OSU Admissions Update

On Friday morning I attended a meeting at OSU to learn from their admissions staff about the latest requirements and updates.  To give you the short version - OSU continues to grow more and more competitive to be accepted directly to main campus, but there are still opportunities for every student graduating from WKHS who wants to be a Buckeye to start at a branch campus.  While I will not highlight updates from every college, because there are so many students who plan on applying to OSU each year I wanted to pass along some of the information I learned.

- November 1st is the Early Action deadline for admissions.  It is also their deadline to be considered for their automatic scholarships.  Students who plan on applying for the Honors and Scholars program, major in the college of Engineering, or the Morrill Scholarship program are strongly encouraged to submit their applications by this date as well.  The November 1st deadline includes having all of your supplemental materials received by the admissions office in addition to your application (such as test scores and transcript).  If you apply by the November 1st deadline, you can expect to hear back on your admissions decision in mid to late January.

-  OSU does NOT require a letter of recommendation.  They will accept one if you send it and it can be from anyone who knows you well - a teacher, coach, counselor, boss, etc.  Can you imagine reading 50,000 recommendation letters?!?  Yikes.

-  OSU had approximately 50,000 applications last year and enrolled just over 7,500 new freshmen.  For those admitted to the Columbus campus, the average ACT composite score was a 29.2 and 95% of the students were in the Top 25% of their class (63% were in the top 10%).  Needless to say it is very competitive to gain admission onto main campus, but they pointed out the opportunities available for admission to OSU at the branch campuses with open enrollment.

-  Students who begin their college career at a branch campus have the opportunity to stay and complete their degree in some majors if they want, but they can also change campuses and move from the branch to main campus after completing 30 credit hours (1 year of full time classes) and earning a 2.0 GPA.  This is not a transfer application, it is an automatic change of location form to be completed with your academic adviser at OSU.

-  There are no set numbers for being admitted or for being deferred to a branch campus.  Representatives from the regional branch campuses also talked and shared about some of the opportunities and experiences on their campus and they are still academically strong.  Additionally, by indicating your back-up branch campus on your OSU application, it does not make you more likely to be admitted to a branch campus rather than main campus.

-  They are major blind in acceptance to the university and then you would be considered for acceptance into your particular major or preferred program.  (So for those students who hope to "game the system" by picking some obscure major that you really are not interested in, that won't actually matter for admissions to the university.)

-  Ohio State has adjusted their FAFSA Priority Deadline to February 1st.  The Financial Aid Officer who spoke to us reminded us to encourage all students to complete the FAFSA even if you know that your family will not qualify for need-based financial aid.  She explained that there are some merit based scholarships that are not dependent upon financial need, but that have a pre-requisite that students have completed the FAFSA to make sure that they had already received any need based aid the student would qualify for before the scholarship could be awarded.  OSU hopes to announce financial aid award packages by the end of February.  (She also pointed out that even if someone submits their FAFSA in October, it will not change when they hear about their financial aid package at OSU. 

-  One other important testing related issue that impacts financial aid... The November 1st deadline for scholarship consideration means that all testing results must be received at OSU prior to that date.  So, if you are taking the October ACT, your results will likely not be considered for scholarship purposes.  The admissions officers did say that IF your admissions decision had not already been determined when the results came in for the October test that your scores would be factored into the admissions decisions.

-  For those students taking CC+ classes, especially if you are taking CC+ classes on a college campus, they stressed the importance of using the additional information section to write in what classes you plan on taking during your second semester so that they know you are still planning to complete a full academic load during your senior year.

Over the next few weeks I will be attending more informational meetings to get additional information about other colleges in Ohio and beyond so that I have the latest information to be able to share with you as you are working on your applications.