Florida universities: Where academic excellence meets athletic prowess

Florida recently overtook New York as the nation’s third-largest state.

With a booming population of 22 million and growing, the Sunshine State is making considerable investments in its public institutions of higher learning, while private universities are also seeing surging enrollment.

Here is a look at some of the top universities in Florida based on enrollment rates.

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Long famous for its legendary football program, the University of Florida now boasts an impressive academic record, and entrance is extremely competitive, with an acceptance rate of just 23%.

Located in northern Florida in Gainesville, it is the flagship school of the State University System of Florida. As the fifth-largest university in the country, it features over 57,000 students studying at 16 academic colleges.

Additionally, it offers numerous graduate programs, including medicine, pharmacy, engineering, law, business administration and dentistry.

Founded in 1851, Florida State University is located in Florida’s capital, Tallahassee.

Comprised of 16 colleges, it features a student body of over 45,000 hailing from all 50 states and 130 countries. It has an annual budget of $2.2 billion, and its athletics programs have won 20 NCAA Division I national championships. It currently offers 104 baccalaureate programs, 112 master’s degree programs, and 70 doctoral programs.

The University of Miami is a private research university, located in the Coral Gables neighborhood of Miami.

The university enrollment stands at nearly 20,000 students, and the school is the second-largest employer in Miami-Dade County. Like UF and FSU, it is renowned for its athletics programs, particularly football, in which it has won five national championships. Admission is highly competitive, with a 2023 acceptance rate of 18.5%.

Formerly known as Florida Technical University, the University of Central Florida is located near Orlando in unincorporated Orange County and features a study body of over 68,000.

It is particularly strong in science, technology, engineering and math, with a historical relationship with the U.S. Space Program at the nearby Kennedy Sapce Center. Located 13 miles east of downtown Orlando, the school features 230 degrees across 13 colleges.

Heavily research-focused, it is known for corporate partnerships with major companies, including Disney, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Universal.

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Florida International University, commonly known as FIU, was founded in 1965 by the state legislature and is located in Miami-Dade County in University Park.

Being the third-largest university in the state, it has a budget of over $1.7 billion, with over 45,000 undergraduate students and 10,000 graduate students. FIU offers 60 baccalaureate programs, 81 master’s programs and 34 doctoral programs. It features a considerable international student population, with the largest student groups coming from Venezuela, China, Kuwait, India and Brazil.

Florida Atlantic University is a public research university in Boca Raton, with 180 undergraduate and graduate programs across 10 colleges.

Its 30,000 students hail from all 50 states and 180 countries. The school consistently ranks as one of the most diverse in the nation, and it receives high marks for its two featured honors programs: the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College and the University Scholars Program.

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Florida A&M, located in Tallahassee, is a historically Black land-grant school, founded in 1887.

It is the third-largest historically Black university in the nation, and its creation was promoted by prominent abolitionist and Florida legislator Jonathan C. Gibbs. It offers 54 bachelor’s degrees, 29 master’s degrees, and 12 doctoral programs, and competes in NCAA Division I in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

The University of South Florida was founded in 1956, with its flagship campus in Tampa.

Additionally, it has satellite campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. Its 14 colleges feature over 240 undergraduate and graduate level programs. The fourth-largest school in the state, its 50,000 student body comes from all 50 states and 145 countries.

Known for its cutting edge research, the USF community boasts over 2,400 patents, while the National Academy of Inventors and the Florida Invetors Hall of Fame are located on school grounds.

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