I’m in state for UF, I live in South Florida, and have family somewhat nearby in Orlando that I’m close with, and have many friends that are going that are studious like me. I toured the campus, but I was sick and had like 3 hours of sleep so I was not taking things in the right way. We also did not see the entire town of Gainesville, nor the entire campus, and since the tour was unguided I did not get a ton of information. I have an engineering info session on Tuesday so I will learn a lot more. Possibly will go visit again to get a better feel because I was rushed the first time as well. For Virginia Tech, I just got back from touring and I loved the campus, really beautiful, but I know that one should not make a decision about how pretty the campus or classrooms are even though they were amazing. I had a guided tour and info sessions and learned a lot. I’m in the Honors College at Virginia Tech, but not for UF. I did not apply for UF Honors, but if I went I would apply after my first semester or 1st year. For either school, I know that they are big of course, but I do not feel like being part of a frat.
For VT I am also in the engineering school and am planning to do CS, Data Centric Computing, or one the CPE majors with a concentration in something software related like machine learning. For UF, I do not know exactly, but am thinking of doing CS or the Data Science major or possibly CPE with a minor in of those, so pretty much identical majors for either school. For VT they said since I’m honors i get heavy priority for course requests, and at UF I would not get this preference, but I’ve heard that Honors College is not a crazy big deal.
I also did research on rankings and saw that VT engineering is ranked really high, but overall UF as a school is ranked higher, but for comp sci and engineering on various sites UF is not crazy far behind. UF also has that new data science center set to be completed in April 2023 which excites me a lot, but I know that VT definitely is established in this field already even if there is not a dedicated building to it, idk.
Do any of you guys who have knowledge about either or both schools and about these specific programs have any insight on what decision I should make? And any knowledge or takes on the towns for each school, and the clubs and competition clubs, internships, research, coop opportunities for these programs? And any general insight on these schools as a whole?