@laralei Those scores would be in the top (not sure how much) probably, 25% of the students at PASSHE.
My daughter scored a 26 ACT and was not offered any merit at Bloomsburg or West Chester. She had been offered swim scholarships at both(partial) so perhaps they included that into the equation?
@laralei a lot of dorms at Bloom do have AC. They are billed at a higher rate about 250 more a semester but there definitely are Air conditioned dorms. As far as scholarships my son got 5000 a year his SAT was 1320 and ACT 29. Someone else we know got 3000 a year and I believe his scores were in the 1200’s. Also Bloomsburg has a great scholarship for students who have had a family member in the Air Force. It’s 5000 a year. My son applied for that one, he did not receive it but I don’t think they would give a student 2 large scholarships anyway. There definitely is some merit at Bloom. At least 3 kids at my sons school got merit scholarships.
Let state universities set their own tuition, report recommends…
https://www.indianagazette.com/news/let-state-universities-set-their-own-tuition-report-recommends/article_fa02d1c4-6ee7-11e7-be9c-db1ffffecacd.html
Elwell and the new dorm both have air conditioning at Bloom…they do allow portable a/c units up to a certain BTU be used in non-air conditioned dorms as well.
EDITORIAL A well-timed retirement for State System chancellor…
http://www.observer-reporter.com/20170726/editorial_a_well-timed_retirement_for_state_system_chancellor
Cal U. lifts layoff notice to union faculty…
http://www.observer-reporter.com/20170721/cal_u_lifts_layoff_notice_to_union_faculty
Report offers a path forward for State System’s schools…
http://www.thealmanac.net/20170721/report_offers_a_path_forward_for_state_systemx2019s_schools
"Of the 50 states, Pennsylvania ranks 48th in higher-education funding. Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at Washington, D.C.-based Pell Institute, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Pennsylvania is a national leader in turning against its own higher education system. When you’re 48th or 49th, can you say anyone is awake at the switch? The state has essentially said it doesn’t care. The state has utterly failed.”
We toured Bloomsburg and Slippery Rock briefly on our vacation earlier this month.
For both, we did self-guided tours because of time.
We did catch the Bloomsburg info session, which was informative. I don’t have my notes with me (the house is still a holy mess from just getting home last weekend). I will try to update with facts and figures later.
We wandered the science building, but I’m not particularly impressed with the program offerings, which seem geared more toward geology and the oil & gas industry. It’s the same offering as SRU, I believe. Environmental geosciences… Not the specialty my daughter is interested in…
Bloomsburg has a lovely theater, though (my D’s other passion) and we chatted with a couple of students there who were setting up for some kind of concert. I asked about their major and they said they were doing an A/V major, which piqued my interest, especially when they said they were actually majoring in music despite not playing any instrument, just so they could do this A/V track.
(Department: What’s your instrument? Student: Uh, none? Department: OK! Voice! – that was one student’s recitation of how he ended up where he was)
There were lots of students around; apparently a kind of pre-college boot camp for kids with less than stellar fundamentals was starting that week. It was a nice campus and a nice downtown.
We missed SRU’s session by a country mile, though we did try to make it. There were a couple of nice admissions folks who talked to us. The campus was less compact than Bloomsburg and seemed newer and spiffier. Rock climbing wall in the rec center etc. Really nice student union building. Few students around, though (granted, it was after 4 when we got there).
BUT there is no current real theater. The building that houses the old one is chained shut and a theater major sitting outside said there hadn’t been a real theater in his three years there; that they used a multipurpose room for productions. He seemed pretty down on the program. We went later and saw that room, which seemed like a huge banquet room and nothing more. Went downstairs in that building to the workshop and found a tech head type of guy (I don’t think he was faculty, per se, but he was middle-aged, so def. not a student – sorry! going by memory three weeks later, with a major vacation trip to Yellowstone in the interim!). He was working with a student on some kind of stage scenery for a show in Pittsburgh. Lots of opportunities for outside work there, he told us. The admissions folks said their theater is being renovated and would certainly be up and running by 2019.
There was a planetarium at SRU, but we didn’t discover it until we were looking at a roof line on our way to leave.
