This is the second installment in our series about what’s going on in great schools near universities whose men’s basketball teams made the Final Four this year. On this page: The University of Florida, Gainesville. The 2012 enrollment was almost 50,000, and the university accepts about 46 percent of its applicants.
Breaking the data down by the GPA of applicants for the high school graduating class of 2013, though, shows that the university admits a much higher percentage of students with high school GPAs in the 4.0-and-above range, compared to the proportion of applicants admitted with GPAs below 3.3:
- GPA 4.0 and above: 10,632 admitted out of 12,612 applicants (84.3%)
- GPA between 3.7 and 3.99: 1,433 of 5,647 (25.4%)
- GPA between 3.3 and 3.69: 327 of 5,198 (6.3%)
- GPA below 3.3: 51 of 3,786 (1.3%)
The Orlando Sentinel reports that some Florida high schools change students’ grades in Advanced Placement classes if the students get a low grade in the more difficult classes but score well on the AP exam.
The story opens with a ninth-grade student who received a D in her AP human geography class but scored a 4 on the AP exam given at the end of the course. (A score of 3 or 4 is generally considered the threshold, out of 5, at which students can receive college credit for the high school courses, depending on the college.)
Because she went to one high school, her grade wasn’t changed, even with an outstanding performance on the AP exam. If she had received the same D and the same 4 on the AP exam, however, while attending another high school in the same district, her grade would have been changed to an A.
“They’re going to apply for the same colleges, and they’re going to be preferred, not because they’re a better student but because they picked a better ZIP code?” the girl’s mother was quoted as saying.
The paper then talked to Chandra Mitchell, interim director of admissions at the University of Florida, who said she wasn’t aware of the AP issue but differences in grading polices from one high school to another are often an issue when it comes to college admission. “We hear that all the time: that the grading practices are different,” she said.
