly would have been accepted to all of the four schools, if they applied, as well as any honors program that that interested them. After weighing the merits of the four schools, the decisions by NMFs broke heavily toward UF.
^ but this is 1) because in Florida UF has an outsize reputation whereas OOS most people confuse it with FSU (informed people place that repuation in between these two perceptions: neither UVA nor FSU, somewhere around PSU or UWash) - top students at that one school are all in a UF mindset to start with but just because they’re Floridians doesn’t mean they’re objective (just like people confusing UF and other Florida universities arent objective either) and 2) because OP’s situation is different from a generic situation.
In addition, how many of these students are going to Harvard, Williams, Wellesley, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, or UChicago?
And if you compare Oos decisions wrt Florida universities, are the results that clear cut?
It seems that for an OOS NMF Benacquisto at a top public university would be a no brainer, except probably for specific situations like OP’s.
That being said, it’d be interesting to hear back from @xxyyzz00 .
Also, it’s clear Floridians don’t feel toward UF the way kids in New Jersey feel about Rutgers 
@oldandwise You are very proud of your son’s school (and probably deservedly)and I am not trying to be argumentative, but I will ask this again…
Where is it located geographically in the state.
And this is a sincere question…what is “gifted”…quantitatively? What or where can i find these state guidelines? I hear that term and wonder what that really means. It looks like the majority of the graduating class chose not to attend uf, fsu, usf or ucf…where did they go…oos?
@MYOS1634, I agree with you that OOS students probably confuse UF and FSU. I’m that way with the schools from Arizona, Oregon, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, etc. But, locals in Florida are clear about the difference, and my son and his classmates know these four public colleges intimately. All of the schools send recruiters to the high school. They have close friends from classes ahead of them at all four of the schools, and my son and his friends have spent weekends at all of them. We’ve toured all of them. His brother went to FSU, so we’ve been through all of this before.
The reason I provided this information is that OOS applicants have very limited information compared to locals. They may read the published rankings and a few posts here on CC, and they will talk to a dozen or so people on a campus tour. But, that’s a far cry from the knowledge that local students have given their better access to the colleges and their having watched previous classes make their decisions. Letting OOS students know what some of the most informed locals do may give them a bench mark against which to judge their decision making.
I’ve been reading advice on this thread from a few avid supporters of UCF that places UCF on a higher plane than it may deserve based on the opinions of some of the state’s top high school students. Knowing that UF is the public college of choice at Florida’s top public high school may help keep this thread’s advice in perspective. (There’s nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about your child’s college!)
My son’s high school is free of geographical preference. It is an hour from USF, two and a half hours from UCF, three hours from UF, and five hours from FSU.
@oldandwise so where did the other 100 graduates decide to attend?
@ufmomfriend, they were scattered here and yon. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, U Penn, Cornell, USNA, USAFA, Michigan, GaTech, Duke, UVA, CalTech, Northwestern, and on and on. There were 4 to U of Miami, two to Rollins. No other school had more than 2.
Like many students who ultimately chose in-state public colleges, most of my son‘s friends who are also going to UF had dream schools higher up the rankings and OOS, which goes without saying since UF is the highest ranking college in Florida. My son was accepted to his dream school (he was rejected by Harvard, but he didn’t really expect it), but, even with a healthy scholarship, it was more than I was willing to pay given that he wants to go to medical school. With the Benacquisto Scholarship, UF is hard to beat, although I promised my son I would pay for Harvard if he got in. However, my son isn’t planning on going to medical school in Florida, which is why he didn’t apply for the medical honors programs at FSU, USF, or UCF.
In general, there is no comparison between UF and UCF. They are not peer institutions. UF spends far more $ per student (more than X2), has a far, far better student to faculty ratio, far fewer classes taught by adjuncts, far smaller classes, does far more research, has far better funded student clubs, etc. The most common reason for a student accepted to both schools, to choose UCF, would be $ (UCF offers generous merit scholarships) or a specific program.
And that’s the case with the OP. His question is around “UF Honors Program vs UCF Burnett Honors College and Medical Scholar”.
At this point, I’m sure they have made a choice, and for them, it was the right choice.
Lets move on.
Touché! Long dissertation with wrong premise reads like headache.
@oldandwise I am also a student of the class of 2018 at the gifted school you talk about. I am outright ashamed of your disrespectful and pretentious comments; people like you are what gives our high school school (and UF) the reputation of being filled with pretentious jerks. I can assure you the majority of our class does not view the list of student names/colleges as a way to see who got rejected from UF, and to view it as such is ridiculous. As you may or may not know, one of our school’s top, smartest teacher was accepted to UF, but rejected UF to go to FSU. Each school has its own positives and negatives, and some students prefer a better “fit” more than ranking or prestige.
As a final parting shot across the bow of this blog before it closes down.
PineView is a good school with some 30 NMS last year. But there are other higher ranked school in Florida with twice the number of NMS from a smaller graduating class. http://www.fldoe.org/newsroom/national-merit.stml A high power school like that, producing 70 NMS year after year, and is a major feeder school to truly top tier schools to US and England. It is not only a powerhouse academically, but also athletically in many spectrum. Three of the top ten ESPN football recruits come from this school. After awhile, other’s comments like “My son goes to the top school in FL, blah, blah, blah; therefore, I advise blah, blah, blah” sound very morbid and pretentiously sophomoric.
High power school like AH@P has a long track record. Premed Club LOL is one of them. They do keep their record year after year for posterity advisory… Over the years, there are more non-NMS from this school, who have gone on to Ivies than NMS. So parents in the school are not so hang up on NMS or not. NMS is good for public schools, but for top tier/ Ivies, it is not useful or meaningful, at all.
Despite the high academic prowess of this school, the track record showed over all medical school matriculant rate of 80% from this school’s PreMed club over the years. That is an outstanding number. It is way above national college’s 40%. It makes UF’s 45% quite prosaic. Many other high schools simply do not have enough data to make any meaningful advisory guidance. Many parents just don’t know what they don’t know, they are proud for just being proud. Hubris or just lack of reality dosing, either way, makes for some bad reading.
We always advise our students, it is all right to go to King’s College at Oxford, or some BS/MD program, just make sure there is a strong game plan, and advisory support going forward bolstered. Be an educated consumer, specific end always justifies the specific means.
@SteyrFWB
Thank You!
I have never regretted or was even slightly disappointed that my kids rejected UF. They chose based on a long list of criteria and a gut feeling as to which school was a better fit. No one would ever describe them as risk adverse and they are thriving and excelling.
I wish that for every student wherever they choose to attend!!!
Enjoy the journey!!
BTW, King’s College is at Cambridge University and and not Oxford.
Thank you for visiting Uncle Google.
Never mind visiting uncle G, you are the one who knows difference between New College and King’s College.