Thought I might start a thread for those students and parents looking at UCF and where we go from here to get ready for next year . I know there is a Dinner scheduled for March 23rd for Finalists who are interested. I can not commend Luke at UCF enough. He is very prompt in responding to requests for info and seems t work very hard for all of the students under his wing. Feels nice to know my DD will have him as a resource next year.
Thanks for starting this thread. My son has UCF at the top of his list for CS. He visits again last week in March. Completely agree about Luke. When I visited the campus I liked the smaller feel of the campus as there are very few roads and little traffic going through campus unlike other large universities I have seen. I like the close relationship the university has with industry for internships, etc which is so important with engineering type fields. I also think the Towers 3 is an unbelievable place to live for a freshman. My only concern would be how easy it is to meet friends if live in Towers as it’s not the traditional ‘dorm experience’. I assume Burnett and other organizations will have activities for students to meet each other the first few weeks. Anybody else have a sense of the social aspects of UCF for Burnett and the NMF students? I assume somemone orgainzes intramural teams and groups to go watch games etc.
Thanks for starting this!! It’ll be interesting to see who joins us on here. As far as the social aspects go, try following the Honors Congress facebook page. They post about upcoming get-togethets/events. For example, they are going to some sort of chocolate factory and have a puzzle/game night scheduled. I’m so excited to get involved next year!!
Glad to see this thread! Goos tip on the facebook group. Ive been impressed with UCFs twitter.
Anyone have any experience tranfering in a lot of credits to UCF as a freshman? My DD will come in with something like 60 credits from our local university. This includes what would tranfer in Louisiana as her Calc 1, Physics, and Chemistry. When could she expect to see transfer evaluations and how likely are they to grant equalivancy?
In talking to Luke they were fairly generous, they have an on line guide to what AP scores they accept. http://catalog.ucf.edu/policies/accelerated-educational-opportunities
I think transfer credits will depend on if it is in their major, I would contact admissions.Here is the link for info on that.
http://transfer.sdes.ucf.edu/credits
Just received a letter from a current national merit scholar from UCF and an email from Luke concerning February updates! Looks like we can expect a break down of the scholarship in the mail sometime this week or early next week! I’ve submitted my enrollment and housing deposit and signed up for orientation! It’s all happening so fast!
Thanks for starting this Forum. My daughter is NMF and had been accepted by The Burnett Honors College and by the Burnett Medical Scholars program. We got notified on 2/21/2018. Daughter is still holding off on making the final decision until she hears back from the stretch schools she applied to. Hence not able to sign up for any housing. Looking forward to seeing the financial package from UCF next week perhaps. Appears the TOWER is the only honor housing at UCF. Please enlighten me otherwise. Wondering if they will cover 4Bed/4Bath occupancy or 4Bed/2Bath? My understanding is they cover Fall and Spring only? We have to pay for the whole year, (3640.00,$3640.00,$2330.00). $2330 will be overhead of picking the TOWER, irrespective of you take the class during the summer or not.
What the students we talked to said is you just have to budget that through the year. All of the students said they had enough left over to pay for that through the general scholarship.
By the way has anyone received their scholarship offers yet? Hoping to get ours before the week is through !
@DadHuss @Phlipper I was accepted to the BMS program too! I hope they release more info about the program since I won’t be able to go to their open house.
I have not received the scholarship offer yet, but I have gone through the sample scholarship worksheet that they gave out at the November event. From what I calculated, if you take 14 credits, live in towers 4x2, and spend their estimated cost of books, it leaves about $170 per school week (30 something weeks- I can’t remember because I did the math a while ago) for all other expenses like travel, food, and fun money(this is assuming no meal plan). The $170/wk is AFTER setting aside the summer housing payment, so the towers are definitely doable!! This of course changes if you choose a 4x4 or additional credits and the scholarship amount that I used was not the official one. Hope that helps!
Wonder how the TOWER 1,2,3,4 are laid out and what would be the criteria for picking one over the other? How many exits do these buildings have and which street do they exit on to? Does anyone have any insight in this regard? Which exit and from which building would be the best to save you walking time to reach your class from your room? Time is precious, so I know from my days in school. Waiting for an elevator was always a killer when you have to get to the class.Does anyone have any insight in this regard?
@DadHuss Towers 4 at UCF is where the NM and Honors students typically live. Towers 4 is one of the best living arrangements I have ever seen for a student and I have personally been on dozens of campuses and seen the residence halls of most of those. The set up IMO is very friendly to students and their schedules. If you haven’t been there I would recommend a visit. The campus is large but has very little through traffic and a nice bus service as well as great walking paths. My son and I are going back again for the Scholars Day March 24. He has UCF as his top choice but wants to check on a few last things. Good luck to all as the process winds down.
