As a prospective student, I am curious to hear what students, alumni, or parents think of Osu? What are specific things that you like or don’t like?
Ohio State is becoming a very popular choice for a lot of kids in Ohio from top public and private high schools. Kids I know going there (my son included) and their parents all seem to be very happy with it. University has a lot of very strong programs. There is a lot of building going on right now (which has been true for a few years and looks to continue). So there are a lot of new dorms (last year’s incoming class was the first to be required to live on campus for two years), new eating places, new student union, main library addition and new academic buildings.
No doubt its a big school. To me, that means it offers a ton of opportunities. If you have an interest, there is a good chance they have a club/group for it and its won’t have 2-3 kids in it. And its not like they hold classes in the stadium. If you walked across campus during time when classes where changing over, I don’t think it looks much different than does a school with 20k kids. No doubt its not a 5,000 kid school though. Not a good fit for everyone.
Best of luck to you.
So will you be a freshmen this Fall? Gone to orientation yet? Know where you are living (maybe not because I seem to recall housing assignments come out in July)?
@saillakeerie no I will be a senior in high school this year
@saillakeerie How big was your biggest class and how big are classes on average? Do you think the size of classes matters?
Do you know how active club/intramural teams are at Ohio State? Especially tennis.
I graduated from OSU and my daughter will start attending in the fall. It is a 50,000+ student campus, but feels so much smaller. It is very walkable, but not overly crowded (unless you happen to walk across the oval on one of the first nice days of spring). There are plenty of places to go, things to do, and a wide variety of people. There is just about a club for any interest. Lots of food choices.
If I had to choose a con, it would be the emphasis on sports. OSU has great teams, and I feel that watching them should be a part of the students’ college experience. But tickets aren’t easy to get (unless you get them during your window, which requires watching a calendar and a clock). They seem to focus on making money for the university on sports rather than it being about the students. A few schools we visited offered FREE sports tickets to students, which I thought was a great perk.
But if sports tickets is the only negative from me, that’s definitely a positive.
As for class size, I had two classes (both in Independence Hall) that had over 100 students in them, but they also had a smaller lab component, so it was just a 1 hour lecture. Class size for me was about 20-30 students depending on what I was taking.
Hope that helps!
Pros:
-Big school with a lot of opportunities;
-Reputable faculty with national reputations
-Columbus is a decent place, relatively speaking
-Cost of living is cheap
-A lot of buildings are new
-only state school in Ohio with a semi-decent reputation
Cons:
-Massive intro level classes
-Intro classes taught by TAs (not the professors with national reputations)
-Entrenched “bro culture”
-Not a lot of diversity when you consider its size (most of my classes were nearly all white)
-Administration unresponsive to student issues and complaints
-Too expensive and without a lot of scholarship money to go around
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What about Cincinnati and Miami?
@almostdonewithhs I am both a parent and an alumna of OSU. As an alum, I know that I got exposed to many different opportunities both in and out of the classroom. I can find fellow alums anywhere I go, and I have had a successful career. My mother is a 2 time OSU grad (BS, MS) as well.
OSU has changed since I attended, and it has changed for the better. There is a fantastic program in place for first year students, and the result is a 92% retention rate (which is amazing for a school of this size). It is highly competitive to get into now, even for instate students. My daughter knows kids who had good credentials (ACT 27-28, GPA 3.4-3.6) who were waitlisted and/or diverted to regional campuses. There are lots of clubs, and most sports have club sports and rec sports teams.
Don’t let @MarcusOSU frighten you about “massive classes” and “unresponsive administration” - he is often quite negative about OSU (despite his name). I have taken some of his comments and put in my daughter’s experiences (since they are more recent than mine!) as a point of reference.
MarcusOSU: massive intro level classes taught by TAs and not professors
My daughter is an incoming freshman and has ONE class that has more than 45 students, and it is a calc lecture, which is taught by surprise a professor and not a TA. Her calc recitation is full at 32 students. Freshman English is capped at 24 per class, entry level languages are capped at 30, and her entry level poli sci class (also taught by a professor, not a TA) could grow to 100, but with one week of orientation left, is sitting at 44.
MarcusOSU: not a lot of diversity
Autumn 2015 enrollment was 18.18% minority - we toured many schools that were proud to mention their 8-10%… OSU also does quite a bit to support their various minority communities, with the PASS program, ODI, Women in Engineering, Minorities in Engineering, etc.
