How do people afford Ohio State University, Columbus?

My daughter was accepted to OSU Columbus campus. She is very excited. That’s the good news. The bad news is we don’t think she can afford to attend. OSU offers the puniest merit scholarships we have seen of the 15+ universities she has visited. She has applied for and been accepted to eight universities and received generous financial aid packages from all of them accept OSU, which is the university she most wants to attend. We don’t even know when to expect notification from OSU if she actually has been awarded a merit scholarship. They don’t provide this anywhere on their website or her admission letter.

She is between a rock and a hard place financially. Her father is deceased and while I don’t currently work (disabled), I have remarried and my husband has a decent job. However, he has no intention of paying for her college as he has his own kids and can barely afford to put them through school, much less add my child. Yet, FAFSA considers his income to be my income, making her ineligible for need-based financial aid. OSU offers almost nothing in merit scholarships, even for the highest tier and they have set the qualification standards so that she probably won’t qualify for even the lowest tier. She has a 3.97 GPA (unweighted) and good ACT/SAT scores, but attends a small charter school that has very strict academic standards. This means she may not be in the top 20% of her class, which is the criteria for the smallest merit scholarship. OSU offers all sorts of money to non-residents, but hardly anything for people who are actually FROM Ohio. How do state residents afford OSU when merit scholarships are so small, so few and FAFSA considers them to be well-to-do, when they really don’t have any money other than a few small outside scholarships? Does anyone have any helpful advice?

Tuition is only 11K per year in state. That helps.

Ohio State has become a much more competitive school (when I went there decades ago there was a one page application and if they had spaces, you were in). More selective admissions today which has resulted in higher average stats. Strong business, engineering and education programs. A lot of money spent recently updating facilities. A lot of the top kids from top schools in the State of Ohio are going there. They are also getting a fair number of kids from out of state and international students as well. As a result, they do not need to offer much in the way of merit to get good students. For example Maximus scholarship was $6,000/year in 2015. Its now $3,000/year.

President Drake was driver of reducing merit aid and increasing need based aid. From a business perspective it makes sense. And colleges are run much more like businesses than many people like or than they were 20-30 years ago.

None of that is helpful for your daughter. More just a background in terms of why the school is with respect to merit aid. They do have departmental scholarships based on merit. And there are jobs available such as tutoring, teaching assistants and cafeteria positions which can help bridge financial gaps. And depending on the major, there are also paid internship opportunities which can provide another source of funding. Good luck to you and your daughter.

Affordability is a common decision most people have to make at some point.

OSU is one of the top state schools around, making it not only difficult to get accepted, but even more difficult to get merit money.

And the OOS money is mostly funny money. It brings the cost down to what OOS students would pay at their own state school, enticing a lot of kids to pay big bucks to OSU. It is a money maker that actually helps in-state students keep costs down.

Can your daughter attend a regional campus for two years to save money, and transfer to the main campus?

Have you contacted the OSU financial aid office to see what your options are?

Worst case, sounds like your daughter has earned a lot of options for her future! Congrats!

I don’t have much info on OSU. but here’s one little thing to think of . . . .

at this point -there is a tax credit called the American Opportunity Tax Credit. You can get back up to $2500 a year if you pay up to $4K in tuition and fees. (there are income limits - like $160K or $180K) – but it’s a nice little credit back that could be used for the next year with tuition. Just a little thing to keep in mind . . . .

I am sorry for your and your daughter’s predicament. I suggest consulting a financial advisor; some charge by the hour and are not prohibitively costly. For us, it was well worth the $300 spent.

Did her late father have life insurance? Your new husband’s intentions to pay or not pay for your daughter’s education would have been one of the issues discussed early on in that relationship.

You have generous merit aid from 8 other colleges. Your daughter will get a good education at one of them.

If it was just about tuition, she’d probably be able to obtain enough money to cover most, if not all of that. OSU also requires freshmen to live on campus, very expensive, so she needs all the help she can get.

Ohio State now requires students to live on campus for the first 2 years. And yes on campus housing is expensive. There is some new off campus housing which is even more expensive.

What are the other schools she’s been accepted to, and are they affordable?

What is her budget for college?

Take that budget, and add $3-4K from summer earnings, $5500 first year federal loan, $1.5-2K school year earnings to get what she can afford.