@DadHuss @dbhawk Actually, I believe it’s Tower 3 that is the honors dorm. It right next to/over barnes and noble and very close to Knightros(cafeteria). From what I remember, Tower 3 is closer to other acedemic buildings than the other towers, may be wrong though. From what I’ve been told, it’s about a 10 min walk to the academic buildings. If you go on the ucf website there should be a map that can give you better perspective about its location.
@sewin2music You are correct about Towers 3, my mistake. Thanks
Received the Financial aid letter. Show 10800 per semester. Can anyone break down how this is spread between the tuition, house, books, food?
@DadHuss I haven’t gotten the letter yet but I’d be happy to once I do! Just out of curiosity, are you instate by any chance? If not, does the letter say anything about an out-of-state tuition waiver? I believe it’s supposed to work out to about $18k per semester so $10800 sounds a bit low. I do remember reading about a waiver on the ucf website so that might be the reason for the discrepancy.
@DadHuss I just got my letter! It says $18,000 per semester, so I’m guessing that you are instate then.
Ok so the out-of-state NM scholarship is $18,000 per semester. I am going to work with cost per year though to compensate for Towers summer housing- so that puts us at $36,000 per year. It’s not in the letter but Luke did say that every NM student would also be awarded an official NM scholarship as well, be it the official $2500 NMSC, corporate scholarship, or UCF’s official $2000. I am going to use the UCF official $2000 scholarship since most students are awarded this one. It is distributed as $250/ semester ($500 per year).
The following is the estimated cost for each section published by UCF:
Estimated Cost of Attendance: $36864
Total Scholarship Awarded: $36,500
A: Tuition and Fees: $20,978
(~$749.21/hr for OOS=> assume 14 credits per semester)
B: Room & Board: $9764
C: Books: $1152
D: Transportation: $1866
E: Personal Expenses: $3104
To figure out how much “extra money” you’ll have, it requires a bit of math. I am going to subtract the tuition and fees porttion (A) from the scholarship amount and COA because I am not changing it for this scenario. I’ll start off with my plan/situation and show how the numbers change with each step:
Estimated COA-Tuition: $15886
Scholarship-Tuition: $15522
B: Room & Board: $9764
C: Books: $1152
D: Transportation: $1866
E: Personal Expenses: $3104
- There is a slight discrepancy between the estimated COA and the scholarship ($364). Also, I don't know anyone that has paid nearly as much as the estimated cost of books. If you are smart and shop around online, it can be much cheaper. For that reason, I subtracted the $364 discrepancy from the book $ to total to $788/yr. sooo... C=$788 now! Also, after taking off the discrepancy, I have removed the "Estimated COA-Tuition" line.
Scholarship-Tuition: $15522
B: Room & Board: $9764
C: Books: $788
D: Transportation: $1866
E: Personal Expenses: $3104
- My parents have agreed to pay for my airfare when I come home during breaks and I will not have a car. From that, I have decided to allot the $1866 from transportation to the personal expenses category which now totals to E=$4970 and removed line D.
Scholarship-Tuition: $15522
B: Room & Board: $9764
C: Books: $788
E: Personal Expenses: $4970
- I have decided to live in the Towers which is a total of $9082 for Fall+Spring+Summer cost. (If any of you know how to get out of the summer portion without paying the ~$2000, please let me know! For now, I am going to assume that the dorm will remain an expensive storage unit for the first summer. :-( ). Anyways! I took the difference between line B and the towers' $9082 and ended up with $682 left over. This was applied to line E.
Scholarship-Tuition: $15522
B: Room (Towers): $9082
C: Books: $788
E: Personal Expenses: $5652
- I have decided not to get a meal plan and instead cook for myself. That is why there is no meal plan listed. Also, there are I believe about 32 weeks in a UCF school year. So I divided line E by 32 to get a weekly budget of about $176.63 for food, living expenses, uber, and fun money. *Just as a check, if you add B, C, and E together, you get the Scholarship- tuition!
Weekly budget= $176.63
This is just my scenario. If you stay in Neptune or else where, take fewer credits, and spend even less on books, you will have a bigger weekly left over/E category. If you stay in Northview, have the student pay for transportation, or take more credits, you will have less. For in-state students, I believe the only difference is in tuition, everything else should work out the same. I didn’t realize this would be so long! I just wanted to make sure I explain the math. I do like math… And I like to procrastinate from doing homework…ANYWAYS I hope this was a least a little bit helpful!
Thanks @sewin2music . My D got her letter today too! must have been a busy week for the mail department at UCF. I agree with you on the meal plan. I think with the full kitchen we will buy a minimal meal plan the first semester so she doesn’t have to worry about any of that and see where we go from there. Can’t wait until March 23rd!
We are In-State. My understanding is for Out-of-State they will still pay “Cost of Attendance”