Life at Penn State

<p>What's life like? Is it a big party school or is a place where there is little to do, ect...?</p>

<p>yo dude, my sister goes there and basically its like a mini city..you can do whatever you want,</p>

<p>if you want to party, you'll have no problem doing so. greek life is huge, and there's always a frat party going on somewhere. most frats I think have converted to a byob policy, b/c many were suspended for having underage drinking. a good portion of the campus does get drunk on weekends (even a rather large percentage of the astro department, which surprised me). I agree w/ the mini-city analogy. you can pretty much find anything you would in a normal city, just fewer of w/e it is. I think full conversion took place when a strip club was added a few years ago, albeit in a rather inconvienient location for students, as motor transportation is necessary to get there. not that I personally condone that kind of life, but realistically, if that's what you want you can have it.</p>

<p>I've heard that, but one of my friends goes down there all the time to see her boyfriend and says there's really not a whole lot to do- everything's pretty far from the campus so you'd have to walk pretty far. And in this weather......?</p>

<p>I'm a PSU freshman right now and my opinion is that there are a lot of things to do. The thing is that if you're not into drinking and partying, you need to look harder for them. Or if the frat party scene is not your thing (at least when you're a freshman), you need to look harder for apartment parties. There's always some sort of frat party going on though. I've had my share of really good drunken nights and really good sober ones, so it all depends on what you do. It's basically about establishing your connections with other freshmen and upperclassmen with similar interests and then you'll practically have unlimited things to do.</p>

<p>what of the workload? Are good grades hard to get? if having transfer in mind after the first year, is psu a good place to go for freshman?</p>

<p>I'm a freshman bioE major, so my classes are pretty set. First semester I took chem 12 (gen chem 1), chem 14 (lab), math 251 (ordinary and partial differential equations), ed&g 100H (engineering design and graphics honors), engl 30 (honors freshman composition), and bioE 100S (first year seminar). This semester I'm taking math 231 (calc 3), math 220H (matrices), cmpsc 201C (c++ and matlab), phys 211 (mechanics), chem 13 (gen chem 2), chem 15 (lab), sts 497K (seminar for something), and kines 11 (skiing). Mind you a bunch of these classes second semester and like one credit, like the lab, skiing, and the seminar, so I'm taking 17 credits. Last semester it was 15 credits. Most of the freshman-y classes aren't too hard to get good grades in, in my opinion if you're doing the work (the math classes listed aren't freshman-y so don't think this is true of them). Basically the way you're going to get bad grades in freshman classes is if you slack off. They're designed to make you pay if you're not going to class and sitting outside all day.</p>

<p>PSU is definitely a good place for freshman because you can meet people from all years, etc. It's probably better to go as a freshman because everyone is new to it, thus friends are easier to make in the fall than say the next year, when everyone already has a social network, not that it's that hard to make friends anyway, but this is a relative comparison.</p>

<p>i am thinking of going to psu smeal biz school in fall as a freshman. however i have to transfer after the 1st year. i know i need gpa of 3.8+ to get into schools worth the effort to transfer to. you know any freshman in smeal and consider gpa 3.8+ doable?<br>
thanks for your reply.</p>

<p>Umm, I can't really say I know the business majors personally...but from what I can tell (and perhaps I am biased since I'm an engineer), it's not particularly hard. I had a 3.93 for the first semester and am expecting it to stay about the same, so since IMO engineering is a heck of a lot more rigorous, I don't think a 3.8 in business should be that hard to pull.</p>

<p>I am a freshman. I am in the business school. I got a 3.78 first semester but I worked really hard for that. You need to work hard to do well here. There is so much to do here that it is overwhelming. There is always free movies (even small artsy foreign films), concerts big and small, and tons of other things to do every weekend if you do not want to drink. If you are not into drinking there is absolutely no pressure from anyone to drink. There is so many people here that it is impossible to not find your niche if you just put in a little big of effort.</p>

<p>What is the music scene like at Penn State? I’m a singer songwriter, and I’m so interested in studying music, but just keeping the hobby alive. How often do students perform around campus? How often are there opportunities in the town? If anyone knows that would be great if you could share!</p>