So, you're thinking about attending a college or university in Ohio?

On the far eastern side of the Midwestern states, Ohio has long been a cultural and geographical crossroads. Since Ohio links the Northeast and Midwest sections of the U.S., there is much cargo and business traffic passing through this state every day. Partly because of this, Ohio has the nation's 10th largest highway network. The state is within a one-day drive of 50% of the total population of North America and 70% of its manufacturing capacity. Ohio is bordered to the north by Michigan and Canada, to the east by Pennsylvania and West Virginia, to the south by Kentucky, and to the west by Indiana.

Ohio is composed primarily of glaciated plains, lending it a relatively flat landscape. The only major exception to this is in the southeastern unglaciated Allegheny Plateau region, which is a part of the larger Appalachian region. This area has rugged hills along with forests. Although 1/3 of Ohio's total land area lies within the Appalachian region, only about 12.8% of Ohio's residents live within its boundaries.

The estimated population of Ohio, in 2006, was 11,478,006. About 390,000 of these, or 3.4%, were foreign-born. It's been reported that 6.6% of Ohio's total population were under the age of 5, while 25.4% were under 18 and 13.3% were 65 or older.

In terms of politics, Ohio is considered a swing state. With its current 20 electoral votes, Ohio is extremely important in national elections. Ohio's votes have gone to the winner of every presidential election, except for those in 1944 and 1960, since all the way back in 1892. The Republican presidential candidate has never managed to win the White House without first winning the state of Ohio. In the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush just managed to win the state with 50.8% of the vote, giving him a margin of only 2 percentage points.

Many different colleges and universities call Ohio home. Some of these schools are:

• Ohio State University

• Notre Dame College

• Ohio University

• The University of Cincinnati

To find more information about universities and colleges in this area, visit the Online College Degrees page on this website.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ohio".

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