I apologize if this topic has already been discussed.
IIRC, PSU ranking used to be as high as 35 or 36 few years back on US News and rankings. It’s disappointing to see PSU ranking drop to 59 for this year’s ranking.
Any idea as to why PSU ranking has been steadily dropping over last couple of years? PSU is 3 spots below Rutgers.
MY S got into Penn State(NO Scholarship) as well as Rutgers(In State) for CS…any guesses where he will go !
Where is he leaning @CS_Parent ? My son is in the exact same boat with engineering.
Not very important and not much of a drop.
@CS_Parent No surprise that Penn State didn’t offer a scholarship. They offer very few and very little money. I’d go where it’s cheaper!
As far as the rankings @txl146 I wouldn’t worry about them too much. We are the #5 school in PA, and the cheapest of the first 5. Penn State will always be a big name and the rankings are temperamental because they are always looking at different things from year to year. For example, this year they looked at Social Mobility - which is how many graduates had Pell Grants. They didn’t look at that last year. We probably don’t score so well in class size either.
You can see the full methodology here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
Regardless of rankings with US News, Penn State will always be a large, Nationally well known institution and a degree from Penn State will always be valuable to employers. The rankings will change here and there, but overall I’m not concerned.
@spqr70nj …We are leaning towards in-state for now.
@jlhpsu HI …you seem to be Penn State Champion, so what’s the philosophy behind offering fewer scholarships to OOS? They prefer full paying OOS students? I’m sure the Scholarship corpus is as large as UMass or Rutgers.
@CS_Parent Penn State offers very little in merit scholarships or institutional need-based aid to instate students either. In fact, most PA families can’t afford Penn State without huge parent or co-signed loans. For that reason, I didn’t even allow my instate daughter to apply to Penn State. At this point, Penn State is really affordable only to well-off Pennsylvania residents or very well-off out of state families.
@kidzncatz It does look like it…considering that it in the same league as Rutgers or UMass for Computer Science, i believe cost will be a major factor for most of us to make a decision. Good news is that Lots of seats will be created for the Waitlisters!
@CS_Parent The Penn State Forum Champion ‘status’ is really just a college confidential status putting me as the first line of defense for answering questions and ‘moderating’ this forum. The big dog moderators come in though when something is really running badly or someone is out of control. I’m not affiliated with Penn State at all. I just know a lot about Penn State because my husband and I are both alumni and I have two kids there now and I’ve volunteered here on this board for several years now, so I was placed in the ‘forum champion’ to be somewhat of a Penn State “expert” - although, I am by far the only one and there are several people here that know much more than I on certain topics.
To answer your question - kidzncatz did a pretty good job. Penn State doesn’t offer much aid to ANYONE. The individual colleges may (in fact, my junior niece got a full ride this year from the college of Ag at Penn State) but overall, they do not. Federal aid is still available for those that qualify for income based need.
While Penn State and Pitt are the two most expensive public universities in the country, they are by NO means the most expensive overall. And while Penn State doesn’t give much aid, the tuition at many of the other schools, especially for OOS, is so high that even a scholarship does not bring it down to Penn State costs for an in state student. So yes, Penn State is expensive - but I don’t think excessively so (for in state students).
Thanks @jlhpsu
@CS_Parent if your child is OOS, I completely get looking at in state options. I think few families can afford Penn State OOS without huge loans. I wish they did a better job at this…