Colleges That Recruit Pennsylvania Students

Pennsylvania high school students looking at their college options can easily become a little overwhelmed. The state officially boasts of 130 colleges and universities tied directly to the state schools, in addition to thousands of other schools. According to Collegebound, Pennsylvania has 3,267 total colleges, universities and technical schools for students to look at. Students who are willing to look out of state will find hundreds more schools actively recruiting Pennsylvania students.

  1. University of Pittsburgh

    • The University of Pittsburgh boasts one of the oldest histories of any American college, starting all the way back in 1787. They are the third largest school in Pennsylvania behind only Penn State and Temple. Affiliated with the Big East, this large state school heavily recruits against other schools in the state for top high school students and boasts an enrollment of over 26,000 full-time students.

    Penn State University

    • Penn State University boasts over 40,000 students enrolled and is the largest college or university in the state. Penn State's athletics associate with the Big Ten Conference and the school has 11 different colleges overseeing more than 200 programs, all of which are recruiting Pennsylvania students to bring in the most promising classes of freshmen possible. According to the Penn State website, over 80% of all incoming students are from in state, with only 20% from out of state.

    Out-of-State Colleges

    • Pennsylvania students who want to use college as a chance to see new places and experience new things have many options. Many colleges will gladly recruit students from out of state because most have much higher costs for out-of-state tuition as opposed to in-state tuition. This means they make a lot more money off of good students from another state. Many schools are also aware of diversity as a bragging point, making them look good when they can recruit students from every state.

    Other Pennsylvania Schools

    • Students don't have to settle for the two most well known state schools of Pittsburgh and Penn State. Temple, Penn and Drexel are all extremely large universities which round out the top five list of largest Pennsylvania schools. In addition, many hundreds of smaller private colleges, technical schools and trade schools in state have class openings they need to fill and concentrate mostly on local students with promise.

    Athletics

    • Great high school athletes will see additional opportunities to be recruited by other schools. With the competitive world of college athletics, stand-out high school athletes may very well see dozens of scholarship offers from schools both in and out of state. This is especially true of students coming from high schools with a reputation for producing consistent talent, since many colleges want to build relationships with those schools by opening a "recruiting pipeline."