MarcusOSU: Administration unresponsive
My daughter has had two interactions with her advisor since orientation. In both cases, she received a response within 24 hours (in one, she had one within an hour), and both her questions were answered and/or solved.
MarcusOSU: too expensive
Tuition is $10,037 for in-state. In comparison, Miami is $14,000+, Cincinnati is $11,000, Kent State is $10,012, Bowling Green is $10,606, and OU is $11,548. For a different comparison, University of Michigan in state tuition is $13,856, and out of state is $43,476. OSU out of state is $27,365, which is similar to that of the other in state schools.
MarcusOSU: Columbus is a decent place, relatively speaking
Columbus is the 15th largest city in the country. There are major national corporations headquartered in Columbus or in the metro area - Nationwide, L Brands (Victoria’s Secret, etc.), Cardinal Health, Wendy’s, with a Honda plant within 30 minutes - so lots of internship opportunities. It is a friendly, inclusive city, and OSU is integrated into it. There are several smaller private colleges in the greater Columbus area - Capital, Otterbein, Denison, Ohio Wesleyan, along with Columbus State (2 year), so education has a place of value. There is an NHL hockey team, an MLS soccer team, and a AAA minor league baseball team.
@16ohio: Thank you! I did not want to be the one to jump out and counter his negativity towards OSU!
OSU being too expensive is just so far off – when the truth is:
OSU has kept tuition in check, with no increase in in-state tuition 6 of the last 8 years (or something similar to that!). Moreover, unlike schools like UIUC and Penn State that have higher tuition for professional college (e.g. business, engineering), OSU does not do that. The result is that OSU in-state tuition for engineering and business is around 40-45% lower than in-state tuition at these schools.
Yeah I a aware of of his recent comments and dont really pay attention to what he says. Thanks everyone for the responses
Great football team – GO BUCKEYES
My D is an incoming freshman, and she’s in some big classes:
General Chemistry 1210 - Lecture=350 students (twice a week), lab=25 students (twice a week)
Pre-Calculus - Lecture=117 students (three times a week), rec=33 students (twice a week)
Psychology 1100 - Lecture=55 students (twice a week)
Survey class for major = 80 students (once a week)
Some entry level classes will be larger (particularly looking at core classes such as intro sciences and math). Upper level classes will be smaller. True at a lot of colleges. And I don’t have a problem with that.
Yeah large classes doesn’t defer me from osu because all the schools I’m looking at are similar size with a few exceptions
eyeroll
You asked for pros and cons, @almostdonewithhs
If the question wasn’t an honest one, then you should have prefaced your question with “tell me only positive things about OSU.” My post was fair and balanced except in your world, where apparently no one is allowed to criticize Ohio State by mentioning facts (only 46% of credit hours taught by full-time professors, by the way).
And by the way, I’m black, and OSU does not have a lot of black students. I was usually the only black person in any of my classes. But if that’s an experience you want to dismiss, you’re welcome to do so.
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And @osuprof should disclose that he stands to benefit financially from more students enrolling in Ohio State, so consider the motivation for all his cheerleading. I don’t have an economic motivation for my posts which, as you can see by reading them, are not at all negative against Ohio State. Unless, again, you think that mentioning some “cons” (as was asked by the OP) is an act of sabotage.
Here’s an article outlining the growing conflicts between OSU students and the academic administration:
http://thelantern.com/2016/04/the-activist-admin-disconnect/
Ohio State is the most unequal public university in the nation:
https://www.thenation.com/article/what-makes-ohio-state-most-unequal-public-university-america/
Ohio State takes away meeting place for Latino students:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/02/09/loss-of-center-leaves-ohio-states-latinos-feeling-overlooked.html
Black students at OSU are underrepresented: http://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-state-aims-improve-diversity-campus
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@MarcusOSU you listed 6 cons and I only talked about the one that everyone mentioned. Even thought it’s not great that OSU has large intro classes, no one is surprised by it since all schools of that size have large classes.
The classes are larger than this thread makes it to be. As an incoming freshman, I am in 3 +200 student classes. And this was after I specifically asked to get out of the 600 class Biology course. However, these aren’t Honors classes, and I am sure that the class size will decrease as you go on through college.
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This was also my experience. Most of my intro classes were at least 200 students. English, history, and social science classes (when smaller) were taught by TAs as instructors of record (not professors) whose teaching skills were still a work in progress. Sometimes there are benefits to their inexperience, though–they tend to give higher grades. I had one TA who gave everyone in the class an A. Everyone.
My upper level classes were smaller but still fairly large–an advanced class I took senior year had 50 people, for instance.