<p>My daughter is going to attend graduate school in the fall and one of the schools she has been accepted by is Pennsylvania State. Her major is a small department so I dont want to name it, but in her area of interest, Penn State is supposedly ranked 3rd in the nation. They have offered her an incredible package and she will visit at the end of the month. Please let me know what you think of the school in general. What do you think of University Park? Someone told us it is "out in the middle of nowhere". Someone else said it is nicknamed "the happy valley".</p>
<p>My niece is an undergrad there (engineering) and loves it. There is strong school spirit and it is an excellent large public university. It sounds like it would be a great opportunity for your daughter since the program she would be in is so highly ranked. It IS in a small town, but the kids go to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh often.</p>
<p>I can tell you that it is in the middle of nowhere and it is also called "Happy Valley".....so I guess it depends on what is important to her. Philadelphia is about 3 1/2 hours away so not a quick trip. I know that most undergrads love it because of the sports, parties, activities usually associated with college. I am not sure if there would be as much to do for a grad student though. I can also say that most students I know ( despite loving the experience) are really sick of the weather by the time they graduate ( it can be pretty brutal there).</p>
<p>Definitely worth a look, but we are in-state and neither of my kids chose to attend.</p>
<p>My s attends. Overall a very positive experience, but here are the pros and cons from my perspective.
Pros:
High level of spirit and pride in the school
Good academics (my s got a great package there too...hard to beat)
Faculty and staff are friendly and accessible.
Pretty campus
Town is small but bustling. Classic college town. Lots of restaurants and shops - most geared to students needs. Not like some places we visited where there was NOTHING around or a touristy town with no student services (like Williamburg)
Awesome football and improving basketball. Both fun times.
Great Alumni network</p>
<p>Cons
Can get crowded. Long lines. Big classes in some cases.<br>
Weather is terrible - cold and gray
Hard to do professional jobs or internships while on campus - network is good though for summer as long as you're willing to live in Philly, Pitt, NY or DC
Lots of kids from PA, NJ, NY. Not bad in itself but diversity is lacking
LOTS of drinking
Far from cities (s is having a hard time getting to interviews especially since his car broke down - the trip by bus is long and no fun!)</p>
<p>DH, S1 and I all went there for undergrad. S1 has applied there for law school. I would agree with toneranger except Grad classes are not big like the 100's in undergrad. By the time you are well into your major they are much smaller. The research opportunities were fantastic even for undergrads. </p>
<p>If this is one of the top programs and a good package, the negatives are a small price to pay. The University is large, there is something there for everyone. No matter what your interests are, there is someone else interested too.</p>
<p>The weather is cold and gray now, but the warmer months (including fall) are lovely, not too humid and no bugs. The U runs a bus to NYC on the weekends.</p>
<p>Just noticed the OP's screen name-- The weather in State College is milder than much of the midwest. It is one "climate zone" warmer than Chicago.</p>
<p>Thanks all - please keep the info coming! This is my first born and even though she is now married, this will be the first time she will go far away (she attended the honors program of our state U which is @ 75 miles away for undergrad). All of the grad schools she is interested in are at least an 8 hour drive away.</p>
<p>The weather where we are is typical "schizophrenic midwest" - ice and snow on a Tuesday and 65 degrees and sunny by Saturday. 10 degrees this morning and 60 is predicted by Friday!!</p>
<p>The new graduate student housing (for singles, couples and families) is very nice, just off one of the golf courses, and a few blocks from the central campus. The community gardens there are just amazing.</p>
<p>The experience of being a graduate student at a university is extremely different from that of being an undergraduate at the same institution. It's important to remember that when evaluating people's views of a place where you are considering going to graduate school.</p>
<p>My son is a first-year graduate student. His experience in graduate school seems to depend far more on the department he works in and the graduate student housing options than on the personality (drinking, activites, etc.) of the undergraduate part of the university. The climate is still a factor, though. He's in Southern California and loving it after the hot, sticky summers and (relatively) cold winters of the Washington, DC area.</p>
<p>I went to Penn State in the early 1980s. It's a beautiful spot. But if your daughter is beginning a traditional PhD program, the ONLY relevant considerations are the strength of her particular department -- including (if relevant to her career goals) its recent academic placement rate, the stability of the department, the average length of time it takes students to finish the program -- and the size of her stipend. Everything else is strictly secondary. She won't notice the weather because she will (or should) be busy getting through the classwork and then writing her dissertation. Actually, for many grad students, good weather is a distraction.</p>
<p>MWParent, I am an alum of OSU and not PSU so I cannot offer any specific info except to say that the football tailgating there is incredible.</p>
<p>However I am glad that you mentioned that your student's department is a small one. I was a Civil Engineering major at OSU which was also a small department with about 35 in my graduating class. The atmosphere was a very intimate one, similar to an LAC I suppose. All the faculty knew us well, the upper class courses were small, typically less than 15 and we had lots of out of class contact with faculty. </p>
<p>During f'ball season we had a pregame picnic on the Hitchcock Hall patio, we had informal b'ball games with faculty, lots of fieldtrips associated with our student ASCE chapter, some faculty regularly ate lunch with us brown baggers in the Boltz Hall lounge and most faculty and student attended the annual awards banquet. Other opportunities to mix with other students/faculty were the concrete canoe team, steel and wood bridge teams.</p>
<p>These are the types of things which many people fail to realize about huge universities-they are composed to literally hundreds of smaller colleges and departments. Yes those frosh/soph general ed course lectures are very big but usually supplemented with small recitation/tutorial/lab sections led by TA's were you could ask questions about the lecture material and hw assignments. Check to see if PSU has these too.</p>
<p>most students follow the idea "study hard, party hard" trust me, i live in pa and like everyone at my school applies and goes there if admitted, i've heard thousands of stories</p>