Penn State- UP or UMD-CP?
Hi, I am pretty deep into the college selection process, now down to my final schools (Penn State and UMD). I love them both and was wondering if anybody who either attends one of the two schools or is simply very knowledgeable about them could tell me about the student life, any similarities or differences they may know of, etc. Also, I am planning on studying biology (on the pre-med track), since I want to attend med school in the future, and wanted to know which school would be better for my major. Thanks!
It would be cheaper to go to UMD.
Is finances a concern?
No, not really.
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Disclaimer: I didn’t factor in either schools School of Medicine as that’s graduate level. I’m solely focusing on undergrad.
PennSt is very much a rural college town. While UMD is 12 minutes to the MD DC boundary so it’s very much urban.
Student life I’m not super knowledgeable about and it’s incredibly opinionated so I’d watch the livestreams that CV hosted with current students. Additionally you can email school ambassadors. In terms of football PennSt all the way other than that no clue :-)
They are roughly a wash in terms of rankings and average alum salary (10 spots and 1k salary). They also more or less tie on graduation rate and retention rate.
UMD is smaller (by 10k) but it still has 30k.
UMD also has smaller class sizes overall.
UMD acoording to 2 blogs have slightly better facilities but it’s more like 4 years old and 5 years old (that’s an example not real numbers).
I’m not super familiar with the pre med track but in my view it’s very very even and niether is clearly “worse”.
In my mind the best thing to do (if possible) is to tour both campuses and get an idea on that. While there ask about the student environment. Neither clearly beats the other it’s very much personal preference. So I Hope this helps.
I know I kinda roundabout didn’t say which is better so sorry?
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