Penn State financial aid

<p>I am a non-Pa student intrested in attending Penn State. I found nothing on the website but I found two articles about tuition breaks at Penn State. Could anyone tell me if this program is still in place? and also how to you qualify for it?</p>

<p>I don’t know exactly what you are talking about, but I can tell you that Penn State has high OOS tuition and bad financial aid. It attracts a lot of middle-upper middle class, fairly smart, preppy, in state students.</p>

<p>Compared to its in-state tuition, which may be the highest in the nation, Penn State’s out-of-state tuition seems like a bargain :)</p>

<p>Ratio of OOS to IS tuition:</p>

<p>Florida 4.94
North Carolina 3.83
Texas 3.32
Iowa 3.23
Virginia 3.16
Maryland 3.01
UCLA 2.97
Michigan 2.96
Purdue 2.92
Georgia 2.92
Georgia Tech 2.89
Washington 2.65
Wisconsin 2.63
Ohio 2.53</p>

<p>PSU 1.76</p>

<p>That is a very poor metric to compare tuitions. Yes, that ratio is low, but only because ALL Penn State tuition is relatively high for a state flagship.</p>

<p>^ Of course! I was just trying to show how disproportionately high the in-state tuition is.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the “metric” may be useless for the students, it could have some significance in public policy debates. For example, how come schools like UVA and UMICH, which take in just as little State money as Penn State does, give their state residents such a big discount?</p>

<p>The main institutional aid that is available is for students who are accepted into the Scheyers Honors College. I believe it is now about $4,000 per year for 4 years, regardless of whether you are in-state or out of state. </p>

<p>By the way, Penn State is probably the only public university in the country that does not provide any preference in admissions to in-state students.</p>

<p>A student should also carefully consider whether they will be ineligible for a college grant from their own state if they attend an out of state college.</p>

<p>As we all know, PSU is not literally a state school; it’s possible the PASSHE give preference ti instate students in return for their more generous state funding. UVA’s state funding is much higher than PSU’s. UMich gets a sizable amount of their operating budget from their endowment, which is nearly five times the size of PSU’s (owing in part to the glory days of the auto industry in nearby Detroit). UVA also has an endowment that is several times PSU’s.</p>