A chance for Ohio State students to express their feelings about undergraduate education may be as close as their mailboxes.More than 8,800 students, about 25 percent of undergraduates, will have the chance to answer a survey which was mailed out last week by the Office of Strategic Analysis and Planning. The students were randomly selected within each college and are of all ranks, said Alice Stewart, director of strategic analysis.The survey is part of a study to understand how students are affected by their college experiences and is being conducted by the American Council on Education and the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. The survey is part of OSU’s on-going benchmarking effort, in which OSU is compared to other similar, but higher-ranked universities, in an effort to find out how OSU can improve, Stewart said. A letter accompanying the survey said the information will be used in the effort to make OSU one of the top 10 public universities in the country.The benchmarking process focuses on comparing three categories of data: academic programs, student experience and fiscal resources, Stewart said.”What we don’t have a whole lot of data on is ‘What is the student experiencing in the classroom?'” she said. “Since they do this same survey across many universities, we thought this would be an opportunity not just to get information about our students internally for us, but that would also allow us to compare our student experiences with other universities to see how we’re doing.”Sophomore Amy Bush said she will fill out the survey in the hopes that the suggestions she makes will help better her education as well as that of others.”This is one opportunity for us to get their attention,” said Bush, a communications major. “They’re reaching out to us; now the ball is in our court to give them answers if we want improvement.”She said undergraduate academic advising is the area she would most like to see improved.”I don’t think they really answer all my questions,” Bush said. “It seemed like they were stressing that it’s really up to you, but especially for freshmen, they need to offer more guidance.”After getting wait-listed for the same class two quarters in a row and receiving only 10 of the 20 hours she scheduled, sophomore Erin Smith said she would like to see the scheduling process improved.”I’m not on any priority lists like athletes or honors students,” said Smith, an undecided business major. “It’s such a hassle when you start the first week of class and you don’t even have 15 hours because you’ve been wait-listed. It throws off your whole schedule and can set you back.”The survey asks about each student’s academic experience, such as how often a student has worked on group projects in class, been a guest at a professor’s home, failed to complete homework on time and discussed course content with students outside of class.It also asks students to rate their satisfaction with various aspects of student life, career goals and expectations, community service involvement and activities outside of class.By participating in the study, OSU also will receive the data and will use it to help make decisions on how to improve OSU, Stewart said. The results will come back sometime this summer and will be used by various OSU departments such as the Offices of Student and Academic Affairs, Undergraduate Student Government and the Office of Enrollment Management.”The ultimate goal here is to improve our retention and improve our graduation rates here at OSU,” Stewart said. “Ultimately, that’s what you’re trying to do, make students happier while they’re here, provide them with a good experience and get them through the system in a timely fashion.”Also included with the survey are 20 questions geared specifically toward OSU, which were submitted by the Offices of Student and Academic Affairs and USG.”I think we can learn from what we’re doing well and maybe areas that we need to focus on more and, as a result of knowing more about our students, be more responsive to their needs,” said Mary Daniels, assistant vice president of student affairs.Stewart said the recipients of the survey are distributed throughout the colleges at OSU so assessments of the student experience can be made on a college-by-college basis as well as university-wide. “With our sampling frame, we can make statistically confident assessments by college with a 40 percent response rate,” Stewart said. “With a lower response rate, such as 20 percent, we can still say things about the university and about the student experience at the university, but it would be harder to say anything about the student experience at the college level.”Some recipients of the survey also took a similar survey in 1994 as freshmen, Stewart said, which will allow a comparison of their attitudes and expectations from what they said then and now. “It really will give us a sense of the impact and the influence their college years have had,” Daniels said.As an incentive to get students to participate, students who return their surveys before May 22 will be entered in a drawing for five $75 gift certificates to the OSU Bookstore.