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My son applied to the University of Florida but did not get in and people that I've talked to about it can't figure out why. His Gpa was over 4 and he graduated from one of the best public high schools in the county. He was selected to spent a year as a exchange student paid for by congress and passed a couple of advanced placement tests. His Sat scores were not great but met the admission criteria. His ACT scores were in top 10 percent. He is was not involved in volunteer work or sports. I have a daughter who is a dual enrollment high school senior attending St Pete College. I would appreciate any insight so that I could give my daughter some advice. Thanks!
My son applied to the University of Florida but did not get in and people that I've talked to about it can't figure out why. His Gpa was over 4 and he graduated from one of the best public high schools in the county. He was selected to spent a year as a exchange student paid for by congress and passed a couple of advanced placement tests. His Sat scores were not great but met the admission criteria. His ACT scores were in top 10 percent. He is was not involved in volunteer work or sports. I have a daughter who is a dual enrollment high school senior attending St Pete College. I would appreciate any insight so that I could give my daughter some advice. Thanks!
His Sat scores were not great
He is was not involved in volunteer work or sports.
My son applied to the University of Florida but did not get in and people that I've talked to about it can't figure out why. His Gpa was over 4 and he graduated from one of the best public high schools in the county. He was selected to spent a year as a exchange student paid for by congress and passed a couple of advanced placement tests. His Sat scores were not great but met the admission criteria. His ACT scores were in top 10 percent. He is was not involved in volunteer work or sports. I have a daughter who is a dual enrollment high school senior attending St Pete College. I would appreciate any insight so that I could give my daughter some advice. Thanks!
It's also the most popular school in Florida. A huge amount of applications.
Are you from Florida? It's a very popular in state school and the hardest Florida public university to get into, especially if you came from out of state. And the SAT and no out of classes activities doesn't help.
Sounds like a big lack of extracurricular activities is what did him in. Schools here usually look at the better ACT or SAT score. Doing worse on one of them usually isn't counted against you much.
Also, did your son have to write up an admissions letter? Maybe whoever read it didn't like what they saw.
Being out of state doesn't hurt you. In fact, it can help especially since schools view out-of-staters as cash cows who have to pay more for tuition, room, and board.
UF is okay, I view it as boring to be honest but I'm more of a city person myself. It's not the end of the world for your son as long as he has multiple backup schools.
We live in Florida. He belonged to a couple of clubs but he didn't do any volunteer work. He is finishing his first semester at USF where he was given a scholarship (based on merit not on financial need) and 9 college credits from placement tests. Like I mentioned before, I wanted some advise to give his sister. I have been told before that the school receives so many applications that could be why. I know he does not enjoy writing so it makes sense that his essay on his application was not satisfactory. His teachers would complain that he never wrote enough when it came to standardized exams - he would write for 5minutes and be done. That was something I never thought about and I will ask him about it.
This site (University of Florida - Admissions) from UF explains that the school uses a "holistic" philosophy - not based solely on academic stuff. Also shows that less than half of applicants with over a 4.0 GPA were admitted (and the middle 50% of admitted students are in the 4.1-4.4 range). With so many >4.0 applicants, you need above average SAT/ACT in addition to extracurriculars to really help your chances (and even then, its not a guarantee). UCLA gets the most applications of any school in the country (and also has a holistic review process). From what I was told (and this was years ago), each application is reviewed independently by 3-4 reviewers. You need all of them to recommend you for admission to be in the running. It's hard to know what each reviewer is looking for, so really anything can get you a rejection. Best not to read too much into it, or go looking for things that "guarantee" an admission.
A GPA means nothing without the test scores to back it up. One of the "top" public schools in the country is also subjective. If you are going off the Newsweek rankings--those are pretty meaningless since they are mostly based on how many students take, not pass, AP tests.
If he had a 4.1 on a 5.0 scale, that is still a B average...if he had lackluster test scores, no volunteer work and no extracurricular activities, he isn't a good candidate for schools with a lot of applicants. What are his SAT and ACT scores?
My son applied to the University of Florida but did not get in and people that I've talked to about it can't figure out why. His Gpa was over 4 and he graduated from one of the best public high schools in the county. He was selected to spent a year as a exchange student paid for by congress and passed a couple of advanced placement tests. His Sat scores were not great but met the admission criteria. His ACT scores were in top 10 percent. He is was not involved in volunteer work or sports. I have a daughter who is a dual enrollment high school senior attending St Pete College. I would appreciate any insight so that I could give my daughter some advice. Thanks!
University of FL is very competitive when it comes to admissions. Some kids are not accepted who are very good students. UF will want to see a student who has very good grades AND has a wide range of extracurricular activities.
Thanks everyone for your responses. I did not know anything about a holistic philosophy. Seems very fair to me now especially considering it is a public university in a highly populated state.
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