UT Austin vs. Ohio State: Which university has a more diverse undergraduate student body?

UT Austin is likely to feel more racially and ethnically diverse overall, particularly because it enrolls substantial Hispanic/Latino and Asian American undergraduate populations alongside students from many racial and cultural backgrounds. Its location in Austin also puts students in a large, multicultural Texas city with a strong Latino presence and many international communities. Ohio State has a diverse undergraduate population as well, but its student body has historically had a larger share of White students than UT Austin’s.

The two schools differ more clearly in the kind of diversity students encounter. UT Austin is shaped heavily by Texas: most undergraduates are Texas residents, in part because UT gives strong enrollment priority to in-state applicants. That creates a campus with representation from Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley, rural Texas, and other distinct parts of the state, but it can feel less geographically national than some large public universities.

Ohio State draws heavily from Ohio, yet its Columbus campus tends to have a somewhat broader mix of students from other states than UT has from outside Texas. Columbus is also a major city with established Black, immigrant, and international communities, and Ohio State’s scale supports a wide range of cultural organizations and identity-based communities. Students who define diversity partly as meeting peers from different regions of the U.S. may find Ohio State especially appealing.