Forgive me, I thought I was addressing a pilot (this is an aviation forum, after all). True, travel time for you and the Mrs. is about the same on airliners. If your daughter really wants to learn to surf she can schedule a vacation to SoCal and do it, it isn't that hard. Penn State is by far the better school. And both are actually quite big.
You should also consider the financial implications. Yes, tuition may be similar between the two schools. But I think you'll find expenses in Southern California dwarf those in Hershey.
The thing about a big school is a good student can treat it like a small school. I've never refused a student help or time, and most of my colleagues feel similarly. And we know our good students.
But if your kid would rather go to where the sun is, I can't entirely blame her. She certainly wouldn't be the first. But what I recall from my San Diego days is the bright ones go to the University of California.
It's about 500 nm from here to State College, probably a little less than five hours by Skyhawk, including climb and approach. That's cutting it tight on fuel, better plan on a stop, so make it six hours. That means I'd need a day each way, once in August, twice in November, once in December, once in January, twice in March, and once in May. I'm not currently flying power planes, but even when I was, I was VFR only, and the dispatch reliability of a VFR pilot going from from Georgia to the mid Atlantic during winter and spring is iffy at best. I'd have to cancel a number of those trips at the last minute and pay last minute prices to Delta or American. Besides, 12 hours @$130 per hour plus tax does not compare favorably with the $250 - $300 each way that the human mailing tube asks. She'll be going commercial.
The elite schools in the California public system are UC Berkley and UCLA. There are some others in the UC system that are also quite strong, and some that are less selective than their equivalents in the Cal State system. My daughter is not an elite student. She scored at the 83rd percentile in her standardized tests and will wind up with about a 3.6 GPA. Incidentally, that academic record would make her a marginal candidate for the University of Georgia. She's very asymmetrical in her test scores, very strong on the verbal side of things and only a little above average in science and math.
Yes, extremely proud of him. And yes, we are very happy he got this opportunity for a gap year. I think it provided a better focus to him, and it convinced him that, although hockey is fun, that won’t be his path to a successful long term career. He’ll play club hockey at RPI, but has wisely made the decision that pursuing NCAA hockey isn’t really a good bet. That’s good; he will be able to focus much better on academics.
It is true, however, that a lot of people tend to find their mates in college. What is your daughter planning to study? It does seem than Penn State is more highly ranked than San Diego State, but a lot depends on the specific major.
Both schools are what I would consider very large. Penn State has 40,000 degree seeking students, SDSU has 27,000. Once you get into the 10’s of thousands of students, I think it’s a wash. Both schools will have that big school feel and similar advantages and disadvantages of the big-school. I’d look at things like how many of the undergraduate classes are taught by professors vs how many are taught by graduate students, and what is the reputation of the school in the particular field of study.
Have you considered flying yourself to Penn State? That’s doable from Atlanta in a day; harder to do to San Diego. Looks like about 500ish miles to Penn State, 1600 to San Diego. The reality, also, is that there won’t be a lot of flights back and forth. We certainly won’t expect to see our son except for semester end points.
For the car, consider shipping it. It will probably be cheaper once you factor in hotel costs, wear and tear, etc.
She's planning on studying journalism and mass communications. Penn State's school of communications is the largest in the nation, SDSU's is much smaller. They are both large schools, but SDSU's journalism program is much smaller than is PSU's. I went to what I would consider a medium sized university (Vanderbilt),at the time we had somewhere around 5,000 undergraduates, and a surprisingly large number of graduate and professional students. That didn't feel small to me, but then the high school I went to only had 180 students.
I will certainly look into shipping the car should she choose SDSU, when the time comes.
It does look like sticker price for SDSU is about $10K less than Penn State. Pretty sure that won’t be made up by the cost of living differences for a student living on campus. A lot depends on the financial aid packages, of course.
You are certainly right about the big school environment. I went to a large state school, and I appreciated the variety of people and classes available to me. However, for the classes in my particular major, it felt like a small school with everyone knowing each other and good interactions with the professors, particularly in the upper years. A good mix. Big school for the variety, small school feel in my field.
Regarding the surfing... We have great white sharks here in CA. Seems to be at least one attack per year on a surfer. Not for me, thanks...
She was going to apply to four schools: Penn State, San Diego State, Auburn, and Indiana. Out of all of them, SDSU was the least expensive. With my wife and I both working, we're not eligible for any need based aid, and she's not strong enough of a student to get much in the way of merit based aid at the schools she'd like to attend. Between having the both of us pulling down professional salaries and only having two payments left on our mortgage, we can pull this off. We have some money saved up for each daughter as well, have been putting $2000 per year into a Coverdell IRA, and between all of that we'll get her through without any student debt.
Now if I can only convince daughter #2 to stay in state...
I’m kinda liking the idea of him keeping a nice, safe, long distance relationship with the New Hampshire girl. He’ll be almost 20 when he starts there this Fall. 20 year old male + under age high school female = not good!