UF is adding early decision to Freshman decisions. UF adds Early Decision admissions option starting Fall '27 News | University of Florida
“Early Decision will be implemented for the upcoming admissions cycle and will benefit aspiring, first-time Gators entering during Fall 2027. While applications will open on Aug. 1, the application deadline for Early Decision will be Oct. 15.”
Keep in mind the SAT/ACT test dates. I think the “Materials Deadline” will be Oct 22nd (for ED, Nov 8th for EA and Jan 15th for RD, but you should verify these dates). For example, the September ACT test will likely the be last one you can take (and get results back by Oct 22nd).
SAT:
June 6, 2026 – Regular registration deadline: May 22, 2026
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August 22, 2026 – Regular registration deadline: August 7, 2026
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September 12, 2026 – Regular registration deadline: August 28, 2026
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October 3, 2026 – Regular registration deadline: September 18, 2026
ACT:
Good Luck!
GO GATORS!
Sad that this is the direction of the college admissions arms race. ED strongly benefits wealthier families and now top public schools are beginning to offer it. Not a great trend, in my opinion.
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100%
Especially for public universities.
Which public colleges use ED, and which of them started doing so recently?
At least the school won’t be giving additional merit as an incentive to families who can afford to pay full freight. If these families want to give up their options and commit, I don’t see a problem with it. The best candidate for admissions is a 1500+ SAT and willing and able to pay sticker price.
Michigan started ED this past cycle.
UVA also does ED but they’ve had it for a while.
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The state of Florida has a state scholarship program (Bright Futures) that may award up to full tuition for Florida resident students going to Florida public universities. The full tuition scholarship is based on 3.5 HS GPA (recalculated with +0.5 for AP/IB/AICE/DE – different from UF admission HS GPA recalculation) in a specified list of courses, 1330 SAT or 29 ACT, and 100 hours of volunteer and/or paid work.
It is likely that most Florida resident students who can get admitted to UF get the full tuition scholarship, so they are not paying full (in-state) price.
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About 80% of undergrads receive some type of aid or scholarship. Quite generous.
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Odd, since the UF frosh profile suggests that most UF entering frosh have HS GPA (4.5-4.7, which is probably something like 4.0-4.2 in the BF calculation) and SAT or ACT scores (1380-1510 or 31-34) well above the FAS full tuition criteria (3.5, 1330 or 29).
Or do many students fail to renew (3.0 college GPA in at least 24 credits per academic year)?
Agreed. I saw it worded elsewhere that “92% of in state freshmen qualify” for Bright Futures ( but there are levels to that I guess and not all levels pay 100%). So the % decreases when you include out of state and all classes
In-state undergraduates are 73% of University of Florida undergraduates.
But it does seem hard to reconcile the stats in the frosh profile with only 30-35% (fewer than half of in-state undergraduates) getting the full tuition scholarship that requires stats below the 25th percentile in the frosh profile.
Yes. Something is wrong about that stat. I deleted it and amended my original post. It may have been entire Florida system not UF.
Bright Futures has some other requirements than ACT score and gpa, although most student who want to meet those requirements (community service, 2 years of foreign language, certain classes) do it. There is also full COA for NMF (Benecquito). Very few instate students are paying full tuition. There are 3 levels of BF, but most of UF students should be on the top level as their gpa/scores need to be high to get into UF (unless in a special program).
Yes, students do lose their BF because they do not take (or finish) 12 credits, or take classes that don’t qualify (this is at all Florida schools, not just UF) College kids can be amazingly stupid to risk their scholarships but dropping classes to preserve their GPAs taking classes that are considered remedial so don’t count toward the 12 credits, repeat classes for better grades, etc. Beer does funny things to college freshman to make them think the rules don’t apply to them. BF is run by a state agency so the college can’t save the student or waive the requirements. Screw up and it’s over.
UF (and most Florida publics) used to have 2 main deadlines for admissions, so two pools. It wasn’t EA or ED, just an early deadline for first pool and then a later one for the second pool. The year my kids were seniors, the first pool deadline was Oct 16, and I found this out at a college night at their hs on…(drum roll) Oct. 15. Needless to say, they didn’t meet this (and neither ended up applying to the second pool either). I think the results came out some time in Dec, and then the next pool’s deadline was Jan or early Feb. It also may only have been for instate students as the GCs sent all the info electronically for those pools. They did away with that at some point. There were X number of seats in the first pool and another X number in the second pool and it wasn’t supposed to matter which pool you were in but of course it did. I do not think they told them if they were fall starts or summer A or summer B, so even if accepted, kids still worried they couldn’t start when they wanted to. You know, there were football tickets to be considered!
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2 Perspectives -
- Commonapp makes it easier to apply to 20 schools. Students take them up on that offer. Colleges get flooded with applications, and do not have an easy way to manage their class. They feel they have no choice but to implement ED.
- Colleges are looking for ways to be perceived as more competitive in an increasingly complex landscape. Florida can’t increase applications with test optional students (like some other schools are effectively doing), so they may feel need to lock in a substantial percentage of their class ED as they compete with U Miami and similar T10 public overlaps.
When will families realize that “YIELD LESS ED” may be the metric of college preference? Who wins when students can freely choose? Isn’t this more important than admit rate?
If admit rate tells us how many students were willing to submit an application, and yield tells us how many students chose a school, why do families spend so much more time discussing admit rate?
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@melissa96 Two questions:
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Do you know what proportion of the class UF intends to enroll via ED?
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Will the NPC be updated to include estimated merit aid (or a range of merit aid?)
UF and FSU are offering ED only to US residents.