Penn State Early Action for Fall 2025 Admissions

My TO Button just went away and I have the yellow bar again that says you application is being processed check back tomorrow. I also had it earlier in the week. What do you think this means?

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I have that as well, people were talking about it earlier here, I forgot what exactly happened after.

My daughter has the same in her portal now. TO option not available. It happened earlier in the week and reverted back to pending review within a few hours. The page indicates that the portal is under maintenance this weekend.

They are doing maintenance on the system this weekend so the portal is not available from today at midnight until tomorrow at noon. Everyone probably has that message again. At least we now know that when that message comes up it means absolutely nothing!

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If TO button disappears, you would try to access lion path using your application portal credentials

https://www.lionpath.psu.edu/

If you can login into it, then there is acceptance letter in communication link of the landing page.

Otherwise, lion path will give you message: ‘you are not authorized to access this web page’, which means you don’t have any decision yet

Hi! If we get that not authorized message (after TO button has disappeared) would that indicate rejection? Trying not to lose hope.

If you are talking about the TO button disappearing today and not getting into lionpath then it means nothing because they are doing IT maintenance and no one has access.

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What is the Lionpath Access Account ID? Is it the same as portal ID? My daughter was able to get to the Lionpath homepage but wasn’t able to this morning.

Yes it’s the same login and password

Everyone says if rejected, ask to appeal under a different major.

Do you call? Email?

How many times can do this? Like can you try one or two others and DUS?

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Congratulations!! Yes, my son said yes for summer. I know he will get in somewhere, but Penn State was his favorite and I like only 3.5 hours.

You have ONE try.
So you have to estimate how competitive you were for the major you chose and pick a major that is similar but for which you’d be more competitive.
For instance, Engineering majors in EMS are less competitive than in COE simply because fewer people are aware of them. College of IST has very good majors for someone interested in CS - the majors have some similarities but typically less math&physics and more technical courses. BBH combines psych&bio and is a great major for premeds (or future nurses who want to complete an accelerated BSN). Etc.
The best thing to do while you wait is
1/ decide whether you can afford summer and if so, your child has to decide whether that’d be an option of interest or possible (6 weeks from Jul2)
2/ look through the 100+ majors and look for majors that seem similar to the one you were rejected from but in a less competitive college or a less competitive major. This way, as soon as you hear disappointing news, you can ask for reconsideration for the new major and/or summer - time is of the essence and the longer you wait the smaller the number of available spots.

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Thank you. Will there be a link to do it or do we have to email or call? Can you ask them to look at 2 majors?

You have to email or call, and figure it out yourself ahead of time. When you call, you tell them which major you want to be reconsidered for (including DUS) and whether you’d attend LEAP (summer) or not.
So, time spent now, deciding on summer or looking at various majors and choosing one in case of reconsideration, is time well-spent.

Are you locked into the major you switch to, or could you then switch to DUS if it looks like you may have the grades to get into finance? The reason I ask is because my son is also interested in ECON, but his primary interest is finance.

Finance has very high GPA requirements and students have a better shot if they can skip the weed out courses, ie., have a 4 or 5 in AP Calc BC (or a 5 in AB and take Math 111 1st semester) and AP Macro&Micro Econ plus have reached level 4 in a foreign language (meaning they’ll be best positioned for an A in FL 003, because students are placed in that class with HS level 3 or 4 but level 4 gives a definite advantage.)

He can apply for DUS or Econ, and at Orientation or at the end of the 1st semester (keeping in mind 1st semester courses are going to be roughly similar: Eng 15/30, FL, Calc or Stats, Econ
) switch to DUS or Econ. Waiting till the end of 1st semester and 1st semester grades can make sense. (Most students admitted to PSU are A students and most of them won’t be getting As in college. 1 semester provides data and an interest for a minor can also manifest itself when taking an unexpected course - being open to the unexpected is also a huge plus of college.)

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My son was a direct admit to Smeal, is there any benefit to that? So if a student is not a direct admit it sounds like there an application process after first or second semester (or later). Are only a certain number of students accepted? Or if you meet certain requirements, you are auto accepted?

No one is really direct admit - everyone has to complete the same requirements and get the same grades. Being admitted to Smeal means they’re pretty sure you have the grades that correlate with meeting the requirements but you still need to take the courses and get the grades (C minimum) and GPA (varies, typically 3.2-3.5 so you really can’t get more than one C).
The benefits of being Smeal premajor is that the student gets a Smeal adviser and can apply for Sapphire (a sort of Business Honors program).
Otherwise, all students, Smeal or DUS, have 4 semesters to complete all the “entrance to major” requirements and get a C or higher in a set of courses, some of which are weed out (calc, micro econ).
It’s the same for all majors at Penn State (with different classes of course) - you can’t major in Engineering if you can’t pass 1st year Physics, you can’t major in Communication if you can’t pass Freshman English

However it’s not competitive, in that all students who meet the requirements get into their chosen major.
Finance is sort of an exception because the GPA required is usually quite high but generally students who don’t expect it to be HS, go to review sessions and office hours, stay focused during the week
 meet the requirements.

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Absolute not.

The To button disappears at 7:00PM EST time, then acceptance message will appear at 12:00PM EST in application portal, you also get status updated email at 12:00PM EST

Someone in this thread mentioned you can login into lion path account to look at your acceptance letter at 7:00PM EST too when you see To button disappears in your account,
which works for us.

So there is a 5 hours GAP between application portal and lion path, simply said you can
see your acceptance letter five hours earlier from lion path than application portal

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If my TO button disappeared does that mean anything or is it just due to the maintenance?