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Admissions FAQ’s

Admissions FAQ’s
Admissions FAQ’s

Students

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), recruiters are looking for college students to build skills during undergraduate education and become “career ready,” which is why career readiness is one of Dean Lang’s top priorities. Career-readiness competencies include self-development, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork, and technology. You get all of these through a liberal arts education, which means you can do pretty much anything with a liberal arts degree. This can be liberating but overwhelming, so resources such as the Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Network are here to help you explore, identify, and articulate your career goals, as well as the industries open to you! 

The College of the Liberal Arts offers twenty-five IUG programs that allow students to stay a fifth year to earn their master’s degree. Typically, students apply for an IUG program in the fall of their third year. It is important to talk with your academic adviser early and often if you are considering an IUG so you can plan accordingly. 

Because a major doesn’t always lead to a direct career path, our students participate in a variety of internship programs across different industries. Our academic programs create opportunities for students to gain transferable skills that make them qualified to participate in their internship of interest. With the help of the Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Network, students have access to hundreds of internship opportunities. 

Penn State students have access to over 300 traditional study abroad programs and over 100 embedded programs that span over 140 countries! Explore your education abroad options. 

Students work with their academic advisers to choose the best semester to participate in a global experience that works with their academic plans and interests. The most common semesters to go abroad are spring of your second year or anytime your third year.  

Parents and Families

The College of the Liberal Arts is a community of people with a genuine interest in developing long-standing interpersonal relationships that help students succeed before and after they graduate. With this goal in mind, our six Student Services offices connect students with the resources and opportunities they need to be successful. 

Incoming, first-year students register for courses at New Student Orientation (NSO). As part of NSO, students work directly with an academic adviser to discuss academic interests, review any college credit they earned while in high school, and enroll in classes. They will leave NSO with their first semester schedule set and ready to start classes on day one. 

If your student has not yet accepted their offer, they should log into MyPennState and select the “Follow this link to accept your offer of admission” button to take the next step. We request students accept their offer by May 1 for summer/fall admission at any campus. 

After accepting their offer, students will receive a notification in their MyPennState account asking them to sign up for New Student Orientation. 

First-year students attending Penn State University Park are required to live on campus, and there are several housing areas from which to choose. The most popular is East Halls because it is primarily first-year students who live there, aside from the resident assistants. East Halls provides a wonderful opportunity for first-year students to bond with one another. 

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Rock Ethics Institute research associate Yael Warshel is poised to receive a book award at the International Communication Association’s annual meeting for her pioneering work in the book “Experiencing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Children, Peace Communication, and Socialization.” Her book, a critical examination of peace communication interventions and their effects on children in conflict zones, has received international acclaim, with this being the book’s second major accolade.

Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing program recently launched a new Open Access monograph. “The Future of Foster Care: New Science on Old Problems,” edited by Yo Jackson and Sarah Font, is a collection of expanded conference proceedings from the 2019 conference of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, a national leader in research designed to influence public policy that better protects vulnerable children from abuse.

P. Gabrielle Foreman, Paterno Family Professor of American Literature and professor of African American studies and history at Penn State and a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, embarked on a decade-long creative endeavor that culminated in her recently released edited volume, “Praise Songs for Dave the Potter: Art and Poetry for David Drake.”

WPSU uncovers the stories that unveil the triumph, grit, caution and legend that make up the history of the commonwealth in a new digital series titled “Past PA.”

Janet van Hell, a longtime Penn State faculty member in the College of the Liberal Arts’ Department of Psychology and director of the Center for Language Science, was recently promoted to distinguished professor of psychology and linguistics.

Liberal Arts Professor of English and Asian Studies Xiaoye You’s new book on rhetoric in early imperial China offers insights into how ancient rulers built and maintained an empire, and what that may reveal about contemporary issues.

Nearly 100 Centre County high school students visited Penn State’s University Park campus on April 12 to participate in the fourth annual Language and Linguistics Day hosted by Penn State’s Center for Language Science.

The Penn State Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction recently hosted its fourth annual conference in the HUB-Robeson Center at the University Park campus. 

An interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers have received a $442,750 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, to support a multi-faceted, three-part study that observes how gay and bisexual men search and find HIV prevention information — specifically information about pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, a medicine that when taken as prescribed, is very effective at preventing HIV.

Two Penn State professors — one in history and the other in art history and anthropology — have collaborated on a three-pronged project that will spark conversation and awe about the art, culture, science and history of Andean peoples.