Penn State is big.

Racing from site to site with two dozen other independent educational consultants and one little tour guide on a blustery, snowy day in late March, I envied the students waiting for the shuttle to pick them up.

The numbers are big:

• 19 satellite Penn State campuses
• 29 NCAA Division 1 teams
• 275 degree programs
• 733 seats in the auditorium for intro to oceanography
• 1,200 clubs and organizations
• 8,500 acres 1
• 7,000 graduate students
• 43,000 undergraduates
• 73,000 undergraduates system wide
• 106,572 seats in the football stadium
• 788,000 alumni
• 1 million degrees awarded

• 110,000 applications for University Park in 2025
• 1 Penn State at University Park

The spirit of community

If you’ve watched any Penn State game, you’ve heard the echoing chant:
“WE ARE. . . Penn State!” It resonates in your bones, and you can see the appeal of that kind of belonging.

Academic breadth and diversity

With all that bigness come options and opportunities. Want to major in mining engineering or rail transportation engineering? Biotechnology? Statistical modeling data sciences? Meteorology? Landscape contracting? Pharmacology and toxicology? Just about anything you can think of is offered here. If it’s not offered at University Park, it’s probably at one of the satellite campuses.

One university, many campuses

The brochures say it’s all one Penn State, and it’s true that whether you study in Scranton or Altoona or University Park, your diploma says The Pennsylvania State University. But most of us mean University Park when we say Penn State. (We stayed close to campus at a hotel in State College, PA, but the campus is in University Park, with its own post office and zip code.) Most applicants hope to land at the main campus unless applying for a B.F.A. or other program that is only offered at a satellite.

Application strategy

For your best shot at Penn State (I mean the main campus), apply through the non-binding Early Action. About 75% of their freshman class applied EA. With a November 1 deadline, you’ll get a decision by December 24. If you get deferred to Regular Decision, they probably ran out of time to read the tens of thousands of applications they received. You won’t improve your odds by getting the application in as soon as it goes live on August 1 because they don’t read them in order of submission, but don’t wait till Halloween either.

Admission selectivity

The Smiel School of Business has a 20% acceptance rate and the School of Engineering is more selective than the overall 54% acceptance rate.

Application requirements

Up till now you’ve had to fill out the tedious SRAR, the Self-Reported Academic Record, but PSU hopes to launch Optical Character Recognition in the fall so that you’ll be able to upload a PDF or JPG of your transcript and let the software do the hard work of filling in the grades.

Turn in a personal essay and fill out your activities on Common App, but Penn State doesn’t really consider your essay or activities unless you appeal the decision. PSU doesn’t require the SAT or ACT, and they’re considering making test-optional permanent. For the class of 2025, 67% applied without scores and 68% of admitted students applied without scores. The Schreyer Honors College is actually test blind.

What Penn State values

What matters to Penn State? They emphasize your high school record. Did you challenge yourself and excel? PSU will recalculate your grades, but not only the core courses. Just about anything taught at Penn State will be considered in their evaluation, so they won’t count dogmatic religion courses (comparative religion is OK), physical education, or test prep, but all AP and IB courses count, even those in music and art.

Summer start option

Willingness to start at the main campus in the summer instead of fall can improve your odds of admission. It is actually an excellent way to get to know Penn State with a smaller cohort of students—1,800 to 2,000 instead of 10,000. With your cohort, you take two thematically linked courses that count toward graduation. Our admissions presenter told us that his own son opted to start in the summer, and it made for a smooth transition to college.

Finding your place

Penn State is really big. But you can make it smaller by joining a living-learning community, choosing from among hundreds of clubs and organizations, and taking advantage of professors’ office hours. Find your people, and spend as little time as you can in your dorm room.