Thank you. He just emailed them & changed his alternate to Behrend. He said they received good Princeton reviews for business. This is still a 2+2 option correct?
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We made a change this week and just called Admissions. They made the change real time while we are on the phone.
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For those receiving 2+2 offers, is it typically the commonwealth campus that was selected on the initial application?
If you get rejected, can you call and ask for reconsideration for summer + different major. What will increase the chances of getting main campus with a different major, but a major that isnât completely random?
How long does it take to get your application back after you ask for a reevaluation? We just submitted for summer session for Agriculture and Extension Education major and included the sat as well as sent an email to admissions explaining the freshman year grades.
I donât know their stats. But my daughterâs are 3.9UW, 4.2 weighted; TO; 2 AP, 3 DE, Pre-Calc; High Honor Roll; National Honors society junior year; 2 sport varsity athletes; 2 club sports teams; lots of ECâs, Girl Scout silver award; volunteer hours; paid employment
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I donât know theirs. But my daughterâs are 3.9UW, 4.2 weighted; TO; 2 AP, 3 DE; High Honor Roll; National Honors society; 2 sport varsity athletes; 2 club sports teams; lots of ECâs, Girl Scout silver award; volunteer hours; paid employment
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As long as heâs had precalculus or calculus (AP or honors if offered) and physics (any sort, regular, conceptual, honors, AP 1 AP2, APCâŠ) he should remain hopeful 
For the Priority round - and if youâve changed your mind you can call and ask to switch. As campuses fill up it becomes more difficult after March or so, but still possible.
Do you mean if you donât get Fall/UP?
Fingers crossed. At least youâll know you did everything possible and this combination is reasonable.
Turn around time has seemed random, from a few days to a couple weeks. People on this thread may give examples from this year or last.
Yes
You ask for reconsideration either Fall& Summer or directly Summer (check with parents because it costs money 
so it may not be affordable; direct Summer is faster.)
You have to look at the different majors. Those they are tucked away in the less obvious colleges are usually easier to get into (not necessarily easier to graduate from!) For instance, thereâs Engineering outside of COE, there are business majors outside of Smeal, there are biology-related majors outside of Eberly.
Or you can list the majors you find interesting and I can try to list those that are similar enough.
Keep in mind that below 3.5uw (equal number of As and Bs) and decent rigor, especially as preparation for your major*, itâs difficult to get UP. External scores (SAT, APâŠ) and ECs can help but canât make up for that.
*. For instance, a string of B/B-s in Spanish donât matter the same as a string of B/B-s in Math if youâre applying for Engineering⊠And the reverser if youâre applying to Communication or CLA.
So, technically speaking Penn State admissions work like random rolling.
They make decisions on a rolling basis by picking up files in a random order.
I find this extremely unfair. That they receive a hundred thousand applications is a very lazy excuse for this practice.
Why do they even have a priority early action deadline if they have to operate like this?
Truly rolling admissions are many times better than this - at least applicants have an incentive to apply early.
Or they should wait until all early applications are reviewed and then make final decisions.
Iâm sorry for the rant, but this is the most frustrating application process among the 12 colleges my kid has applied to. Iâd rather wait for 3 months for the decision than this anxiety driven by a daily anticipation of a result.
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Yes, itâs very frustrating.
And until this year there wasnât even an email warning your kid to check the portal so they checked constantly, increasing the stress.
This isnât really Rolling - Rolling is once Priority (Nov1) and EA (Dec1) applications are done.
The benefits of applying Priority is that all the spots are still open so your odds are best. If you apply in January or February, many majors are already full.
So, if you apply for the Nov 1 deadline, you hear by Dec 23. You can hear before that but you could just decide to ignore the trickle and the daily stress, and just check on the 23rd.
They could release everything at once on the 23rd but wouldnât be able to offer the option if âreconsiderationâ (basically a second chance at admission) since they couldnât handle all the reconsideration requests at once.
All I can say is to wait and be patient. 
Thanks. Youâve been a voice of reason in this thread, and I really appreciate reading your posts.
How could they ensure that spots will be available for all those who applied before the priority deadline? Especially if they are releasing decisions in batches without first going through all applications and without any pre-sorting based on GPA/Scores/etc?
Isnât it theoretically possible that most admission spots are filled for your intended major/campus even before your file is picked? Especially if they have received large volumes this year? Even for early action applications, to me it sounds like a rolling decision process unless Iâm grossly misunderstanding this.
you donât have to check daily for an update. wait until the 23rd and you will receive a decision by then. That is what Penn State admissions committed to. And for the most part they will make it. (there will be people who are convinced their application was in by Nov. 1st until pressed further and realize the SAT/ACT scores were late, or the SRAR wasnât received in time).
I do not believe they are randomly plucking files and admit/branch/summer/deny them. There is a reason that high stats kids hear first in November. Those applications donât need a deeper dive into academics ⊠was Calc taken for an engineering major, for example?
Penn State has their own internal EI - Evaluation Index. We donât know how it is calculated, but we know weighting goes into it (which is why you fill out the SRAR). And while I donât know definitively this answer, I will guess that kids who submit test scores are easier to make a decision on - because they have more data about that student. I know last year that kids with similar profiles (admittedly different high schools) received different results between the test score submitted and TO. (test submitted = Fall, TO = summer).
Penn State will want to ensure they admit the highest profile kids (who then will have the highest chance of success). We havenât seen any outliers of lower stats kids getting in and higher stats kids getting summer/commonwealth/deny. The ones that we have seen - historically - have been explanable. There was a 4.0 kid a few years ago that was sent to a branch. It turned out that her HS was not rigorous and she took all on-grade classes (no honors, no AP, no DE), didnât have calc or stats, and was probably the right decision.
I know it is frustrating. walk away. There is no longer any incentive for hearing on Nov. 20th vs. Dec. 20th other than an ego thing.
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The process outlined by you is contradictory to the conveyor belt process explained by someone with insider knowledge here. As per that thereâs no pre-sorting based on an academic index.
Weâve also heard lot of anecdotal posts here where someoneâs friends from same school with better stats/rigor/test-scores havenât heard back yet.
Iâd be happy (not that it matters) if what youâre saying is an accurate representation of the process. Peace out.
Take those applications times 2.5 and that is how many applications Penn State is wading through. You will eventually be able to see the data in the CDS. Right now, frankly, Iâd rather have admissions staff making decisions than slicing data for external report (which required many eyes). Iâm sure they have that data for internal purposes, but to publish it is a different level of review.
Having said that, there is a new (ish) Director of Enrollment Management (or some fancy term). Maybe he will be more transparent!
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One question - on the TO comment - if they are in fact taking decision on tests - i.e sending kids who submitted scores to Fall and those to Summer for TO with similar stats- it seems that they are not truly being âtest optionalâ but rather assuming that TO kids have âlowerâ stats. The admissions rep assured us that they do not make any assumptions but this would seem like that they do.
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