The college admission process can be a stressful and anxious time for many students, especially due to selective admission processes, and Ohio University was no exception when choosing admittees for the 2023-24 Academic Year.
Students who wanted to attend OU during the 2023 Fall Semester had until May 1 to choose to confirm their intent to enroll.
OU accepted students on a rolling basis, reviewing applicants’ academic
qualifications to meet the colleges’ preparatory criteria.
Vice President of Enrollment Management Candace Boeninger said the division of enrollment management expected to have more than 25,000 applications submitted by May 1 for the 2023-24 academic year, which is more than last year's numbers.
“We’re not surprised to see a slight increase, since students nationally are submitting a higher number of applications to colleges and universities on average,” Boeninger wrote in an email. “Since our admission processes and guidelines are the same, we expect our volume of admitted students to be fairly similar to recent years.”
Ali Kleiner, an incoming freshman who plans to study environmental pre-law, said she immediately accepted her offer to OU because she was confident it was the right school for her.
“The admission process was very easy and didn’t cause me any stress,” Kleiner wrote in an email.
Application reviewers consider various factors when evaluating incoming students’ applications; the reviewers mostly look at students’ high school curriculum, performance, grade point average and class rank, Boeninger said.
Boeninger also said OU is currently not requiring students to submit standardized test scores; however, some academic programs with more selective guidelines may request that students submit additional information for further review.
Last school year, OU enrolled the largest-ever freshman class at 4,441 incoming first-year students, a 21% increase from 2021. Due to the record-breaking enrollment, second-year students were given the option to live in RiverPark Apartments to create more on-campus living options for freshman students, according to a previous Post report.
Lyn Redington, vice president for student affairs, said the fall 2022 housing capacity was initially restrained due to Gamertsfelder Hall undergoing renovations. The dorm had 280 living spaces that were not available for use at the time.
“OHIO was able to mitigate that challenge through a master lease with Riverpark Apartments,” Redington wrote in an email. “For fall 2023, Gamertsfelder will be back online and the master lease with Riverpark has been continued, which means that we do not expect to have the same challenges with housing capacity (as last year).”
To increase the university’s housing inventory over time, the OU Board of Trustees recently approved the development of a long-term housing master plan, which recognizes the needs and preferences of students in the future for their on-campus living experience, Redington said. She said the plan includes adding 600 newly constructed beds located on South Green.
The current confirmations of intent to enroll are well ahead of prior years' decisions, Boeninger said. She added this trend may conclude students have an overall increased interest in attending OU.
“We are finding that the fall 2023 entering class is full of motivated, engaged and academically talented future Bobcats,” Boeninger wrote in an email. “We are excited to welcome them to our community and look forward to the mark they will make on this institution.”
