College life, academics, social life, parties, food, etc.
@jlhpsu may have stories to report 
PSU Altoona is a pretty campus and is one of the better commonwealth campuses as far as a real college feel. The others that are 4 year colleges in their own right are Behrend and Harrisburg. PSU Altoona has only 4000 students so it is surely a different feel than UP campus, but most people I know that have gone there (and that’s a lot from our area) really like it. There are a lot of clubs, social life seems to be active there, lots of parties off campus etc…The campus is in the middle of a neighborhood so it’s not a hopping area, but there are restaurants around and lots of other students in off campus housing that have parties and things going on.
My son is going to Altoona in the fall as well and we have a sophomore daughter at UP. It’s about a 45 minute drive between the two campuses, so one of the nice things is that people who go to Altoona can be relatively involved at UP if they have a car at Altoona. My daughter at UP had friends come up for football games, concerns, THON, etc…
Altoona is also heavily involved in THON in their own right.
My son would have gotten eaten alive at UP so we are glad he’s starting at Altoona. He didn’t have a choice of UP because his grades aren’t UP caliber, but even if he had, he’d have chosen Altoona.
^Nothing to contribute other than that the drive between Altoona and State College is really easy! I used to live in State College and drove to Altoona occasionally for a variety of reasons. Straight shot.