Ohio State University

The Ohio State University, often known as OSU or Ohio State, is a public land-grant research university located in Columbus, Ohio, United States. It is the most prestigious member of the University System of Ohio and consistently receives high placement in major institutional rankings that place it among the top public institutions in the United States. Ohio State University was established in 1870 as the state's land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio with the Morrill Act of 1862. It was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College and focused on various agricultural and mechanical disciplines. However, it developed into a comprehensive university under the direction of then-Governor and later U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes, and in 1878 the Ohio General Assembly passed a law changing the name to "the Ohio State University." Over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, admission requirements were tightened and became far more exclusive.

The political science department and faculty at Ohio State University have made significant contributions to the construction and development of the constructivist and realist schools of international relations. In 2004, a study conducted by the London School of Economics ranked the programme as the first among public institutions and the fourth overall in the world. In addition to being a member of the Association of American Universities and a leading producer of Fulbright Scholars, Ohio State University is the only college or university in North America to provide an undergraduate degree in welding engineering that is accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). It is projected that the university's endowment will be worth $6.8 billion in 2021, making it one of the richest in the world. Alumni and professors have included 108 Olympic medalists, 5 Nobel Prize laureates, 9 Rhodes Scholars, 1 Fields Medalist, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 64 Goldwater scholars, 6 United States Senators, 15 United States Representatives, and 1 Fields Medalist. As of the year 2021, more students at Ohio State Institution than at any other public university in the United States scored in the 95th percentile or above on standardised tests.

The university provides a comprehensive student life programme, which includes over one thousand different student organisations, as well as intercollegiate, club, and recreational sports programmes, student media organisations and publications, fraternities and sororities, and three different student governments. Its sporting teams, known as the Ohio State Buckeyes, participate in Division I of the NCAA and bear the school's name. The school's football team has seen a great deal of success and is considered to be one of the top programmes in college football; its rivalry with the University of Michigan has been called one of the greatest rivalries in the history of sports in North America. The football programme at Ohio State University has been valued at $1.5 billion as of the year 2017, making it the programme with the highest valuation of its kind in the nation. With almost 50,000 students enrolled in undergraduate programmes and nearly 15,000 students enrolled in graduate programmes, the main campus in Columbus has expanded to become the third-largest university campus in the United States. In the bulk of the varsity sports it offers, Ohio State competes as a member of the Big Ten Conference.