I cant decide between Penn State campuses

juillet
Tue, 18 Aug 2015 02:26:05 +0000

Why don’t you want to stay in New York?

I hear students say that all the time because they want something “different”, nominally, from their high school experience. But quite frankly, there won’t be a huge difference bewteen living in some small town in New York like Fredonia or Geneseo and living in some small town in Pennsylvania like Erie or Berks. In fact, there are some places in New York that are further from NYC than some places in Pennsylvania. And both a small town in NY and a small town in PA will be very different from living in New York.

There are many SUNY campuses in small towns with small schools. SUNY New Paltz, for example, is a cute little small town in the Hudson Valley and I think the school’s enrollment is something like 5,500 students. Fredonia, Brockport, Geneseo, and Oneonta are other campuses that are small, in small towns, and pretty far away from New York and will be pretty functionally similar to attending a Penn State branch campus - with the caveat that they will be far cheaper. There are several other SUNY campuses in slightly larger towns or very small cities (Oswego, Plattsburgh, Potsdam, Cortland). SUNYs are excellent deals for New York residents.

Don’t assume that you will get financial aid just because you are applying with a fee waiver. Public universities reserve their best aid for their own state’s students, and because PSU is a state-related university, it’s actually much more expensive than actual state public universities. (Look up the difference: it’s subtle but has a huge impact on the finances of the university.)