99 percent of PSU alumni had a wonderful experience. They return to PSU football games, arts festival weekend, send their children to PSU, and form live long friends from college. If it was a small "clique" of cool kids, then why for the next Maryland vs Penn State football game (Oct 15) are there so many PSU alumni/fans wanting to support their school and reconnect with their college friends that the game is being held at MT stadium in Baltimore and not at the smaller stadium at U of MD.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No very large school can be cliquyey. It is just impossible

It is if you don't belong to the Greek system. That is the main venue for socializing b/c there are no other outlets. It's very isolated. It's not like University of Michigan.

+1. I don't get the PPs who are telling OP that a school of PSU's size can't possibly have an in crowd. It most certainly can - often dominated by Greeks or whatever college activity is cool - for PSU that's football. I'm not suggesting that all the students not involved with those things are miserable and will drop out, but just this weekend Onward State had an article about why students choose NOT to participate in THON - the huge fundraiser for pediatric cancer. There were numerous students who told the reporters than they didn't feel part of the in crowd -- the charitable event which should be open to all is dominated by Greeks; if you're not Greek you have to go through a whole interview process to be able to participate and some students even said that once they jumped through hoops and got on committees, they were made to feel unwelcome by the Greeks who view it as their event. So yeah - I think if you don't look the part and act the part, there's a chance that at schools like psu you won't get to,do what you want to do -- even if that's merely taking part in planning a service activity.

Anonymous wrote:We Are A Cult!

Of morons.

We Are A Cult!

Anonymous wrote:No very large school can be cliquyey. It is just impossible

It is if you don't belong to the Greek system. That is the main venue for socializing b/c there are no other outlets. It's very isolated. It's not like University of Michigan.

Just remember it's really isolated. Its in the center of the state and there is nothing around there but PSU. You should visit. It's not an urban school, but more the classic college town. So maybe you need to determine what type of college experience would be best. The good thing is people at college and college age make friend easily.

Penn State has a seriously demented culture and aura. The horrible circling the wagons around the football program that allowed decades of unfettered child rape is sickening.

I agree with the comments above re Pitt. I'm from PA and from my observations over the past 5 years (while my kids have gone through college admissions), PSU seems to be accepting area kids who are just barely or not getting into JMU -- so PSU looks great (and often is) for them. But Pitt seems to be attracting area kids who are choosing and preferring to go to Pitt -- and they're stronger students than the ones I've seen who go to PSU.

As a Pennsylvania native, I can tell you that Pitt has passed Penn State in terms of selectivity over the last several years, and is gaining in prestige, whereas Penn State is holding steady as kind of a poor man's decent state school. As pp suggests, Pitt is considered more sophisticated and less full of rural folk from the hinterlands than Penn State. Pitt is a becoming a popular choice for kids from DC privates. Penn State, not so much. Penn State has more appeal to mid-range, middle-of-the road suburban public school kids, but that is a different crowd.

The "In" crowd?

Op, I couldn't get past this in your post. It's almost hilarious.

Not relevant at any school the size of Penn State.

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have experience with Pitt?

It's urban, more diverse than Penn State, and has similar academics. I've definitely heard more favorite things about it than Penn State. It's less insular, not as obsessed with football, and not as greeky.

But you should start your own thread, and my perceptions might be totally wrong.

Penn State is a huge, HUGE school. PP is correct that it is impossible for a school that large to be cliquey. There are 46,000+ students at the main campus.

I went there for undergrad (like a PP, I was in the honors college) and you can essentially build your own social circle because of the enormous student body. I went dual engineering/computer animation, and my social circle was mostly artsy animation people or science/engineering types. Not a lot of football and zero frat involvement in those scenes, but very fun and close (many higher-level classes in junior and senior year concentrate down to 30-50 of the students pursuing the same specialties, so it's easy to build relationships in smaller degree areas).

I met my Asian husband (an exchange student) there, too. There's a fairly large number of exchange students since the university is so large and a few thousand Asian students. I'm sure your daughter would be able to find people similar to her -- or completely different if she wants to push beyond the familiar (I know I did!). There's also a big variety of activities (I want to say I was active in maybe 6-8 clubs? I had something fun to look forward to every evening).

It's a perfectly good state school, and it will become what your daughter makes of it. If she's looking for a more intimate experience with like-minded people, it's not that type of school. But if she's still finding her passion and wants a lot of different academic paths to choose from, it's good from that perspective.

Anyone have experience with Pitt?

Anonymous wrote:Keith Olbermann Is a Smug Elitist. But He Wasn’t Entirely Wrong About Penn State.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/24/keith_olbermann_suspended_from_espn_after_twitter_fight_over_penn_state.html

I can't believe someone was dumb enough to give him a job!

anyway I think this was the best comment on the story

"Fighting with college students via Twitter? Really? You're a grown man, Olbermann."

Put Wisconsin on your list instead. Great academics, great college town with lots of different social opportunities, and Greek life is only about 8-9%.