Undergraduate admissions Undergraduate admission to Oregon State is rated "selective" by
U.S. News & World Report. OSU is the largest university in the state and set a new record for enrollment in 2023. Close to 37,000 students attended the university during the year - the most for any Oregon university on record. For fall 2015, OSU received 14,058 freshman applications; 11,016 were admitted (78.4%) and 3,593 enrolled. Fall of 2022 brought in the largest freshman class the university had seen, with 7,146 new students. The average high school grade point average (
GPA) of the enrolled freshmen was 3.58, while the middle 50% range of
SAT scores were 480-610 for critical reading, 490-630 for math, and 470-590 for writing.
Research Research has played a central role in the university's overall operations for much of its history. Most of OSU's research continues at the Corvallis campus, but an increasing number of endeavors are underway at locations throughout the state and abroad. Research facilities beyond the campus include the John L. Fryer Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory in Corvallis, the Seafood Laboratory in
Astoria and the Food Innovation Center (FIC) in
Portland. The 2005
Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education recognized OSU as a "comprehensive doctoral with medical/veterinary" university. It is one of three such universities in the
Pacific Northwest to be classified in this category. In 2006, Carnegie also recognized OSU as having "very high research activity", making it the only university in Oregon to attain these combined classifications. OSU was one of the early members of the federal
Space Grant program. Designated in 1991, the additional grant program made Oregon State one of only 13 schools in the United States at that time to serve as a combined
Land Grant, Sea Grant and Space Grant university. Researchers at OSU have improved the quality and yields of Oregon's grains and vegetables, particularly through its work in wheat and hops breeding programs. The
Cascade hop, widely used in American craft brewing, was developed at Oregon State University and released in 1971. The Department of Food Science and Technology maintains a fully automated research brewery that has partnered with private industry to develop beer recipes and test products. prepares a surface mooring The university's College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) operates several laboratories, including the
Hatfield Marine Science Center and multiple oceanographic research vessels based in
Newport, Oregon. CEOAS is co-leading the largest ocean science project in U.S. history. The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) features a fleet of undersea gliders at six sites in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans with multiple observation platforms. CEOAS is also leading the design and construction of the next class of ocean-faring research vessels for the
National Science Foundation, which will be the largest grant or contract ever received by any Oregon university. The first of three planned research vessels, the Taani, was launched in May 2023 and will be stationed in Newport. OSU also manages nearly of forest land, including the McDonald-Dunn Research Forest. .In 1967 the
Radiation Center was constructed at the edge of campus, housing a 1.1
MW TRIGA Mark II Research
Reactor. The reactor is equipped to utilize high-assay, low-enriched (
HALEU)
uranium zirconium hydride fuel.
U.S. News & World Report's 2008 rankings placed OSU eighth in the nation in graduate
nuclear engineering. In the early 2000s, researchers at the campus reactor developed a prototype
small modular reactor (SMR) to power large commercial operations, buildings, and large industrial facilities. More recently, Oregon State University has partnered with a leading manufacturer of SMRs,
NuScale (a company started in part by OSU faculty), to provide continued research and development for commercial applications. The university's College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) operates several laboratories, including the Hatfield Marine Science Center and multiple oceanographic research vessels based in Newport. In 2001, OSU's Wave Research Laboratory was designated by the National Science Foundation as a site for tsunami research under the Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation. The
O. H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory is on the edge of the campus and is one of the world's largest and most sophisticated laboratories for education, research and testing in coastal, ocean and related areas. Oregon State University operates two off-shore research test facilities near Newport for commercial
wave energy technology companies to stress test prototypes. The North and South PacWave Energy Test Facilities are located several miles off the coast of Newport and serviced by the university's Hatfield Marine Science Center. The South PacWave Test Facility is an open ocean test site consisting of four berths, which occupy two square nautical miles of ocean with a cable route to shore of approximately 12 miles in length. The North PacWave Test Facility offers a site in state waters with streamlined permitting (the expected time to permit is under one year). The site is shallower than PacWave South and closer to port. The
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funds two research centers at OSU. The Environmental Health Sciences Center has been funded since 1969 and the Superfund Research Center has been funded since 2009. OSU administers the
H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a
United States Forest Service facility dedicated to forestry and ecology research. The Andrews Forest is a UNESCO
International Biosphere Reserve. OSU's Open Source Lab is a nonprofit founded in 2003 and funded in part by corporate sponsors that include Facebook, Google, and IBM. The organization's goal is to advance
open source technology by hiring and training students in software development and operations for large-scale coding projects. The lab hosts a number of projects, including contracted work for the
Linux Foundation and
Oregon State Wireless Active Learning Device.
Military Oregon State University is one of the few universities to have
ROTC detachments for each branch of the
US Military.
Oregon State University Army ROTC is a distinguished program and has been taught regularly since 1873. The so-called Beaver Battalion is known as the West Point of the West for producing more commissioned officers than any other non-military school during
World War II. It is located in McAlexander Fieldhouse, named after General
Ulysses G. McAlexander, the former commander of Army ROTC. After the Second World War ended in 1945, a
Department of Naval Science was added at Oregon State. Providing officer training for both the
US Navy and the
US Marine Corps, it became one of the largest in the nation and has earned the unofficial title "Naval Academy of the Northwest." On July 1, 1949, the
US Army Air Corps training branch became a separate officer training unit later known as Aerospace Science. The Oregon State
Air Force ROTC draws more freshmen scholarships than any other AFROTC unit in the nation and has had over 1,000 officers commissioned. In 1977, two graduates of the OSU AFROTC became the first women pilots in the Air Force. The Army and Air Force ROTC programs at the university share the McAlexander Fieldhouse.
Libraries In 1999, OSU finished a $40 million remodeling of the campus library. Known as the
Valley Library, the remodeled building was selected by
The Library Journal as its 1999 Library of the Year, the first academic library so named. The Valley Library is home to the
Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives, the first archive in the United States dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the history of hops cultivation and brewing in the
Pacific Northwest. Housed in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center, the archive contains materials related to regional
hops and barley farming, craft and
home brewing,
cider,
mead, and OSU’s own brewing research dating back to the 1890s. The archive’s collections include the papers of
Fred Eckhardt, industry periodicals, research reports, oral histories, photographs, memorabilia, brewery advertising art, and records from organizations like the Oregon Hop Growers Association and
Pink Boots Society.
Rankings and recognition In 2023, the
Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) ranked Oregon State University in the top 1.4 percent out of 20,531 degree-granting institutions of higher education worldwide. The CWUR is known for relying heavily on outcome-based data to compile their rankings. In 2021,
U.S. News & World Report ranked OSU tied for 139th nationally, tied for 71st top public and tied for 58th "most innovative" university in the U.S., and tied for 277th best globally. In its 2021 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, the
Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranked Oregon State University's oceanography program 5th in the world, its agricultural sciences program in the top 50 worldwide, and its earth sciences, ecology and water resources program among the top 100 worldwide. Agriculture and forestry at Oregon State University rank 26th in the world (11th in the U.S.), according to
QS World University Rankings in 2021. In 2012, ECONorthwest conducted an
economic impact analysis that found that each year OSU has a $2.06 billion economic footprint. $1.93 billion of this total was in the state of Oregon. == Student life ==