Hi;
Does PSU located on a city or rural area? Does it have good location & campus?
Thanks!
Penn State has over 20 campuses. The main campus, University Park, is in rural central Pennsylvania, but the city that surrounds it, State College, is pretty big. University Park itself is massive and there are over 40k students. Some people don’t like how it’s in the middle of nowhere, but I personally love it because everything in State College revolves around Penn State.
I went there and loved it. If you come from a city, some people dont like it. It is massive, so if you even think you dont want big, Penn State is not for you. My son wants big but not quite this big. Its still in the mix though
Penn State University Park is a town built around the college, otherwise in a rural area of Pennsylvania. However, downtown State College is a very nice area with the typical amenities, such as clothing stores (Urban Outfitters, Target, H&M and small boutiques), restaurants (Chipotle, pizza places, etc.) and grocery stores. The nearest mall is about an hour drive, but you can carpool with friends if you need anything. The campus is large, but depending on the dorm you live in, it’s easy to move from one end of campus to another. I’ve walked from one end of campus to the other and it only took about 45 minutes, from East Halls to the stores. There’s a bus that runs on campus which can help. You can also bike to classes, which is quite common.
State College is called a “college town”. College towns are smaller towns that contain all the amenities that college students may want to have in terms of shops, housing, entertainment (big sports, concerts, theater/music, cinemas), activities, restaurants, etc. (What they lack isn’t of much concern to college students: Philarmonic Orchestra, choice of bilingual private kindergarten, sailboat dealerships, huge skyscrapers…) You walk off campus and you have several streets dedicated to students’ needs and wishes. A great benefit to living in a college vs. a usual American city is that it’s designed with great public transportation and you don’t need a car to get around.
Additionally, State College is roughly 4 hours to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, New York City.
Penn State is in the center of the state and while state college (the town Penn State is in) is not rural - it’s surrounding area is. State College itself has a very walkable downtown area with tons of shops and restaurants and anything a student could want. Then outside of downtown on Atherton Street is where you will find every big box retailer you’d want…target, wal mart, sams club, home depot, lowes, clothing stores, etc…
Go up Rt 26 about 15 minutes and there is the Nittany Mall. You are about 2 1/2 hours from Pittsburgh, and 4 hours to Philadelphia. The campus is wider going east to west than it is going from north to south. If walking from the south west corner to the northeast corner of campus, it will take you a good 45 minutes. Walking the front of campus from east to west will take you approx. 25-30 minutes, and walking north to south on campus would take you about 20 minutes. It’s a large campus - but very beautiful and very walkable - and keep in mind that rarely do you need to walk the entire length of campus. My daughter normally takes about 15 minutes to walk between her classes. She walks everywhere. And she has a car. But the school bus loop will take you anywhere you need to go and Uber and Lyft are also very prevalent in the area.
It’s very often ranked one of the top college towns for a reason!