About OSU
Founded in 1868, Oregon State University is a Land Grant campus - one of the "people's colleges," as Abraham Lincoln famously described them -- and over the past 40 years has added Sea Grant, Space Grant and Sun Grant designations. Ivy League stalwart Cornell is the only other U.S. university so recognized.
OSU is also the only Oregon institution to hold the Carnegie Foundation's top ranking for research universities, a recognition of the depth and quality of OSU's graduate education and research programs. OSU is Oregon's largest non-health sciences university, earning most of the federal research dollars awarded to Oregon colleges and universities and bringing in a projected $250 million in the current fiscal year in scientific grants and contracts.
Through its centers, institutes, Extension offices and Experiment Stations, OSU has a presence in every one of Oregon's 36 counties, including its main campus in Corvallis, the Hatfield Marine Sciences Center in Newport and OSU-Cascades Campus in Bend.
OSU's academic programs are increasingly recognized as among the best in the nation. Conservation biology, agricultural sciences, nuclear engineering, forestry, fisheries and wildlife management, community health, pharmacy and zoology are ranked in the nation's top 10 for their respective disciplines. They are among the 81 undergraduate and 100 graduate degree programs offered through OSU's 12 colleges.
Those programs enroll more than 20,000 students from every county in Oregon, every state in the country and more than 90 nations. The average high school GPA of incoming OSU first-year students was 3.46 for fall 2008--the highest of any Oregon University System campus.
OSU's main 400-acre campus in Corvallis includes a Historic District, making OSU one of only a handful of U.S. university campuses to be so included on the National Register of Historic Places. The district includes 83 buildings and outdoor spaces, all arranged around a campus plan created in 1909 by famed architect John C. Olmsted of the Boston-based Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm. The Olmsted's are known for their design of such iconic outdoor spaces as New York's Central Park and Yosemite National Park.
In 2008, Corvallis was named the nation's "Best Green Place to Live" by Country Home magazine and one of America's top five "Smartest Cities" by Forbes magazine - the latest of many national recognitions for OSU's hometown. It frequently is included on lists of best cities for bicyclers, most pedestrian friendly and best quality of life. Corvallis also ranks among the top cities in the United States for per capita representation of individuals with doctoral degrees, and was featured in economist Richard Florida's groundbreaking book, "Rise of the Creative Class," as one of America's top cities for creative class employment.