Also, the College Board had systems issues this year. Usually they would transmit the results at the same time that they are available online. They had trouble with my son’s October test and it took over a week to get it to PSU. They emailed apologies and said that the issue was resolved, but then it happened again in November. To my dismay, his SAT score was available on 11/24 but when I called PSU on 11/30, they did not receive the score. After spending hours on the phone with College Board, they escalated the issue and finally transmitted it to PSU at 5pm on 11/30. A PSU rep told me that they have been updating more frequently at the request of College Board because they were not being sent promptly.
FYI this is the email that we received from the College Board for the October Test:
Dear Student,
We have resolved a system issue that caused a delay in delivering your SAT® scores to certain institutions. We were able to successfully deliver most of the remaining scores on Nov. 11.
To determine if your scores have been delivered, please review the status of your score sends in your College Board online account.
We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. We’ve been communicating directly with affected institutions to help them address this situation and are encouraging them to be flexible when processing scores.
Thank you for your patience,
The College Board 
My daughter’s material is still being verified. does anyone know how long this stage can last?
I had read that last years applications may have been slowed down due to admission director leaving Sept.14. Has their been any word on things moving “a bit” quicker this year due to a new director?
I sent in my application along with all materials and heard back in ten days.
ACCEPTED: College of Arts and Architecture - Architecture Major
Stats:
ACT: 30 (26 CR, 33 E, 31 M, 31 S)
GPA: 4.3 W, 4.0 UW
Rank: None
APs/Honors: 4 AP classes, rest are honors
Other stats: Future Architects and Engineers of America club President, Church Youth Group, Summer Internship at Architecture Firm, National Honor Society
college
Location/Person:
State or Country: New Jersey
School Type: Public
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Gender: Male
Applicant Type: out of state
Good luck everyone!!
My S applied Sept 2nd and still under review. All materials were added before the end of Sept. I think the bulk of decisions will be made in Jan for the priority apps. Did anyone get accepted to their 2nd choice campus such as Altoona as of yet if they were not accepted into UP?
I don’t think I agree…my son is more qualified than his sister was last year and she found out end of Jan (2015). He still has not heard.
My D applied last year and status/decision was not made until end of Jan, even though she applied Oct 2014. Her brother applied, with better stats, in Oct + now he has a sister there and he still has not heard.
Hi!!! I was accepted into Penn State Altoona, bummed I didn’t get UP, but it was a REACH, it’s all good. I am going to be pursuing meteorology major. So for the 2+2 thing, does meteorology fall in line with most of the other majors and you transfer after two years or is meteorology different??
@dtheman17 if you don’t mind sharing, what were your stats?
It’s been disappointing to wait for my D’s Smeal decision after being “under review” for over 3 months now while friends & applicants on this thread with lesser stats, some Smeal, some others, have been accepted. Don’t know why the tour guides & info session leaders, on both of our UP visits, stressed applying early to take advantage of their rolling admission when clearly it is not. People can debate the semantics of what type of “rolling” admission it is, but PSU should remove “rolling” from their presentations & tours b/c they are setting expectations that are not realistic. They should simply cite the “priority” Nov 30 deadline. Or, qualify it by major/school. Other universities have honored the true sense of rolling admission and have accepted her and offered her scholarships while she sits under review at PSU. What a bummer.
Hoosier, this is my last time going through this with my 3rd son. For PSU, it is also my most stressful because my other sons got accepted the first week of December and we have yet to hear about S3. I will say that my other sons were way up in the blue section of the bubble chart which may be why they heard so quickly…they both applied to Smeal. S3 is in Engineering but he did not want to study for or take his SAT more than 2 times, so his results just made it into the blue section. My guess is that he is on “hold” in order to process more candidates to see how competitive the applicant pool is before he gets his decision. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they just press the button if he meets all the criteria right now? I know they verified all his data already.
@kimba3842 I have a 3.2 uw GPA/3.55 W, 25 ACT, and great essays. So, UP was a HUGE reach. But after two years at Altoona, do I transfer to main campus or does my major (meteorology) fall under one of those weird ones where you transfer after a year or year and a half?
