<p>It can get a little hazy distinguishing a commuter college from a residential college. I think the American Association of Universities (AAU) considers a primarily residential university to be one where at least 25% of undergraduates live in on campus or campus affiliated housing. So regular on campus dorms count, plus off campus privately owned apartments and private dorms affiliated with the university that are provided with certain minimum university police protection, private security protection, and traditional RA type supervision by university personnel–all this housing can qualify as “on campus” housing. In other words, even if a university with 30,000 undergraduates only has 5000 dorm beds on campus, if you add the apartment compexes near the university–the university could conceivably be classified a primarily residential university and not a commuter university.</p>
<p>Even though the UNF/UWF question has evolved into a discussion on commuter schools. . .S has a friend at UCF who lived on campus his freshman year, but couldn’t get housing for summer or sophomore year as they were reserving it for incoming freshmen. Guess they need even more dorms.</p>
<p>In reply to original post. . .youngest S and I toured both UNF and UWF. He actually liked them both. They are definitely not UF/FSU quality, but they seem to be a good choice for a student who might otherwise be lost at UF or FSU. Or who don’t have the test scores to get in. (S has great grades with AP and Honors classes, but not so great SAT) Seems like they try with what resources they have. In fact, for what it is worth, we have eaten at FSU (Suwannee), UNF, UCF(Nitros), UWF and Florida Southern (private school in Lakeland), UWF had by far the best food and a very nice dining area.
But their regular dorms (not honors) were nothing to write home about. Very cramped. We saw an RA’s dorm at UNF and it was beautiful–overlooking the nature area.<br>
Both campuses have a common green area for the ultimate frisbee, concerts, and all other college activities. And both have boardwalks through wooded nature trails. Very nice.
The only thing I didn’t like about UNF, although a few ducks are cute, the amount of duck poop everywhere, including outside the cafeteria was kinda gross.</p>
<p>The only reason I went to UNF was because my parents wanted me to stay close to home my first year or so (I live in Jacksonville). I was accepted into a couple of other schools, but not allowed to attend… haha. Kinda disappointing, but I am going to FSU now so it’s okay :o)</p>
<p>Most of my friends who go there live in town and attended HS in the area. A lot of them live @ home with their parents, so being at UNF is a good deal. They have a BF scholarship and free housing…
The quality is not quite up to FSU, but it’s a new and developing school… with no football team. It is still growing.
To me it is a commuter school because it is far from downtown. You need a car to get there, because it’s kinda in the middle of nowhere in a sense. It’s near the beach.
Same with UCF, which is 16 mins. away from Orlando. It’s pretty far from downtown and an awful, traffic-ridden drive.
I’m not a big fan of Orlando. The layout of UCF is a lot like the layout of UNF.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with attending a commuter school. In fact, there are many well-known and nationally ranked universities that due to their geographical constraints are considered commuter schools. When UCF was founded as Florida Tech, it was built to train much-needed scientists and engineers for the burgeoning Kennedy Space Center nearby. No one thought it would one day become the fifth largest university in the United States. As the original Florida Tech, UCF still is home to nationally ranked programs in engineering and computer science. In fact, UCF engineering is ranked ahead of many, much older engineering programs at schools such as Clemson, LSU, Kansas, Kentucky, BYU, Cal State, Oklahoma State, SMU, Texas Tech, Tulane, Alabama, Georgia, Miami(FL), Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Florida State. With nearly 40 different degree programs in our engineering college alone, UCF is one of the most established in the southeast. In the Fall of 2008, incoming freshmen engineering students had an average SAT score of 1247 and incoming freshman honors engineering students had an average SAT score of 1376. </p>
<p>UNF began admitting electrical engineering students in 1992 and civil/mechanical engineering students in 1999. Now, granted, UCF was founded as an engineering tech school. However, who’s to say that UNF won’t one day have a nationally ranked engineering program. </p>
<p>As far as the on-campus housing, UCF is actually looking into building yet another on-campus housing community. With nearly 10,000 beds, UCF offers one of the largest numbers of university housing in the Southeast. Nine on-campus housing communities, their on-campus Greek Row featuring over 15 fraternity and sorority houses, their Rosen College of Hospitality Management campus near International Drive, and their large number of off-campus affiliated housing have helped establish UCF as a mainly residential university. I’ll admit, in my days at FSU, I thought UCF to be a commuter school as much as the next person, but you can’t visit UCF and leave thinking they’re still a commuter school, no matter what people say. The longer I’ve been at UCF, the more I’ve grown fond of it. In fact, it’s a long-standing tradition here that UCF stands for Under Construction Forever.</p>
<p>You sound like you work for UCF :P</p>
<p>I’m glad for this thread about some of the other FL schools! Due to the rising tuitions and cutbacks, etc, it’s nice to know that there are different options and alternatives…and fairly decent ones.</p>
<p>Yeah. I believe overall that Florida has pretty good universities… am I right? These days you can’t have a 2.5 to get into the better ones “directional” ones (UWF, UCF, UNF, USF).</p>
