Ohio State continues to find academically stronger students as prospective applicants continue to raise the bar. Following suit are other Ohio public and Big Ten schools.
Assistant Vice President for Undergraduate Admissions and First Year Experience Mabel Freeman said the criterion for admission has not changed in the past 15 years.
OSU moved from an open admission university to a competitive admission campus in 1986, she said. Freeman said this was implemented because too many students were admitted unprepared.
“We were not helping students by admitting them to our campus if they were not ready to do the level of work expected by the faculty at a major research university,” she said.
Freeman said OSU uses “Targeted Strategic Recruitment,” which means the university directs their recruitment toward students who are most likely to be successful.
OSU, the biggest public university in the state, receives more than 20,000 applications per year. Freeman said OSU will only be able to accept 5,800 students for next year’s freshman class.
“We are attempting to bring in better prepared freshman classes in order to increase both the retention and graduation numbers of Ohio State students,” she said. “The most important goal is not to be admitted to Ohio State, it is to graduate with a diploma from Ohio State,” Freeman said.
One out of three students in the freshman class graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school and almost 70 percent graduated in the top 25 percent of their classes, she said.
Public universities in Ohio – Miami University, Kent State University, Bowling Green State University, Ohio University and OSU – remain under a selective system of admissions.
Ann Larson, senior associate director of admissions at Miami, said the university uses a comprehensive system for selection that is done by the faculty of admissions rather than computers.
Miami has a higher academic profile than any other state school in Ohio, she said.
Miami has been a selective institution since 1809 and boasts a retention rate of 90 percent. Larson said the retention is high because the university has the ability to recruit students who they feel have the ability to graduate.
“The university’s goal and mission is to enroll the strongest class that is broadly diverse,” she said.
Another public university in Ohio that holds a less selective admission guideline is Kent State. Kelly Roser, an admission counselor at Kent State, said they look for students with at least a 2.5 cumulative GPA.
Roser said Kent State was at one time under an open enrollment system like OSU.
“We look for criteria that will make students well-prepared to be successful at Kent State,” she said.
Freeman said all of the Big Ten universities are bringing in better students in order to make each year stronger than before.
“The reality is that major public research universities like those in the Big Ten are now attracting a lot of students who, in years gone by, might have only considered a more elite private college,” she said. “This makes admission to our institutions more challenging for students who are not as academically strong.”
Emil Rinderspacher, senior associate director of admission at the University of Iowa, said students who apply must have 15 course requirements in order to be accepted.
Rinderspacher said the University of Iowa has never been under an open enrollment system. Iowa is the smallest university in the Big Ten, and diversity is an issue surrounding the selection of new students, so he said they seek non-resident students to fill the void.
Like OSU, Iowa has seen an increase in applicants who are getting higher ACT scores and increasing grade point averages in the past few years, he said.
“We don’t know why it is happening,” he said. “It is a phenomenon in admissions; if you tighten up the admissions standards, the amount of applicants seem to get higher.”
