Pennsylvania State University

PSU, while the area of Religious Studies was very good, lacked a great deal. Our department was all honor students so the focus was on academic. I was an older student and did not plan on following a career in the area. What I was seeking was a more classical approach to critical thinking. I received that. The other departments such as business lacked this. I would have been piled with information, taught how to take orders and sent off to be a phone clerk. The campus itself was problematic due to the large amount of student drinking. It was not unusual to sit in a general education class next to a student smelling of gin.

Alumnus Male -- Class 2000

Penn State had its ups and downs. I liked attending a big university and experiencing the typical college lifestyle, such as the college town, football games, and the party scene. However, a word of advice about going to PSU. I recommend starting at a branch campus to get acclimated to college life and actually having your gen eds taught by real professors who go out of their way to help, plus the benefits of smaller class sizes. Main campus treats the freshman/sophmores like crap (from what I've heard) since I started at Penn State Altoona I had the benefits of main campus being so close and the personal attention from advisors and faculty at Altoona campus. My upper level classes at main campus were relatively small and taught by professors except the only difference was that most of the profs in the psych dept were difficult to contact which is why the TAs are the prof's bitches. I always perceived arrogance from the psychology professors because they spend most of their time researching and writing text books. WORD OF ADVICE: You have to be a good self-advocate in the psych dept because it's such a huge major. Personally, I didn't have a problem because I knew how the system worked and had my career goals in place. WHAT SUCKED: Getting profs to write grad school recommendations. I had one of my references rejected because the letter sucked and then had another professor avoid me for 3 months when I would ask if he had written the letter, he finally did it after months of reminding him.

4th Year Female -- Class 2003

Campus Maintenance: A, Faculty Accessibility: B-

Although the university has several official departments dedicated to the promotion of racial/ethnic diversity and fair treatment of women and sexual minorities, they are largely uneffective. Furthermore, there is a clear blue-blood, white, upper class "penn state football rules" attitude which prevails in the personalities of a vast majority of the students here. Finally, the University Park campus is surrounded by vast, very rural areas with a huge amount of racist, backward thinking people. Not a fun place to be if you happen to be a racial minority, or Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered. If you belong to any of these oppressed groups, then I would seriously reconsider your decision to attend here.

3rd Year Male -- Class 2002

Campus Aesthetics: A, Collaboration/Competitive: F