Students stand with members of the OSU marching band and OSU cheerleaders during the 2015 Buckeye Kick-Off event held at Ohio Stadium on August 27. Credit: Michael Huson / Campus Editor

Students stand with members of the OSU marching band and OSU cheerleaders on Aug. 27 during the 2015 Buckeye Kick-Off event held at Ohio Stadium. Credit: Michael Huson / Campus Editor

The Ohio State University’s class of 2019 shows a continual, improving trend in the quality and diversity of the university’s freshman classes.

These strides align with OSU’s mission and values, said Joseph Steinmetz, executive vice president and provost, in an OSU press release.

According to projections from the OSU Office of Enrollment Services, the class is expected to be one of the most diverse and gifted classes that the university has ever seen, with a projected average ACT score of about 28.9 and students coming to OSU from all over the world.

“It will be arguably one of the most talented classes ever at OSU,” Vice President for Strategic Enrollment Planning Dolan Evanovich said. “We are among the very highest average test scorers in the Big Ten.”

This group of first-year students was talented inside the high school classroom, as it is projected that between 61 and 63 percent of these students graduated in the top 10 percent of their class.

With a projected male-to-female student ratio of around 50-50 and students from across the U.S. and around 20 countries, this class is expected to be the most diverse class ever at OSU, too.

“This group of students is well represented from the state of Ohio, as there are students from around 88 counties, as well as almost every state and several other countries,” Evanovich said.  

Many of these students from this group are looking to improve their classroom performances and reach their academic and life goals through everything that OSU has to offer.

“Academically, I hope to graduate, obviously, with a good GPA in my field,” said Tevon Martinez, a first-year in aerospace engineering. “I will probably just go straight into the industry and probably work on planes. I know Ohio State has a good program that will efficiently help me do that.”

Katie Whitmore, a first-year in exploration, said she is weighing her future career options carefully.

“My academic goals as of right now are to find what I’m interested in and pursue it in a major,” Whitmore said. “Hopefully with the classes I’m taking I can find one that speaks to me.”

Another student, Madeline Winans, a first-year in zoology, said she is chasing her dreams to one day travel around the world and work with exotic animals, starting with OSU’s study abroad program.

“This is an amazing place, there is so much diversity here and there are so many people from around the world,” Winans said. “I am definitely honored to be a student in the class of 2019. It is really cool to know that I am a part of that.”

Evanovich said the class of around 7,000 students was chosen based on their qualifications from 45,921 submitted applications. He added that he attributes the interest in OSU to students wanting a high-quality education as well as a great living and learning experience both inside and outside of the classroom.

“It is, as always, a great time to be a Buckeye,” Evanovich said.