D was OK with both schools but really not that impressed. She didn’t hate them, just wasn’t feeling it. I don’t count either visit as a true test, though.
We visited Otterbein U. in Columbus, Ohio, the next day and D was much more impressed with that school. Not sure it’ll be a financial possibility but we will keep it on the list.
@Gatormama Thanks for the great review
…“pre-college boot camp for kids with less than stellar fundamentals was starting that week.”
Yep, this is the Summer session that I described a while ago in this PASSHE thread. I still don’t understand how you get accepted but lack the fundamentals to get accepted, but it is what it is, I guess. I think in next couple of years (sorry to say) but due to the PASSHE woes, that it may be more difficult to get rejected than accepted. I just don’t like to see standards lowered.
Side question, was there anything about SRU that really differentiated itself (in a positive way) over Bloom? My younger D is looking in-state, but not sure an extra 4 hour drive to SRU would be worth it unless there was something that really stood out. SRU is doing well in recent rankings, including Money.
@Portercat - let me look more carefully at the photos and info later tonight. I don’t want to say anything off the cuff, because my memory really is abysmal… bear in mind, we didn’t do an info session, so I don’t have independent notes of that nature.
@Gatormama I too am anxious to hear about SRU, so looking forward to any more info you can provide. I really don’t think I want to drive all the way out to western PA to look at it, when WCU & Bloom already offer two good viable choices.
I think viable options are key here. SRU is in a cute small town and the campus is nice. But, Bloomsburg and West Chester sound like good options as well. Unless SRU has a program that the others don’t offer, not sure it is worth the extra driving. I grew up in Pittsburgh. We all went to Indiana, Slippery Rock, California, Edinboro. I can’t think of anyone that ended up at West Chester or Bloomsburg. Lots of commuting to Pitt but I did not want to do that so ended up at Indiana (Pitt for graduate school was okay because I had already been away ). Driving hours for Pitt or Penn State , or a top school elsewhere seems different than driving hours for a PASSHE school. But that is just me. Good luck to all of you with sorting all this out! And have fun on your visits!
I like the mentioning of a theater at Bloomsburg. @Gatormama, check out IUP. They do several shows a year I believe.
Voice music majors usually have to play piano, or so I have been told. I am also intrigued by Susquehanna.
Edinboro has a good science reputation around here, and was it Millersville I seem to remember someone mention.
For science and theater Muhlenberg is supposed to be good, but too far for us.
Allegheny has environmental science.
SRU appears to offer one thing that might interest my daughter and that BU does not have (not sure about WC yet): a BS in park resource management. D was really into the whole park ranger vibe while we were in the national parks the last three weeks. We talked to the retired rangers at Yellowstone that staff the Museum of the National Park Ranger, and one of them told us that while we’d been thinking a science-based degree would be most useful, it wasn’t the only entry into the field. He said he in fact majored in something like this SRU degree (or maybe it was hotel management - I can’t remember what his exact degree was in). He volunteered in parks every summer, then went off after college and did some unrelated federal job for two years to get his permanent classification, and from then on, he’d worked in Glacier, Big Bend, Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain national parks his entire life, in interpretive roles (tours, lectures, hikes, etc). TOUGH ASSIGNMENT 
According to College Data, the acceptance rate at SRU is 68%; at BU, seems like most anyone can get in, as we were discussing earlier (87% acceptance rate).
I found an interesting graph at this comparison site that shows BU’s acceptance rate shot up in about 2013; before then it matched SRU’s level:
http://colleges.startclass.com/compare/3582-3804/Bloomsburg-University-of-Pennsylvania-vs-Slippery-Rock-University-of-Pennsylvania
Anyway, I think SRU is worth the visit if it has majors that interest you - maybe even if it’s the same set of majors that BU or WC has. Like I said, the campus is more spread out than BU and seems newer. It’s easy enough to get to (not far off I-80 and Pittsburgh is only an hour south, so make a weekend out of it and visit Pitt et al!
DS was offered diddly squat, or close to it from Pitt, so Pitt is on my %*$) list! 
