As far as what Penn State charges is up to its administration, it is a ‘state related’ school (along with Temple, Lincoln, Pitt). They get only about 7% of their funding from the state. Might even be less in the future.
The problem is that top students in the state that can’t afford $30k plus with maximum federal and state aid of about $10k, can’t attend Penn State. The Shreyer’s honors college is very selective and not just about stats and like mentioned doesn’t give much merit.
But Temple does offer automatic merit and Pitt offers some full tuition and Stamps Scholarships to instate students, but can be very competitive (2%of applicants received full tuition last year and 5 Stamps scholars a year are selected).
Most of the students who don’t have the stats for merit or even to be accepted at PSU or Pitt main, attend a Penn state regional campus they can commute to or one of the PASHEE schools.
But there are plenty of full pay students at PSU and Pitt as well.
Pitt tries to have a diverse student body, they have students from most of the United States and several countries.
It has a med school, dental school, pharmacy school and law school. It’s urban. A very different school from PSU.