Penn State has extremely loyal alumni all over the country and outstanding job placement after graduation. It also has a beautiful campus in the quintessential college town. My neighbors’ kids all went there (and LOVED it) for everything from education to accounting and the family took out Parent Plus loans to help pay for it. I live in PA, but for kids who have the stats to be admitted directly to UP, it’s often the only school they apply to. Many, many OOS students (especially from NY and NJ) want to go there, too, not realizing how expensive it is today. Some are the children of alumni, others just have classmates they know headed there, or they’ve visited themselves and “fell in love.”
Even the Sandusky scandal only affected their applications for one year. It’s really a remarkable thing, one I don’t totally get, but it is what it is. Success breeds success. They also have one of the top-ranked honors colleges in the US, which offers tremendous perks, although not much merit money. It’s a very good school, though, even if you don’t get into Schreyer. It’s definitely a “work hard, play hard” kind of school.
It’s a lot like Michigan in that sense, although not nearly as selective.
My DD picked an OOS Public School as it was in the state that she wanted to end up working in, it was a Kiplinger’s Best Value (not that much more than in state), they were generous with IB credits and she didn’t want to be running into all her classmates from our hometown.
Penn State seems good but for OOS the price, not so good. And by price I mean net price.
When I check my social media feed I see a lot of Northeast kids with no affiliation to PSU picking it.
They don’t come close to meeting need per the numbers and there is not much merit at all.
Perhaps the math becomes - it’s $48,000 (so not 65k like a private). We will get a little money so it’s $40. Take out student loan and a plus and now it’s mid $20s and they make that work???
Penn State net price after financial aid is not even very good for Pennsylvania residents. Net price for a student living on-campus with FAFSA EFC = $0 (maximum financial aid) is $24,123 for Pennsylvania residents, $38,725 for non-residents, according to https://cce.ais.psu.edu/college-cost-web/netPricePageOne.xhtml .
OOS private seems about the same as OOS public on the sticker price. Is net price usually lower for private with merit and need based scholarships and aid?
However, some other schools like Georgia Tech, Delaware, and Virginia also have similarly low Pell Grant percentages, despite their lower in-state net prices after financial aid.
Not sure at which level the Penn State tuition and financial aid policies are made. But low income Pennsylvania residents tend to be worse off than those in most other states as far as finding affordable colleges goes.
@Marakov29 What about the Merit Recognition Scholarship at MSU (which is room and board plus $4000). Can that be stacked with the Honors National Scholarship?
Penn State was considered by a few kids I know. In the end, parents could not justify the cost. Gave kids the choice of PSU or in-state and help with a house deposit and in-state won.
Seems to me you would want to go out of state if you got a lot of money or your in state options were not good (either generally or for your specific major).
And I can see state schools wanting to increase their profile by attracting high performing out of state schools.
I think many schools take high performing OOS students to improve their profile, but I also see schools taking OOS kids who fall below the 25%. They are full pay and bring in OOS tuition.
To answer clarinetdads quesPSU, I went to high school in Mass. in the 1970s, and back then PS was the only major football power anywhere even close to the Northeast. Places like Maryland, Syracuse, BC, and Pitt played an occasional big game, but PS was the only perennial powerhouse, and also the only one with a cozy college town and a rabid fan base. While most people in my high school dismissed big universitiesas places where u were “just a number,” some were after the classic rah-rah football/frat/college town experience, and PS was the only option in the whole Northeast. 40 years later, it’s still the only real such option in the Northeast., despite Rutgers and Maryland being in the Big 10, and BC, Syracuse, and Pitt being in the ACC. Given the widespread skepticism in the Northeast about the existence of indoor plumbing and people marrying outside their families in the South and Midwest, PS can continue to attract hoardes of Northeasterners and overcharge them. Sooner or later word will get out that the PSU experience can be had much cheaper in Tuscaloosa or Lincoln or Norman .
Flagship publics are often only offering in state tuition to high performing OOS kids. So they can get better qualified kids for the same revenue as in-state kids. Issue with taking non-high performing OOS kids full pay is that often approaches cost of privates. Great if you can get them (though if lower stats than what you could get in-state, you have sacrificed profile for additional revenue).
@Marakov29 Thanks. My daughter is looking at vet school. From what I have seen and been told, one school of thought is undergrad as cheap as possible to help avoid mountain of debt in grad school (because salaries are not great). I understand that MSU has the possibility of being less than in-state flagship on a merit basis. A few other schools can be free/close to free on OOS basis. Then it becomes a balancing act to see what offers the best option in terms of undergrad program, opportunities to get vet experience necessary for vet school admittance and preserving options if there is no acceptance to vet school.
As far as what Penn State charges is up to its administration, it is a ‘state related’ school (along with Temple, Lincoln, Pitt). They get only about 7% of their funding from the state. Might even be less in the future.
The problem is that top students in the state that can’t afford $30k plus with maximum federal and state aid of about $10k, can’t attend Penn State. The Shreyer’s honors college is very selective and not just about stats and like mentioned doesn’t give much merit.
But Temple does offer automatic merit and Pitt offers some full tuition and Stamps Scholarships to instate students, but can be very competitive (2%of applicants received full tuition last year and 5 Stamps scholars a year are selected).
Most of the students who don’t have the stats for merit or even to be accepted at PSU or Pitt main, attend a Penn state regional campus they can commute to or one of the PASHEE schools.
But there are plenty of full pay students at PSU and Pitt as well.
Pitt tries to have a diverse student body, they have students from most of the United States and several countries.
It has a med school, dental school, pharmacy school and law school. It’s urban. A very different school from PSU.
^forgot to mention that the numerous private schools are also popular with PA students if they are good students and qualify for some merit and/or need based aid, which could put them at less than the full price of PSU or Pitt.
In reading these threads, multiple editions of USNWR, talking to other parents and just reading the news which is incredibly hostile to high-priced college tuition and loan debt, I can only project that ALL of the public universities (flagships and non and throughout the states) are going to be massively advancing in the ranks of public opinion in the years ahead. More good students, choosing to go OOS public for scholarships, will boost the receiving schools’ stats and the brands.
More of the solid non-flagships (like Colorado State) who give a lot of OOS merit scholarships and are in beautiful places, similar to Boulder but half the costs, will continue to rise in rank and prestige. When people start saying, “oh, XYZ State University? Didn’t Johnny Achiever go there?” It’s just going to keep changing as more people reject the old prestige brands and go for the latest “good schools”. Not dissimilar to shopping at Target instead of Saks or Bloomingdale’s. People shop at Target because they want to, they believe it’s a good product at a great price that serves it’s purpose. Makes me imagine that going to OOS schools with tremendous merit aid may become the new normal for many motivated students who want no part of indebtedness. That’s IMHO at any rate…
Seconding @JessicaO. My oldest (and her younger sister, coming close behind) will certainly be applying to Big Name Universities™, because that’s simply what one does when one comes from their high school with their stats—but they also both recognize the high likelihood that they’ll be awarded big merit awards at OOS public flagships and near-flagships, and there’s an opportunity cost to debt, so…
What are some of the well-regarded public universities that are inexpensive for out of staters? I had heard that U of Minn was affordable, but then just read that it’s tuition is rising. Are there any good universities out there that are less than 35k for those in other states?