OSU admits 52% of all applicants. That might be selective for a large public university, but not on an objective scale. ND, for instance, admits only ~28%.
I have taught for years and many students who were not super high caliber students have ended up at OSU. Also the students who cannot hack it at Miami OH and other schools end up transfering to OSU. If OSU were so tough there would not be as many that I know that went there. On another note I only have known two that went to ND and a few of the Ivy league schools.
Well you need to accept that it is a massive public university. They deal with the whole gamut of intelligence levels.
You cannot simply look at the acceptance rate, or anecdotal accounts of people you know who go there, and expect to accurately describe a student body of 64,000.
Any Ohio resident can get into Ohio State-Columbus, you just deferred to a regional campus first (similar to the way Rudy spent time at Holy Cross in the movie). Getting into the Columbus campus directly out of high school is becoming exponentially more difficult. I don't remember off the top of my head, but I know for a fact that the freshmen class was both the largest and smartest in history. I know the ACT score had a
median of 29, and I think the
size was ~12,000. That means there are literally thousands of students there with 30+ on their ACT, which is impressive and is why Ohio State's academic reputation, whether you like it or not, is rising steadily.
This is all because of the billions Dr. Gee is pumping into the facilities and programs. $115m for a new student Union, $140m for a new recreation center--rated the best in the country, $108 million for a massive library renovation/expansion, hundreds of millions to completely rebuild the Fisher College of Business, another tens of millions to build a completely new Knowlton School or Architecture (where I go). They are building a new
$1.5 billion cancer hospital, which according to the architects I talked to is unlike any in the world. The new South Campus Gateway is transforming the neighboring areas and cost a pretty penny. Then there's the not-as-neat dorm construction, physics building, etc. etc. etc.
The new hospital:
Rebuilt Business College:
New Architecture School:
I could go on, but I doubt many of you care.
Simply put, if you returned to campus after a fifteen-year hiatus, the place would be unrecognizable. The same is true with the academic status of the school. Make no mistake, while there are hundreds of partying education majors, there are a ton of engineers, architects, med students, business students, etc., that are extremely bright.
THAT SAID, what they do with the football players is an absolute joke. This place is a factory and the football team is no exception. you can literally have half of a brain and get by here as a football player taking communications or something. The Glenville kids they bring in wouldn't be able to cut it at an institution that required them to be academically responsible.
There is no better university anywhere in the country when it comes to educating football players than Notre Dame. End of story. Ohio State is a fine institution, but it's a moot point because it doesn't normally apply to the football players.
