UCF has earned a Silver Award on the 2022-23 Military Friendly Schools list. This year, 665 schools earned awards in Gold, Silver and Bronze. A Silver Award is granted to institutions within 20% of the 10th-ranked organization.
Founded in 2003, Military Friendly is an organization that measures organizations’ commitment, effort, and success in creating sustainable and meaningful benefit for the military community. Military Friendly Schools strive toward and succeed in the areas that matter most in helping veterans make the transition from the military to school and, ultimately, satisfying careers in the civilian world. Earning the designation shows a school meets the minimum criteria.
Military Friendly’s final ratings for its Schools list were determined by combining each institution’s survey responses, government/agency public data sources, and measurements across retention, graduation, job placement, repayment, persistence, and loan default rates for all students and specifically, for student-veterans.
There are about 1,400 current student-veterans at UCF, and there are a range of services, including the Office of Military and Veteran Student Success, offered to support them.
In September 2021, U.S. News & World Report ranked UCF the 86th best college for veterans. In January, U.S. News & World Report ranked UCF 8th for online bachelor’s programs for veterans.
UCF is also home to UCF RESTORES, a nonprofit clinical research center and treatment clinic established to change the way post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related concerns are understood, diagnosed, and treated. The organization’s unique approach to treatment — combining exposure therapy, emerging technology, as well as individual and group therapy sessions — has resulted in 66% of participants with combat-related trauma and 76% of first responders no longer meeting the diagnostic criteria for PTSD following three weeks of intensive treatment.
