Smeal Business Program Advice for International fall 2007 admitted applicant!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Penn State
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<p>Hey guys, </p>

<p>Im an international student who has been admitted to Smeal school of Business as Penn State-University Park. How is the business school, generally academically and reputation wise? Is landing jobs easy? Is the experince a good one? </p>

<p>Also, taking into consideration I'm an international student, will I like university park as a whole? </p>

<p>Also, I have been admitted to UW-Madison, and I'm tending to lean towards Madison over PSU? Any reasons/points of differentiation? </p>

<p>Thanks for the help!</p>

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<p>Wisconsin is a good school but if you are looking for business go with penn state, state college is a small town, but it is made for college students, since ur coming from hong kong i don't know how you will adapt, but philadelphia and pittsburgh are near by.</p>

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<p>dda ... Smeal is an odd b-school. Because as "yeahwhatever" noted, SC is a small town, literally in the midst of "nowhere", it plays tuff on the b-school and other programs like engineering, etc. Few opportunities for hands-on outreach. The MBA will forever struggle with this problem, no matter how hard they try or how much $$ gets dumped. Until that gets relocated to an urban setting, or SC becomes such, they'll never get close to Northwestern, Penn, Chicago, maybe even Pitt, heaven forbid.</p>

<p>And one of the great challenges is finding reasonable employment for top-dog profs. State College, unlike Philly, NY, Chicago, etc., is a really tough sell to professional couples. And this relates to b-school issues.</p>

<p>That said, there are some great programs @ PSU in Smeal. Logisitics is the best in the country (ironically the b school domos pooh-pooh it because it is not seen as a true "discipline" worthy of major resources, etc. Like accounting, finance, marketing, insurance, etc. are true disciplines. lol), accounting is seen as top notch among the major firms (much of this may be because they all have 30% attritition annually and must find mega programs like PSU to hire sufficient #s of rookie auditors to generate the billing hours), marketing, finance, insurance, are so-so.</p>

<p>All programs have been substantially improved since PSU joined Big 10. </p>

<p>Madison's b-school is top drawer and probly a bit more cosmopolitan than PSU. I suspect your leaning is in the right direction, altho you'd not go wrong either way.</p>

<p>SC, despite being a small city, has a major international component. It's simply less integrated than you'd find in Philly, NYC, etc. Almost alwys it's assumed that international folks are U people. Because they usually are. lol</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

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<p>Thanks a lot for the insight, much appreciated!</p>

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<p>Hey dda, you don't currently live in the US?</p>

<p>I am an international student as well and will be going to psu as a transfer this spring. Anyways, I was a little worried that PSU wouldn't be welcoming to international students since there are so few in a mostly white student body. However, they seem to be ver informative and have several groups for international students, including english classes. </p>

<p>good luck.</p>

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<p>dda - Per your question on PSU-UP vs. Madison, I'm familliar with both, as my son has applied (and been accepted) to Smeal for this fall and I used to live in Wisconsin and hang out at UW-Mad. THis is clearly not an academic related response, but given that you live in HK you should know that Madison has some of the longest, and most severe, winters in the US. </p>

<p>I am told that Univ Park also has some lousy weather (more like Pittsburgh than Philadelphia, but Wisonsin winters are in a whole other category. Pennsylvania can get really cold by, say, late October and starts to warm up by late March- early April.</p>

<p>In Wisconsin it's cold about a month earlier and probably stays cold a month later. If you don;t like the cold, it can be endless. </p>

<p>BTW, Wisconsin is beautiful in the summer and the Great Lakes region provides endless opportunites for fun. </p>

<p>Good luck with your decision.</p>

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<p>Right on with the winter. </p>

<p>PSU, despite what student perception can be, i.e. "they're rough", are not bad. Because Happy Valley is about 7 ridges east of the Appalachian Plateau, much of the precip gets dumped before reaching SC. However, because students must be OUT in the weather, unlike previous experience, it seems more brutal than it is. Not close to Wisconsin's winters. Aside from downhill skiing though, Madison is a great place for winter sports. SC has had only one inch of snow to date this year.</p>

<p>And btw, Penn State is also beautiful in summer, fall, and spring. And winter's only about 3 - 4 months.</p>

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<p>Smeal is an above-average learning school, however, as Whistle Pig noted, you'll have to do some more traveling for hands-on experience.</p>

<p>I'd choose Madison, mostly for the opportunities it would offer. And Wisconsin's business school is probably a little more highly regarded.</p>

<p>As far as weather goes, it's lose-lose. State College gets horrible winters and tons of rain, however it can be beautiful in the summer. Ditto for Madison.</p>

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<p>hey guys, thx for the replies. Yeah, I do know about the winter and trust me I'm kinda looking forward to it in an apprehensive way. Here in HK, the "winter" is considered "freezing" when it drops to 15C. Never below that, so yeah -20C is kind of frightening. </p>

<p>But yeah, Im leaning towards madison, because I just like the feel of the university and it seems a lot more academic and welcoming than Penn State.</p>