Article about UF's admissions

SSobick
Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:43:42 +0000

As applicant pool widens, UF gets used to saying ‘no’

If you’re already a student at UF, consider yourself lucky. Odds are, you wouldn’t have been accepted if you applied this year.

Most of those who applied to UF for the 2005-06 school year didn’t get in. That year’s acceptance rate of about 48 percent was the lowest in the university’s history.

While acceptance rate statistics for this year haven’t been released, there were 8 percent more applicants and no substantial increase in the number of openings.

With more applicants, the university is forced to turn down thousands of qualified candidates.

This selectivity is a growing trend in elite schools throughout the country, said David Hawkins, the director of public policy for the National Association of College Admission Counseling, in a phone interview.

Provost Janie Fouke said the university doesn’t have enough room to accept every qualified candidate.

There are roughly 6,600 openings for the freshmen class each year. This year, roughly 25,000 people applied to UF.

UF President Bernie Machen wrote in a document on the Office of the President’s Web site that the university has not increased its academic criteria, such as setting a higher SAT score that must be reached for consideration. However, he wrote, standards are naturally increasing due to the large applicant pool.

In 2002, the SAT score of the middle 50 percent of incoming freshman was between 1160 and 1360. In 2005, it was between 1220 and 1410.

Though UF applicant qualifications increased, they stayed the same for colleges nationwide, averaging between 870 and 1180 for the same years.

Standards are also increasing for transfer students.

Albert Matheny, the director of academic advising for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said the college used to receive about 1,400 applications for the 1,000 openings the college allots to transfer students. Recently, transfer applications increased to 2,000. For the 2007-08 academic year, he said CLAS could receive 3,000.

Matheny said that sometime in the near future, the college would have to turn qualified transfer applicants away.

And the college isn’t just looking at numbers, he said. Matheny said he recently turned down an applicant with a 4.1 grade point average and a 1400 on the SAT because he had no extracurricular activities.

He predicts there will be more competition for admission for both freshman and transfer students. And he doesn’t expect a large increase in the number of freshmanclass openings.

Hawkins, the public policy director, said he thinks future increases in UF’s capacity will allow the university to accommodate more students and maintain high acceptance rates.

But Matheny said UF doesn’t have the funding. It can’t provide some of the resources it should with the number of students enrolled now, he said.

There aren’t enough science labs, he said. And fewer incoming students need to take the easy-to-staff general education classes, he said. More are enrolling with AP credits and need to take the upper-division classes taught by professors. All of this costs more money, he said.

Matheny said it’s a difficult situation, especially for alumni whose children are being turned down.

“What are we going to do? Let your kid in and not the kid who’s smarter?” he said. “It’s hard for people to understand,” he said, “but it makes UF a much better place.”