<p>I think we’re going to be seeing something in Florida very similar to what we’re seeing in the state of California. The UC system is one of the largest university systems in the country and we see numerous institutions hold up very well on their own. In addition, many private schools in California are outstanding. California universities riddle the national rankings. Stanford(4), Cal Tech(6), UC Berkeley(21), UCLA(25), USC(27), UC San Diego(35), UC Davis(44), UC Irvine(44), UC Santa Barbara(44), Pepperdine(56), UC Riverside(89), UC Santa Cruz (96), University of San Diego(102), University of the Pacific (102), and the University of San Francisco(127) are all nationally ranked Tier 1 universities. </p>
<p>In Florida, the big three academically – UF[49], UM[51], and FSU[102] – are the only schools in the national Tier 1 of universities(there is no Tier 2, as Tier 1 encompasses the top 50% of universities). Following them in Tier 3 are UCF, USF, and Florida Tech. Finally, in Tier 4(the bottom 25% of national universities) are Barry University, Florida A&M, FAU, FIU, Nova Southeastern, and UWF. Because UNF offers such few doctoral programs, it is ranked in a different category (Master’s Universities) which is split into regions. In the South region, UNF is 43rd. </p>
<p>With declining state budgets comes higher selectivity. This has been clearly evident in the past few years as schools that were once fallback options are seeing intelligent crops of their own. The average SAT score at UCF last fall was 1220 with the average SAT score at UCF’s Honors College being 1370. UCF also ranks 34th in the United States in enrollment of National Merit Scholars.</p>
<p>It is an exciting time for Florida universities. Although budget cuts have developed grim outlooks for many of our state’s schools, they are helping to improve the credentials of all Florida schools collaboratively.</p>
<p>National merit students are bought by universities so they are not a significant indicator of academic quality. Both FSU and then UF have stopped the spending of significant sums on NM freshmen.</p>
<p>UCF isn’t that impressive. I visited it, and wasn’t pleased.</p>
<p>Gradboy…UCF had a awesome year in new patent approvals…better than the perennial leader in the state…and a great accomplishment for UCF and the state as a whole. Better than most of those Cal unis too…major props.</p>
<p>I do feel like pretty much every Florida school continues to get better each year.</p>
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<p>To be honest with you, anything can be patented. People who file for patents usually question whether or not its worth spending thousands and thousands of dollars every year to keep it in the patent office. A true measure of useful intellectual property is return on investment from the patents.</p>
<p>You’re absolutely right, gators :)</p>
<p>You are selling the significance of patent awards (as opposed to patent applications) short. It is simply not true that “anything can be patented”…I assume you are aware that there is a multi-year review and defense process that the inventor must sucessfully negotiate. Further, patent awards are an accepted metric when comparing business research and development productivity. To dismiss this metric is absurd.</p>
<p>UF is usually the state leader in this category…by a wide margin…but this year UCF was tops, and was one of the best in the country to boot.
I do agree that mind-to-market technology transfer is also important. But quantifying revenue from a patent comes much later in the process…if ever…in a research environment…which is what a university is.</p>
<p>I’m not selling UCF short by any means. But I can tell you that anything that is unique or different (ie not prior art or isn’t considered “common knowledge”) in any way shape or form can be patented. </p>
<p>I am in a research group at the electronics/communications corporation I work for and my job is to write disclosures. I talk to patent lawyers all the time and I can tell you for sure that one of the main criteria for spending the large amounts of money to file for a patent is 1) How much money can we make and how relative is it to our business (ie can we use it in our products to actually make money off it) and 2) is it detectable (ie if you can’t prove whether or not some other product/company is infringing on your patent then its not worth spending the money protecting something that can’t be controlled and proven in a court room).</p>
<p>I agree that the number of patent awards is one of the metrics but one must look closer at the significtance and impact to get a better idea of “quality”.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the national rankings for patents don’t rank the number of patents each school applies for, but rather that school’s patent efficiency. </p>
<p>I see goufgators’s point that a certain technology can be slightly altered and then patented, leading to the possibility that many different forms of a product can be patented. However, the Patent Scorecard determines the strength of a university’s patents as measured by how frequently they are cited in subsequent patents. As far as the “Industry Impact” of its patents, UCF actually ranked third nationally in that category. </p>
<p>[IPToday.com</a> - Intellectual Property Today - The Patent Scorecard 2008 Universities](<a href=“http://www.iptoday.com/articles/2008-9-oldach2.asp]IPToday.com”>www.IPToday.com - Intellectual Property Today - The Patent Scorecard 2008 Universities)</p>
<p>As for sophiegirl, simply because UCF received more applications than any other university in Florida this past year doesn’t mean UCF can please everyone. :)</p>
<p>Gradboy, you posted earlier that you attended UF then FSU and finally UCF. Why did you find it necessary to transfer?</p>
<p>Personal reasons. </p>
<p>“There is in human nature generally more of the fool than of the wise.”
-Sir Francis Bacon</p>
<p>I’ll leave it at that. :)</p>