Expert: Todd Johnson - 11/2/2007

Question
i recently took interest in penn state.  i understand that it is the university campus that is popular among the other schools.  but i noticed that they were called branch campuses.  i am not so sure if i understand the difference between penn state abington and penn state university park.  are they completely different or are they similar?
their school mascots are both nittany lions but i am not so sure if abington is such a good school...  also, i cannot find the website for university park.  i saw the penn state home website but it didn't have a link to university park.  is there a home website just for penn state university park?
thanks.

Answer
Stanley,

Many large Universities have a main campus and branch campuses. The branch campuses are smaller and often might have a particular focus. Most often the branch campuses were created just because they couldn't make the main campus larger and some students learn better on a smaller campus.

When people talk about Penn State they are generally referring to the main campus which is University Park. This is the largest of the campuses and this is where the graduate school is focused, where the football team plays, etc. Abington is a much smaller campus located in another city. I haven't checked for sure but I would assume that the  admission requirements for University Park are probably the most difficult of all of the campuses because it is so well known.

The web site for Penn State doesn't break it down simply because they are a unified state system. You will note that for admissions, it breaks it down by campus and you can find more information on each campus through the admissions site.

I hope that helps.