DD wants to study linguistics and none of the state schools offer it as a major, but a few do have a minor. She is also studying Chinese and Korean on her own, so need to look into that as well. Also, looking at TESOL in her future, she thinks.
I know the state schools simply aren’t going to offer her what she would really like to pursue, but it is what it is. We don’t have the finances and she didn’t get high enough stats to really move beyond them. So now it really is just a matter of which state school could offer her the best options.
Does SRU offer off campus opportunities? Do the students have somewhere to go off campus easily? If she were there, I would not be able to bring her home all that often. I think kids shouldn’t come home anymore than necessary, but if the campus and surrounding area is limiting, the distance becomes an issue. However, if it does seem to be a good possibility, I might be taking a drive out to SRU yet. 
I am curious what the transportation options are across the state (East-West or visa versa). Is it just Greyhound, drive or fly? I remember traveling by bus from Harrisburg to Philly in the late 80s and a normal less than 2 hour car ride, was more like 3-4 hours by bus and still had to get home to the burbs. It was then that I bought a junker car and started driving to college.
@laralei, with suite style dorm, meal plan and tuition/fees the PASSHE schools are going to cost at least $20,000-$22,000 a year.
If you have a major that cannot easily be done at one of them, then maybe Penn State 2+2 would be an option?
Our local branch costs about $14,000 with fees I think. And then main is about $18,000 for tuition/fees? I am not sure how much rent is, but if you could get a shared apartment in State College for around $6,000 a year, it might come out to the same cost over four years?
I would apply to several public and private options to see what kind of aid you could get.
@laralei…I am a graduate of Slippery Rock. Never had any issues with finding things to do. It is an extremely active campus with students that enjoy being active(through SGA/Campus Rec, social groups, events on campus, International club is very cool there). We would also make the 50 minute trip to pittsburgh sometimes…go to pirates games, concerts and such. They have grouyp buses for certain events.
I currently volunteer there every spring and review portfolios of the graduating seniors. One of my favorite times of the year because I get back on campus and feel the energy of the students. Students do like to enjoy the weekends but I think you would be surprised at how serious they can be during the week.
My daughter is not attending there. This is only because they do not have a varsity swim team. She loves it and is extremely picky.
Personally, I think that Penn Sttate/Pitt and Temple are ridiculusly expensive. My very next door neighbor is attending PSU UP and will be a freshman. His 1st year cost will be between $34 - 36,000 and that is a shame. He is interested in Hotel Management as a major. PA is in the middle of a tuition crisis. Just my 2 cents.
Thanks for the info on SRU @bester1.
I agree with you about our other “state” schools. Also, per my post about Pitt PSU is also on that #$&* list! I know the local branch of PSU, oldest went there for a year, hugely overpriced IMO, it’s grade 13 in our public school district.
@mommdc I’ve run the NPC’s on hundreds of schools, they all come out to around the same costs, $22K - $30K after applying all merit/need based aid. Huge, huge reduction in many cases, but I am not comfortable with need based aid, too many variables there. A few lower priced schools came in less than that but didn’t even offer linguistics as a minor. The schools with the really low COA for us are highly selective and doubt DD would even get in I think am done w/ the financial chase.
Just need to decide which of our 3 or 4 state schools I’m considering offer her the best opportunities. One of her teachers mentioned linguistics and I think she just latched onto that as a major. I have read having an affinity for math, formal logic, or computer programming is more likely to be good indicators for linguistics study, and those criteria do not apply to her at all. So…
She could actually get certified in ESL at Bloom if she goes into education. And I believe several of the PSSHE schools offer an MA in TESOL, which I think is where her interests really lie as opposed to “linguistics”
@laralei…here is some info that you may have already seen on SRU, for whatever it is worth. One of our very best friends son transfered to SRU from Miami of Ohio for the Fall 2016. He loves it and personally wished he had started college there.
Incomplete grade: Report on ailing State System schools falls short…
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2017/07/30/Incomplete-grade-Report-on-ailing-State-System-schools-falls-short/stories/201707310048
State Rep. Jordan Harris talks severity of Cheyney University’s problems…
http://www.phillytrib.com/cheyney-is-on-fire/article_5e28db15-adbf-5a52-8b83-83c22101356d.html