Ground&Pound

If you were a big time blue chipper living in PA and wanted to stay in state, where would you go?

eazee

I assume that a majority of PA kids grow up rooting for Penn State (mainly because of football). I would probably have to choose them.

JensenS

The stock answer is probably Penn State as its the most well known school, its had the most success overall, and has the best facilities. However, Tim Flynn has a real nice thing going on up at Edinboro too.

Flop The Nuts

Given that I went to Pitt, I would NOT recommend Pitt.

I think I'd go with Lehigh, at this point. PSU is a great school, but it's still a football school to most people.

The clock is now ticking for wew to come on here and verbally assault me.

eazee

While I agree Edinboro's got a great program, it doesn't seem like a place for PA studs to go. Out of their 8 NCAA qualifiers, only 2 are from PA and none are their AA's.

141-Daryl Cocozzo (NJ)
149-GG (NY)
157-Matt Hill (Freedom, PA)
165-Deonte Penn (OH)
174-Phil Moricone (NH)
184-Alex Clemsen (MO)
197-Jim Gibson (Hermitage, PA)
285-Joe Fendone (NH)

From this years recruiting class they have:

Chris Honeycutt-St. Ed's OH
Thomas Straugh-Massilion Perry, OH
Paul Paddock-Warsaw, NY

RYou

No question about it, I'd head for Zeke Jones and U Penn's Wharton School. Now if I didn't have the smarts to get into Penn, then I'd head for Penn State which offers an A One all around experience.

wew

The answer is fairly obvious....it depends.
PSU is one of the most expensive public schools in the land, so it depends how much money you're getting. The choice of majors is much more extensive, but there is no major city, if the city night life is important. Cost is about $20,000/yr., even if you start at a branch. My son starts at PSU-Berks in the fall, and I would not have qualified to be on main campus if I had applied this year and not in 1977((avg. for main campus...1320 SAT's and 3.6+ for grades).
Lehigh has comparable academics(Engineering school rated below PSU's in some areas, even in others....business school the same....check any rating in the last few years). I grew up in Bethlehem and currently live in Allentown....the major drawback now for Lehigh is that they are starting construction on a Sands' casino within walking distance of the school....Great for the Steel brownfields, not for South Bethlehem or the Lehigh campus. Cost is about $45,000/year. great tradition, wrestling and otherwise.
Edinboro, and the other state teachers colleges, are very nice campuses in remote areas, and obviously do not have the same academic requirements as some other schools. They get supported even less than the state schools, but are very well thought of and i have many friends who attended and have achieved great success.
Pitt and Penn have different academic advantages(Pitt in pre-med and pre-dental), Penn with Wharton and the Ivy league plusses, and I have relatives and friends who have and are attending each. If you want to live in the middle of a city, with the inherent plusses and minuses, these would be the place for you.
See....no attack at all. There are plenty of great places to go to school in PA, and we didn't even touch on the one part that many would see as important....that being the wrestling situation! The point to be made is that we concentrate so much on that aspect that we tend to forget that these kids will only be in the sport, maybe, through college and a little longer, if they are very good! College is so much more than this one part, and every kid is different and has different academic, social and economic needs.
I usually just hope that the PA kids stay in PA, but let's face it....there are too many who are too good who have opportunities outside the state and want to be further from home.....so the best of luck to them!!!

wew

By the way, Flop....my Dad was born in the projects of Oakland(for those not aware, Oakland is the name of the Pitt neighborhood). They moved to Mt. Oliver with the money received when my uncle was killed in the last two weeks of WWII. He went to Penn State because he could not afford Pitt, and spent his first year at Edinboro because that is where they sent kids in his major for one year in 1950 before they got up to main campus.
Pitt has a very good reputation in the LV(I grew up rooting for PSU and whoever was playing against Pitt), and at least 4 friends of my son from his church group and hockey/lacrosse friends are attending in the fall. Is there anything they should know, or is it mostly wrestling-related and the Rande program???

Flop The Nuts

I had problems at Pitt primarily because I grew up in a very rural area about 90 minutes north of Pittsburgh, and I really had a hard time focusing on academics there. I wasn't a hick, but at the same time I wasn't ready to live on my own in a city, and Pitt is a city school. The nightlife and ample opportunities for women-chasing were too much for me, and I had to transfer to a more laid-back school. Flop the Nuts did better there.

When I slag on Pitt, I guess I don't really mean it. It wasn't the right place for me, but there's nothing inherently wrong with the place. A mature kid that went to a big high school, or grew up in or near a city should do fine.

There are some very rough neighborhoods to stay away from though, especially at night - the Hill District being one of them. Anyone going to Pitt should be careful in choosing an apartment, if living off-campus.

RYou

I read your note about the PSU tuition being high and I found it a bit a stretch...until I checked the current rates. Wow have they jumped and including the instate fee. My son graduated last spring and we were paying the out of state rate. When he started we were paying the current in-state rate. Penn State is now higher than Rutgers for in-state students. When he made his decision he had the Rutgers option, but he decided to Go State...because of the athletics and tuition being not much more than the in-state RU rate.