I agree Datahound and Hoosier44, they told him to apply early for the best chance at the orientation day. If he is on the bubble and they are waiting to access all Nov 30th apps for a better pool that is just wrong. You either get in or not- and they should give the option for DUS as a 2nd choice on the app, if you do not qualify for the COE or Smeal etc…Most of his friends are putting deposits down, know where they are going, picking dorms and roommates while mine sits and waits for the mail and logs on everyday to find out his future with PSU, his first choice. Stress for everyone. I understand that they get an enormous amount of apps, but seriously why not plan for it and hire temp help to get them reviewed in a reasonable amount of time?
They do hire temp help. Lots of it. Lots and lots of it. Temps work 10 hr shifts from August through May, 5 days a week. They got 11,000 applications in a single day! Each one is scanned, data entered, cataloged, updated. Each one is then given to actual human beings. If you want it to go faster, the only other choice is to have some arbitrary cutoff of either gpa or SAT score, and simply throw out anything underneath those marks. That hardly seems like a good idea.
Again, this is life at a Very Big School. If your college expectation is personalized service, someone on the phone to answer questions you could Google but you really just want a different answer, a variation on every policy for your student’s situation – that doesn’t happen at Penn State, and it won’t happen at SEC or Big10 or other big schools. You either accept that, or find a school that’s a better match.
Hi #greenbutton I don’t mean to mock PSU’s policies, I understand it is a HUGE school with lots of qualified students applying. What I am trying to say is at the orientations it would be nice to know that most of the priority apps will not hear back up to Jan 31st. We appreciate all their hard work!
@Datahound @hoosier44 We all discussed this last year as well because it is very frustrating to hear the term rolling and find out later that it does not mean what we thought it meant. (for others, you can search the thread “Rolling Admission and this Terrible Waiting” that I started last year. There was plenty of discussion on this topic).
But, even though PSU is not considered to take a holistic approach, they are not necessarily straight by the numbers either. There is variation. And that’s because even though they received 130,000+ applications last year (including UG, Graduate, Commonwealth Campuses and World Campus), each application is looked at with human eyes. I don’t think it’d be better if they had strict by the numbers admission where some algorithm controls your future.
All of that being said, I completely understand the stress and anxiety. I remember last year being just sick that my D didn’t get a decision by Christmas because the offices close and we knew that it would be a few more weeks. It was actually a month later (Jan 26) that she finally got her acceptance after having her application complete and “in review” as of Sept. 8.
Also, everyone who applies by Nov 30 is considered under the same criteria. And everyone who applies by Nov 30 will have their application decided upon before any applicants after Nov 30 are considered. The applications are sorted when they come in. I’m sure higher stat applications go one way, bubble other ways, absolute no’s the other way. But beyond that, the decisions are random - so someone with a lower stat can hear before your high stat kid simply because that particular admissions rep got to that file before the rep with your kid’s file gets to their file. It’s not one person just going in order. Hang in there. I have been there and as evidenced on this board from last year - it nearly drove me crazy.
This is how it’s done now…
-Accept or deny the higher level applicants first.
-After that they just pool every applicant that was received by Sept.1 to Nov.30th and make decisions as they come to it.
What they should think of doing. Is still decide the higher applicants first. But, when that is done. Decisions on the rest should be done by date of receiving information. So if someone had all their info submitted lets say by Oct.15th. They would get a decision before someone who had all of their info in by Nov.30th.
This would help in two ways…
1-Those who took the time and applied earlier get a decision before a similar ranked applicant who applied near or at the deadline.
2-It would help admissions. They got 11k applications on the deadline date. If people knew it would help to have their apps in early. They wouldn’t be swamped in one day with apps. They would come in more evenly over the month or two.
@jlhpsu , LOL I do remember reading your posts as I was gathering data for the past three years. I really felt for you and am so happy that there is a human aspect to evaluating the application. As a result of that, your D was able to get to Main Campus and is thriving. After reading the threads, one thing is very clear to me, PSU admissions seems to truly care about getting all eager applicants into University Park campus. Most of the highly qualified applicants don’t even have PSU as their first choice campus. I believe from many of the comments on this thread, that when a student is denied or accepted with an alternate, the admissions advisors work very positively when notified that the student wants to be re-considered for any avaliable option to get accepted into PSU-Main campus as it is a first choice. That gives me a lot of comfort during this waiting period. However, I am still getting a bit crazy as each day goes by LOL! :-t
@dtheman17 - I was wondering how long it was from the time you applied to when you heard?