Is anyone aware of how difficult it is to establish in state residency in Ohio? If I got instate tuition that’d definitely be a big boost. Thanks.
@MitchIsTheMan97 Assuming you are a traditional undergrad who still is supported by your family, your family would basically need to move to Ohio. The link to the policy is here: http://registrar.osu.edu/residency/guidelines.asp. If it was easy to do this at out of state universities then everyone would. If you are a self-supporting, independent student then the path might be a little easier but still would likely take twelve months to take hold.
It’s not easy - I’m the parent of 3 out-of-state OSU students! Here are the requirements per OSU’s website:
All must be met:
- A student who has been living in Ohio for at least twelve consecutive months immediately preceding the term for which he or she is applying (this is known as their twelve month review period); AND
- A student who has not left the state of Ohio for more than thirty days total, no more than two weeks at a time throughout their twelve month review period; AND
- A student who has been financially self-sustaining throughout their twelve month review period; AND
- A student who has changed all of his or her state specific documents to Ohio, including but not limited to; driver’s license or state ID, voter registration, and vehicle registration.
The most difficult one is #3 - you must be financially self-sustaining for the 12 month period - hard to do if you’re in school full time. Your parents cannot claim you as their dependent. The best thing to do is to receive the National Buckeye scholarship - it brings tuition almost to in-state amount. If becoming an Ohio resident was easy for tuition purposes, many would do it!
For undergraduates, almost impossible.
If the parent gets a full time job and relocates to Ohio and cut off all his relationship with his previous state of residency, the dependent stiudent will become Ohio resident for tuition purpose if all this happens before start of school year.
Bearvet said - “The best thing to do is to receive the National Buckeye scholarship”
Since OSU exhausts the scholarship money on those that apply by 11/1, good luck with that!
@sltxdad, actually many states do make it reasonably easy to establish residency. For instance, in Iowa a student can enroll as a part-time student for one semester, still live in the dorms, and supplement their hours with online classes from a community college, then successfully apply for residency. At Mizzou, students must live in state for one summer and also earned a certain nominal dollar amount of income ($2500?) then be able to apply for in-state.
@skewlcounselor I am not sure where your info comes from, but the websites for both University of Iowa and Mizzou explicitly contain the twelve month, self-supporting standard for residency common in lots of other states.
@sltxdad, the primary reason I send students to those two schools is because it is very easy to establish residency following freshman year and save big especially compared to our state flagship. And, I just spoke with a student last week who easily established residency at Iowa State after his sophomore year and will be attending their vet school next year with in-state tuition. That being said, it is typically NOT easy to do at most state flagship schools—particularly most of those in the Big 10.