Just trying to get some insight between U of O and OS. Any information or advice will help.
In general, U of O is known for liberal arts, while OSU is known for engineering/computer science/agriculture.
The cities where each is located is quite different as well—UO is in Eugene and OSU is in more rural Corvallis. Back when I went to UO, it’s campus was much larger than OSU in acreage as well as student body.
Also, UO has an excellent, newly well-funded honors college, which makes a lot of difference for top students. UO os better for cs and CS related majors, business, science research, as well as economics, foreign language (it’s got the Chinese language flagship, which is a premier, DOD/alphabet agency supported program)… whereas more applied subjects such as agronomy, engineering, education, etc. are stronger than OSU.
Just stats: the average admitted freshmen have higher sat math scores at OSU by a couple points (554 v.560) but otherwise the profiles are very similar.
Thank you everyone! As far as culture, area around, general feel, do any of you have input on that? @Studious99 @HImom @MYOS1634
Corvallis would be more conservative, if that is what you mean. Since your user name indicates CA, I’d assume you know that out of state tuition would be charged for a CA kid.
Correction : stronger at OSU, NOT ‘than’!! (Autocorrect 
)
@intparent I was really going for conservative or not, just more of the feel of the school and area around it. Small town, large town, city, comfort level, accessibility, etc. And yes, I know what the tuition is for both places. We’ve visited U of O and loved it. Just got accepted to OS, so trying to get a feel of the difference between the two school and community around each.
Corvallis has a lot to offer and I can’t believe that it would be all that conservative! I haven’t been there for years, but conservative is one word I would not have ever used to describe that town. As a large school in a state with a varied population, it will have students reflecting that population, so I’m sure that some would be relatively conservative. I remember a professor once voicing frustration that a student had come to class in a bio-related field (that I don’t want to identify further for anonymity) and the student complained that creationism wasn’t taught in that hard-science class. Some students can be conservative, I am guessing from that story, but this is not on the whole a conservative town. OSU is a fun school, in a nice town. The sciences are excellent, as was mentioned above, but the liberal arts areas of study are solid too.
There’s really nothing like a visit and eating at a hangout where students are to get a better feel for each place. My info is decades old and I know things have changed and that OSU is much bigger than it was when I attended a football game there in the 70s. Most of Oregon definitely has an ecological feel to me, which I really like.
OSU is cheaper than UO, keeping in mind I’m in the higher income bracket and have rather above average stats for the schools.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx indicates that creationism is a rather mainstream opinion in the US, even though it is a fringe opinion in university biology departments.
I’m pretty sure they were talking about intelligent design, which isn’t creationism.
I was on both campuses in August. Corvallis is much smaller, and more of a farm town, than Eugene. I was shocked at how much Eugene had grown since the last time I visited about 25 years ago, to the point where it hardly even feels like a college town anymore.
If you take the area right around Corvallis and transfer it to almost any state other than Oregon, you’d assume that it would be very conservative. But hey, it’s Oregon. For all I know, the farms surrounding Corvallis are growing marijuana.
I personally liked Oregon State’s campus more than Oregon’s. I grew up in the Midwest, and Oregon State reminded me of a prototypical Big 10 campus. Oregon’s campus looks like it’s been rebuilt almost entirely since I last visited, and it came off as somewhat new and sterile. The UO campus reminded me a lot of the University of Florida in Gainesville.