I am a PA resident who was considering Penn State and Pitt as my safeties. I found out Ohio State has some amazing scholarships which can make my COA at OSU half the cost of my in state universities. I want to go into business, or finance more specifically. If anyone here is in the business program or made the decision between PSU/Pitt vs OSU, I would love to hear your experience with the school and why you chose it.
I’m in high school as well but a P.A. resident. Im not going into business, but unless you really like Pitt over osu or osu, you can probably cross it off your list. For the price, I think Fisher is the better deal over sneak but if you like penn state more it’s a good school too.
My son is OOS and chose OSU Fisher because it was a good fit and the cost was a lot less than Pitt and Penn State. Also the Honors or Scholars Programs are very good options to apply for by writing the extra essay required on the Common App. My son was in Honors and enjoyed the priority registration and smaller class size. Each program has different benefits. OSU Buckeye (($12000) and Provost ($3000) made cost of OOS tuition/fees about $13,000. Pitt and Penn State don’t give out much in scholarships and OOS tuition for Pitt is $29,000 and Penn State tuition is $32,000. I don’t think Penn State Smeal is worth $19,000 more per year. OSU this year reduced these scholarships by 5% but it’s still a great deal. USNews ranked undergrad business schools and listed Fisher at #22, Smeal at 22 and Pitt at 39. My son completed first year and is happy he chose Fisher. The bus adm 1100 survey course gave a good overview of the different areas of business and Fisher majors. First year is mostly prerequisites and general Ed courses. Sophomore year starts the business courses.
@trackmbe3 How has your son’s experience been so far at OSU? What does he like and not like? Penn State would be about $10k/year more for me right now(Buckeye+Provost or Maximus depending on June SAT) and $20k more if I get one of the Morrill Scholarships I am aiming for. I don’t think Penn State is worth that much more and it is a lot of money for my family.
Also, would love to hear from people in OSU Fisher and their experience so far even if they didn’t decide between OSU and Pitt/Penn State.
@class0f2017 My son is very happy he chose OSU. He had a good first year academically and socially. In choosing courses it helped to select professors based on student feedback in Rate My Professor.com. Not every professor is listed but for the ones that are it is helpful. Added plus this past year was the fun surrounding college football weekends and tailgating parties before and after.
Are you a high school junior?
If so, apply to all three, as well as to others (run NPCs on Loyola Maryland, Northeastern, Tcnj, Miami Ohio, Ohio University, Suny Geneseo and pick a few that are affordable. Note in Ohio Miami OH is the best public business school and UCincinnati’s co-op program is among the best in the country.)
You can’t ‘count on’ competitive merit scholarships so you have to apply to a few programs.
I agree overall that if you got these scholarships tOSU would be a better value butvyoy cannot count on them.
If you have the stats, apply to UAlabama Honors and Temple Honors since they offer AUTOMATIC full tuition scholarships for stats. Those would be your ultimate safeties.
@MYOS1634 - why do you feel that Miami University has the best business school in Ohio? Ohio State’s undergraduate business program is ranked 21st by US News and World Report and 14th by Bloomberg
To be honest, I feel both are equal. It just depends on who does the rankings and the specific year, and it seems to me that over time Farmer was ranked higher than Fisher, but true Fisher has climbed steadily. All in all a student from Ohio would get a good business education at both, and I imagine good scholarships, so that OP should apply to both.
@MYOS1634 Apologies for the late response, I opened the notification a long time ago and forgot to reply! When I said OSU was cheaper, it was using the automatic scholarships(National Buckeye+Maximus). There are competitive scholarships that make the difference even larger but I’m not counting on those. With the automatic scholarships, OSU is about 22k/year for tuition,room, and board while PSU and Pitt are about 28k/year. I will apply to competitive scholarships at OSU(Morrill and Eminence), Pitt(Stamps and Nordenberg), and the Schreyer’s honors(4.5k/year) for PSU. I am a rising senior right now. So with the automatic scholarships, OSU is 6k/year cheaper. Is OSU the better value for business at 6k/year cheaper?
Yes.tOSU for 6k less is definitely the best value!
Next would be a Schreyer /Smeal combo for 28k in my opinion - Schreyer 's one of the top colleges in the country (top 5 or top 10).
@MYOS1634 My bad, Penn State is 28k before the Schreyer scholarship. I only included things paid to directly to the school(tuition,room,board). The other costs like books/personal expenses would add a little more but it would be the same for each college so it doesn’t affect the cost difference. With Schreyers(which is very competitive, not counting on this one) it would be 23.5k/year compared to tOSU at 22k/year. That’s not a fair comparison though since Schreyers is very competitive and that’s comparing a competitive scholarship at PSU with only the automatic ones at tOSU. So it would be 22k/year at tOSU with 28k/year at PSU with no Schreyers which I guess means tOSU is an even better value. How much cheaper do you think Pitt would have to be to be a better value than tOSU and PSU? Pitt scholarships seem very unlikely but I’ll still apply.
Also, my matches and reaches meet 100% of need and show net prices around 15-25k/year. But I want to make sure I have good value schools for safeties just in case.
If you have Schreyer for 23.5k definitely go. If not, tOSU :).
Apply to all three in any case.