Among the pomp and circumstance at The Ohio State University’s graduation ceremony this Sunday will also be an obscene number of diplomas. Breaking their record for the third year in a row, the university will hand out 11,734 degrees to the most populous class in university history.
That’s a lot of hats in the air.
The graduating class of 2016 held the previous record at 11,235; the class of 2015 follows with 11,040 graduates.
Each graduate will go home that day, diploma in hand. It’s “a practice rarely attempted by a university the size of Ohio State,” which boasts a student population of just over 66,000. The 3-hour ceremony takes place at the Ohio Stadium at 411 Woody Hayes Drive. It opens at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 7. Tickets aren’t required, but seating is first-come.
Of the top most populous schools in the state, OSU has the highest graduation rate at roughly 83 percent, about a 7 percent difference from their rival, University of Michigan, which sees 90 percent of its pupils cross the stage. After OSU, the schools with the highest enrollment rates are Kent State University, with a graduation rate of 53 percent; the University of Cincinnati, with a graduation rate of 59 percent; and Ohio University, with a 67 percent rate of graduation.