Univeristies (Pittsburgh, State College, Bradford: public schools, colleges, bars)

[JHG722]

Originally Posted by Lion11

humm... okay. That's your opinion. I would just like to ask what your problem is with the agricultural side of PSU. Do you not like food that you buy at the store? That's what those farms do... put food in your stores. College students are also our future, and they must be pretty smart to handle those courses and graduate. Not sure what you mean at all.

I have no problem with agriculture, but I wouldn't want to spend my college years surrounded by it.

Originally Posted by Katiana

That sounds sort of like my brother's opinion, and he went there! He is still a big PSU fan, though.

An anecdote: When the U of Nebraska went to Penn State to play in 2003, their fans complained about how rude the PSU fans were. When they went to Pitt the next year, they said the Pittsburghers were wonderful!

I was at PSU a few weeks ago with our fan group for the Temple/PSU game, and by and large, their fans were some of the most rude and classless people I've ever encountered in my life. I could write a book.

[pinetar10]

one downside to going to school at penn state is that a lot of classes are large auditoreum classes with hundreds of students. Other schools on your list have more traditional style classes. I graduated from IUP and only ever had 1 class with more than 30 students, and most of my major classes had about 15 students

[JHG722]

Originally Posted by pinetar10

one downside to going to school at penn state is that a lot of classes are large auditoreum classes with hundreds of students. Other schools on your list have more traditional style classes. I graduated from IUP and only ever had 1 class with more than 30 students, and most of my major classes had about 15 students

Yeah, I have one 'big' lecture class with around 75 people, but other than that, my classes have between 20 and 40 people in them. I've seen stuff about big schools having 400+ person classes. No thanks.

[Lion11]

Originally Posted by JHG722

I was at PSU a few weeks ago with our fan group for the Temple/PSU game, and by and large, their fans were some of the most rude and classless people I've ever encountered in my life. I could write a book.

Try going to Michigan or Ohio State. Much worse. At Michigan they even boo their own team. That doesn't happen at Penn State.

[JHG722]

Originally Posted by Lion11

Try going to Michigan or Ohio State. Much worse. At Michigan they even boo their own team. That doesn't happen at Penn State.

I actually went to Michigan for two college hockey games (with my previous college), and they were just as bad.

[dugdogmaster]

To the OP, you've picked all good schools to choose from, maybe you can just flip a coin or play paper/rocks/scissors to eliminate them one by one. Have you considered Allegheny College in Meadville? That's another good one for teaching I hear.

[pinetar10]

i think you should look at what you want to major in and what type of area you want to go to school at. Most of the schools on your list are in small towns and fairly rural areas. I went to IUP and I think its a good school, but there are many students who go to IUP with partying on their mind, and they rarely do well in school.
Penn State is a completely different ballgame than the rest of the schools you have listed. It is a much larger school where you can get lost in the crowd.
Although IUP is a fairly large school, (14,000+ students) most class sizes are under 30 students.
The rest of the schools are all pretty small. Another nice school that is not on your list is shippensburg. Very rural, beautiful campus bordering the town of shippensburg that has most things you would need, though it is a fairly small town.

[toobusytoday]

Hopefully, you've applied to these schools already. All have rolling admissions and that makes a HUGE difference at PSU. Just apply now and decide later....

BTW, I second the suggestion of Allegheny. They offer pretty good financial and merit aid, small classes and a nice campus. My son looked at it when he was going through the college search.

[cowboyxjon]

I went to Penn State (main campus) for four years and would definitely recommend it. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do when I was a senior in high school and the fact that the school offers so many majors to choose from was definitely a selling point for me. I had the chance to take a gen ed class in Geography and never looked back. I love working in the GIS field.

Yes, *some* of the classes are very large, but usually the upper level classes are regular-sized or even somewhat small (one of mine had 8 other students). Also, the nice thing about PSU is that it has multiple campuses, so there's always the option of taking a summer class at a branch campus. I took C++ programming at Penn State Schuylkill one summer and definitely benefited from the smaller class size and accessibility of the instructor.

Also, the school is priced relatively reasonably for in-state residents and definitely has name recognition. I've had jobs in PA, CA, and CO, and all of my employers seemed impressed by the fact that I have a Penn State degree. I also had no trouble dealing with them for transcripts, etc., after I graduated. In fact, they seem WAY more organized and efficient than my graduate school (University of Denver).

State College is small, but offers a lot of amenities. I'd never want to live there permanently, but I enjoyed my time there.

[JHG722]

Originally Posted by cowboyxjon

Also, the school is priced relatively reasonably for in-state residents and definitely has name recognition. I've had jobs in PA, CA, and CO, and all of my employers seemed impressed by the fact that I have a Penn State degree. I also had no trouble dealing with them for transcripts, etc., after I graduated. In fact, they seem WAY more organized and efficient than my graduate school (University of Denver).

Yeah, I've heard some bad things about how DU is run, although they do have a helluva hockey team :P