Miami University-Oxford

“Ohio's second-oldest university, ranked No. 2 public for undergraduate teaching”

Miami University, founded in 1809 in Oxford, Ohio, is one of the original eight "Public Ivies" — a designation that signals an Ivy-League-quality education at public-university tuition. With ~17,000 undergraduates on a leafy 2,138-acre Georgian-brick campus 35 miles north of Cincinnati, Miami sits in the heart of the classic American "college town" experience: a walkable downtown of restaurants, coffee shops, and student bars surrounded by red-brick academic quads, slate roofs, and Beta Bell Tower at the center of campus. Academically, Miami is best known for the Farmer School of Business — consistently ranked among the top public undergraduate business schools in the country (top-25 in many rankings) — alongside strong programs in Architecture & Interior Design, Education, the Engineering & Computing programs in the College of Engineering and Computing, and Nursing. The Honors College draws high-achieving students nationally with the Presidential Fellows Program offering full-ride scholarships. Miami is a teaching-first R2 research university where faculty actually teach undergraduates: the average class size is around 27, and 80%+ of classes have fewer than 30 students. For international students, Miami offers something unusual for a flagship public: automatic merit-scholarship consideration for admitted F-1 students (the International Education Scholarship runs $1,000–$8,000/year and the University Merit Scholarship can cover up to ~50% of tuition for students with 3.0+ GPA). Miami is also one of the few large publics to actively recruit internationally with the #YouAreWelcomeHere half-tuition scholarship. The international student community is small but supported, with the Office of International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS) running orientation, immigration advising, and a robust mentor program.