Monday, September 8, 2008

They Get It

The Central Florida Future, in an essay on UCF’s legacy policy, nicely summarizes one of UCF’s major problems:

At one point, UCF was one of the most accepting schools in Florida, which is how the enrollment numbers jumped so quickly and made the school the sixth largest in the nation. Now, it's coming back to hurt the quality of the school because as the student body increased exponentially, the faculty numbers remained relatively unchanged.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

UCF Hates Critical Thinking

UCF is arguing that they have one of the most selective medical schools in the country. They use an inappropriate statistic to suggest that UCF’s medical school is more selective than Harvard, Yale, or Duke.

As of Aug. 22, UCF will accept one of every 67.5 applicants for the charter class. That’s more selective than Harvard (1 in 40.2), Yale (1 in 50.2) or Duke (1 in 53) were last year, according to data in the 2009-2010 Association of American Medical Colleges Medical School Admission Requirements guide.

UCF’s number appears so impressive because they are accepting an atypically small class (40 students), and UCF has gotten a lot of applications from weak and/or poor students who know better than to waste their time and money on very selective, expensive schools. When comparing GPAs and MCAT scores, does anyone seriously think the UCF inaugural class will be as impressive as those at Harvard, Yale, or Duke?

Comparing UCF to Harvard is typical of the administrative culture at UCF where everyone is expected to engage in hyperbolic bragging that typifies a wrestler in the WWE. If you are a reasonable person associated with UCF, you cringe from embarrassment whenever you read stuff like this.