ONU First Year Class Increases in Size, Geographic Diversity

Compared to the 2023 cohort, Ohio Northern University’s 2024 first-year class of students has increased in size by over 16%, according to a recent University press release. The release places the total incoming class size at “almost 700.” 

Ohio Northern’s 2023-2024 Fact Book provides contextual data for the past four years of incoming first-year students. The Fact Book, compiled annually by Ohio Northern’s Institutional Research, is a comprehensive statistical reference for the University.

Figure 1, created jointly with information from the Fact Book and the press release, compares the rates of enrollment since 2020 according to the  following attributes: “All Undergraduate,” “Enrolled,” and “First-Time Freshmen.”

Figure 1: First-time Freshman class size. Years 2020-2023 taken from the Ohio Northern Fact Book, estimates for year 2024 taken from University press release.

The press release also indicates that “[m]embers of the incoming class come from Ohio, 26 other states, and 16 countries.” Figure 2 represents the total number of unique states in each of the five columns representing 2019-2023. Note that in 2021 and 2022, 2 students each were listed as “Unknown/Other,” and are excluded from these graphs.

Figure 2: Geographic diversity of incoming class by number of U.S. states represented. 2019-2023 compiled from data in the Ohio Northern Fact Book, 2024 taken from University press release.

Individual columns can also be used to make the following geographic maps. At the moment, insufficient information is available to produce the equivalent for 2024.

Editor’s note: One visualization in this article has been updated (8/23/2025) to reflect that the first-time first-year class of 2021 came from 26 unique US states, not 25.