go gators

Melissa,
On the UNC website was a link to a Kiplinger's article which ranked "best buys" in the country of public colleges/universities. UF was ranked 5th in the country (followed by New College in 6th). You'll have to look at the article (from 2002 or 2003, I think), but it ranks the schools according to percent of students with over 600 in verbal, 600 in math on SAT as one measure to determine the quality of the student body, teacher/student ratio, cost, yada yada yada.

Also in the US News college report I looked at on line, UF is ranked 50th, FSU is 110.

[***Detour for my favorite current rant: The cost of attending anything other than a state school is outrageous. While as a National Merit Finalist (with all the goods, varsity sports, honor societies, church and community service etc etc) my son received some generous offers, none came close to the approx. $12,000(before you apply Bright Futures) to attend a state school. If any of the schools to which ds applied had made the final cost close to that $12,000 figure, we would have had some hard decisions to make. But everyone came with offers that would require us to pay around $20,000 or so.

The Kiplinger article, dated though it is, suggests out a trend which I think is going on sort of underground right now among families who are rebelling at these high tuitions. (And when you read that colleges are building multi-million dollar recreational facilities to "attract students", well, you can't help but think that if they didn't build that stuff, they could offer an affordable education! Note they aren't putting that money into grants to help pay for college, or even into professors' salaries!!)End of rant.***]

I think it is this demand for an affordable tuition which has created the demand at state schools and which has allowed them to become more selective. Even University of Texas ("small-planet" sized school) has become more selective, with the middle 50% of its freshman class scoring a composite 1230 on the SAT. I have an old copy of the Princeton Review Paying for College book. It talks about the "public Ivies", and mentions U. of Michigan and U. or Vermont. (I don't think they update this book very often, because I looked at a current copy on the bookstore, and they stil only list U. Mich and U. Vermont.) But I think I would have UNC and UVa on that list for sure; and probably, now, UF. If you compare the freshman profiles of those schools with the profile of UF, you'll see that UF is getting close to being as selective as UNC and UVa.

I can only tell you about UF because we didn't look at FSU; but these were the things we considered.

An admission person from UF spoke here a couple years ago, and said that UF was committted to trying to stop the "brain drain" of Florida students. That is, the tendency of really smart kids to go out of state for college. UF now has the highest number of Merit Finalists of all public colleges in the country; and is 2nd to Harvard, I think, overall.

All that to say, the student body at UF may be different than it was when my husband graduated from high school in the late 60's. I have heard it suggested that a student might want to go to a college where the average SAT scores of the student body are within 200 points of his own scores. I haven't looked at FSU, because ds didn't apply there, but that might be something to consider.

At any rate, going to a state school in Florida isn't the sacrifice for a smart kid that it might have been years ago, (or, as ds said, the sacrifice it might be if we lived in, say, Mississippi). So UF or FSU, I guess it depends on your kid!

FWIW, ds has decided to do Honors College at UF. You know, when we did the campus visit a while ago, it was important to ds to know he might be able to have a couple dimes to rub together for the occasional pizza or movie or concert. Even if we remortgaged the house or got a bunch of loans so he could do one of the out of state or private colleges to which he applied, it would still be very hard for us to give him much discretionary spending money. I remember in college I could rarely go out with my friends: as the eldest of 5 kids, my family didn't have as much $$ to send me for incidentals. Attending a state school means we have some flexibility that way, too.

So, in spite of the frustrations, we see this decision as a win for our kid and for our family! We also know we'll be better able to help with grad school if and when the time comes.

Let us all know if you have a gator or a Seminole!! Good luck with the decision--we made the final one at breakfast just this morning!