Right now, the most affordable option for her is to attend the University of Dayton., which is ironic because they are private and have very high tuition. But, their merit scholarship package was generous. She will have to commute about 45 minutes each way, but without paying extra for room and board, this is the most affordable option for her. Miami University also offered a generous merit scholarship package, but their room and board are higher than OSU’s, so it would cost her about the same to attend there. She really had her heart set on OSU, as her father went there and she has grown up in a family with a lot of OSU spirit.

Have you run the net price calculator for tOSU? https://sfa.osu.edu/incoming-freshmen/about-aid/net-price-calculator It can provide an estimate of what you might receive in their FA package which is usually posted by the end of March. Did she set up her BuckeyeMail so she’ll be notified when it’s ready? http://undergrad.osu.edu/apply/freshmen-columbus/after-you-are-admitted

"Financial aid awards for newly admitted students are available to view online in late March. " https://sfa.osu.edu/incoming-freshmen/apply-for-aid/step-by-step

@buckeyemomx3…Have some hope. Decisions, do not have to be made this early in January. Plenty of scholarships are awarded between now and the month of March.

College is very expensive but in IMHO no school is worth going into lots of debt. Sometimes, you have to make hard choices. Keep in mind that the first two years of college pretty much all the students have to take prerequisites courses. Maybe a local community college is the best option for the first two years and then transfer to OSU for the last two years.

Another consideration is the number of AP classes the student is able to get credit for. This could cut down the number of years at any 4-year school.

The posters above have given good answers. OSU doesn’t give much merit aid to in-state students because it doesn’t have to. The in-state tuition rate is relatively low to begin with. OSU doesn’t have to compete with BGSU, WSU, OU, Akron, Kent, or even Miami to get the in-state students it wants. If OSU gave the same merit aid percentages that Miami gives, OSU’s average ACT/SAT average for incoming freshmen would jump even higher than it already is, which is high. The OSU president made a decision not to go that direction. If he had, OSU’s academic rating versus its peers would have gone up. OSU would have made up a good bit of ground on Univ Michigan.

Out-of-state (OOS) merit aid is a completely different animal. Like most schools, OSU grossly overprices OOS tuition and give discounts to select OOS students it is interested in attracting. My daughter is a freshman at OSU and is from Connecticut. She got National Buckeye ($13.5K) plus Trustee ($1.0K) plus a departmental scholarship ($1.1K) vs. $31.9K OOS tuition. That leaves a tuition bill of $16.3K, which is still well in excess of the in-state rate. If she studies at OSU for anything more than eight regular semesters, she will pay the full $31.9K OOS tuition. Some OOS students will come to OSU without any merit aid at all, and OSU knows that. That is why it pays to grossly overprice OOS tuition.

1 Like

Not sure how much more OSU will move up in the rankings. Though it does depend on which particular ranking. IN USNews it has been in mid 50s for a while. Not a lot of room to move up. And they haven’t really over the past 10 years or so at a time when stats/selectivity have been increasing.

Tuition and fees at our PA state and state related universities is $14,000-20,000.

Looks like Ohio State instate tuition is closer to $10,000.

If the FAFSA EFC is low, wouldn’t she qualify for a Ohio state grant? And the Pell Grant of up to $6,195?

Oh I see that you have remarried and don’t qualify for aid.

She can borrow her student loan of $5,500

She can get a part time job now and work in the summer and get a job on campus.

You might qualify for the AOTC, as mentioned above of up to $2,500 of which 40% or up to $1,000 is refundable.

Did you try the net price calculator on the tOSU website? It might tell you what the state and Pell Grant estimate might be.

What was the FAFSA EFC?

Some of my kids’ friends commute to a local branch campus for two years to get general education requirements out of the way and save money, then transfer to the main campus to finish their degree and live off campus with roommates.

Once decision time comes, consider the net cost for all schools based on all four years, figure in tuition increases.

I agree with others that commuting to a branch campus for two years might be a good idea.

I think U Dayton and U Miami both freeze COA at freshman rates, so that is nice to know.

Kent State might offer her quite a bit of merit, try their net price calculator.

U Toledo has good engineering and science programs and gives merit.

WVU gives merit.

Ohio University also used to give some good merit for certain stats and Ohio Northern might be an option too.