I am assisting my friend and her daughter on their decision making based on my experience (2 kids in college) and doing a lot of research. What would your choice be for an undecided female leaning towards STEM major from PA looking to choose between these 3 schools? She has been accepted to all 3 and finances are not an issue. Go.
Don’t know anything about the kid - and all three will work.
You have size, environment (city, flagship in small city not in the middle of nowhere, flagship in the middle of nowhere), weather, and more.
You’ve given zero info.
All three are great.
How about she visits all three and decides which she likes best…
Thanks. Yes, she has visited all three and still undecided. She wants a large school, likely more suburbs which would cancel out Pitt. Although during visits UF had the best weather which is swaying that way but concerns regarding housing and potential political environment (not sure I can mention this here). What else? They told me there is an LLC for out of state students which sounded so strange to me.
Sounds like she decided.
Large - Pitt is out.
Politics are not potential in Florida…they are absolutely real - and unless you agree with what thye are doing, that should be out. While I don’t anticipate it, there will be certain majors, if the governor has his way, that will be eliminated, etc.
So to me, you’ve decided PSU.
Good luck to her.
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UF grad here and for me also, Florida schools would be off the table.
Pitt - my kid just got back today from a weekend/admitted student visit.
We find the city incredibly charming. The students have free bus passes and free admission to museums & discounted admission to events. There is a lot of good food in town also. I find it very manageable and approachable, considering it’s a city.
As far as STEM - without knowing more details, Pitt has a pretty robust program in medical & related stuff. Engineering also, I think. We’re an arts & humanities family, so I can’t be more useful there. Sorry! Is the honors college in the offing?
I concede I’m biased against Penn State. As a PA resident, I’ve never forgotten or forgiven the Sandusky scandal, and that colors my opinion, so I won’t give it. Factually, though, it’s extremely isolated - close to nothing. Supporters would probably argue that it’s its own ecosystem, and they might well be right.
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Thank you for your feedback. My pick would be Pitt as well for many of the reasons you stated. She did not apply to the honors college. This young lady said she wanted a suburban feel and I actually thought Penn State’s honors college would be an opportunity for her in the future and saw that as a selling point.
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Advise the student to make an account here and ask with more details (e.g. what STEM major?) in order to get better answers more quickly than going through you.
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My DD is still deciding as well and I have to say PSU is at the top of her list. We ruled PITT out, she thought it was too urban. We visited PSU a few weeks ago and she loved it. We loved the college town around the campus. Campus is large but it is set up well, each dorm area has it own commons and dining hall, gym etc. My DD is also undecided and this major (DUS) at Penn State gives the students so much flexibility to find the perfect major for them and still graduate in 4 years. We were very impressed!
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From our high school Penn State wins for engineering, math, computers, agriculture, and similar.
Pitt wins for anything medical related.
Penn St wins for it’s “college town” feel. Pitt wins if they want urban. For both of those categories there are often other options too.
FL colleges can win for weather, but not generally academics unless it’s Marine related.
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2 issues with UF: lots of online classes (some online credits are actually required) and the politics (beside the surrounding political issues, it directly means elimination of certain majors&DEI, meaning that as a girl in science she’s now de-prioritized and if she has any sort of learning or other disability she won’t be supported).
One +: the peer quality will be very high. Florida is a huge state and UF admits the cream of the crop.
(Hot&humid -85% humidity today 
- with a thunderstorm a day from March to October isn’t my cup of tea but I can see how, compared to cold&cloudy from November to March, it’d seem like a better deal and students pick a college based on weather all the time.)
What college is her major at at Penn State? Or is she DUS? Because students in the CLA (Anthropological Science, Criminology, Social Data Analytics, Psychology/Neuroscience option) can participate in all the Honors College classes through the Paterno Fellow program and have easy access to research thanks to their personal adviser. The basic idea: you want to join, you’re in - then it’s up to you not to be kicked out.
https://la.psu.edu/prospective-students/paterno-fellows )
Pitt is urban in all the cool ways.
State College is a college town - while I think the best time to live in a college town is when you’re in college 
(since the town basically focuses on you and your needs/wants), Pittsburg is a great city in which to be a student, great public transportation everywhere you’d want to go and enough accessible on foot from the Pitt campus.
An advantage of Pitt is that you can take some honors courses even if you’re not in Honors; however, you do not have priority registration.
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The LLC (living learning community) at UF is there if you want to connect to other out of state students who would have something automaticallly in common. Not necessary.
I’m not sure what to say about people claiming “majors being cancelled”. I’d have to ask for sources.
Gainesville is not “in the middle of nowhere”. But she’s already visited and knows that. It’s a great college town with a great student body. I wouldn’t be sweating about “political environment” in the least. I’d worry more about the northern schools to be honest. But that just points out the bias on both sides of that coin.
The weather is great for most of the school year but summer can be HOT. But I can’t take the cold so would rather be hot than cold. And yes it is humid.
There are numerous on-line classes–just like everywhere else these days.
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I just drove from Gainesville to Jax. It is in the middle of nowhere - but was an hour and 25 - and behind big trucks. I drove in last night from Tampa…yes, it’s middle of nowhere.
But so are most places - til you get to city limits.
As for majors being cancelled - no one knows - but because the governor is wantitng to get rid of majors and he seems to have carte blanche - people are saying it’s a possibility - which is fair.
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Thanks for your input. She was accepted to DUS at Penn State. Isn’t there a possible path to Honors college as well? (My daughter was accepted for fall 2022 CLA and Paterno Fellows was a selling point but she chose to go elsewhere.)
As a DUS student, she’d have to indicate she is thinking of a major in the CLA in order to become a Paterno Fellow Aspirant. That should cover her at least for the 1st year, meaning she’d get to take the innovative 1st year courses that combines English and CAS and often include field trips etc., while she decides what she wants to do.
If she switches to a major outside of CLA after she figures out what she wants and thus leaves both CLA and DUS, she’d leave Paterno Fellows, I suppose.
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