re: UF ranked 55th best univeristy in the entire WORLD!!!!

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Tolbert,

Just curious, but how long ago did you attend UF? Things have really changed lately, as you have to pretty much be a valedictorian in order to get accepted as a freshman. I don't know what the stats are for the entire university, but I'd guess that 90% of the engineers I know @ UF are from India......as it is highly competitive (very few dumbasses as you described).

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You have to be a valedictorian? Now you're just speaking in hyperbole.

I attended UF in the mid-to-late 90's. But I have a close relative who graduated last year and another one who graduated a couple of years prior. They were pretty good students in high school but certainly weren't elite in any way, i.e., they weren't valedictorians and they didn't have exceptionally high test scores or GPAs.

They've told me about people they knew at UF and I also met many of their UF friends at graduation. Some were pretty accomplished, some were average, some of them were total dumbasses. According to them, the student body is basically the same as when I went to school. You've got your overachievers, underachievers, dumb jocks, pot heads, etc.

UF is a bit more selective than when I went to school but still accepts nearly 40% of applicants, which isn't all that selective compared to the really prestigious universities. I was in the honors program at UF and my test scores and GPA would have been good enough to get accepted into the UF honors program today. Yet my test scores were not exceptionally high. According to Wikipedia, "The fall 2011 incoming freshman class had an average 4.3 GPA, 1963 SAT score, and 30 ACT score." These numbers aren't indicative of a prestigious, highly-competitive university. "To be invited to apply to the [honors] program, freshmen must have a weighted GPA of at least 4.0 and an SAT score of 2070 out of 2400 or an ACT score of 33." These aren't highly-selective criteria either.

I hear labels like "public ivy" and "Harvard of the South" being thrown around by some UF fans, but really UF is probably a few notches below any of the Ivy League schools. However, UF is still a really good public university; you can get a decent education there and find career success after graduation. But as much as I love my alma mater, there's really nothing prestigious about it. UF was my "safety school" and would still be today, and I'm sure it still is for many high school students in Florida. (BTW, I did get accepted into my first-choice school, Georgia Tech, but then I visited and said "no way." That place sucked. UF was like a paradise in comparison, so I chose to go there instead. I'm glad I did.)

Regarding your "India" comment... when I studied EE at UF there were tons and tons of students from India. All I remember is that they were really intelligent, hard-working, and almost all of them had horrendously bad B.O. We had lots of east Asians as well. And there were almost no girls in any of my classes. The College of Engineering was much more competitive than most of the other UF colleges. Those who couldn't hack engineering usually switched to Business Administration, which was insanely easy... and still is.

is this one of those moral victories?

I don't get it please elaborate...