When it comes to colleges making money from application fees, Ohio State falls within the top 50 of 500 U.S. schools for collecting the most revenue from accepted and declined applicant submissions.
Ohio State requires an application fee and made roughly $2.41 million from the $60 fee in the 2015-16 academic year, according to projections made by lendedu, an online service that provides guides, tools and resources for students and graduates to make financial decisions regarding their education. Its recently released data comes from the 2015-16 academic year, the most recent year all fee information was available from the 500 colleges it analyzed.
Of the 500 colleges listed, Ohio State ranked 35th for most revenue from total applications and made the 45th-highest amount of revenue from declined applications. The university made $1.22 million from denied application fees alone, according to the projections.
For the 2015-16 academic year, 40,240 people submitted applications to Ohio State’s Columbus campus and 19,872 were admitted, according to lendedu.
An unspecified portion of the money Ohio State garners from application fees “goes to the university’s general fund and a portion goes to student financial aid,” said Ben Johnson, an Ohio State spokesman.
Ohio State’s application fee of $60 was more than other Ohio colleges such as Ohio University, University of Cincinnati and Miami University, which had fees of $50 in 2015.
Ohio University made $1 million from total applicants and $268,600 from rejected applicants; University of Cincinnati made $764,300 from total applicants and $110,250 from rejected applicants; and Miami University made $1.37 million from total applicants and $473,700 from rejected applicants, according to the projections.
There are various exemptions from paying the Ohio State application fee for U.S. residents.
They are: if a student has a standardized test fee waiver, is enrolled in a free and reduced-price lunch program (or a program that aids students of low-income families) or has provided a support statement from a school official showing significant economic disadvantage, Johnson said.
For the 2016-17 academic year, 49,388 people applied to the Columbus campus and 24,240 were admitted, according to university data.
For the 2017-18 academic year, 52,439 people applied to the Columbus campus, according to university data, although it is not clear how many were admitted.
