Hi i am currently an undergrad at penn state, and will be attending grad school in the fall. In terms of housing i would say the majority of apartments downtown are filled with undergrads. So the closer you are to campus the more likely you'll be living next to undergrads; which also means its probably louder. I currently live about a 10 minute walk away from campus, and occasionally it has gotten pretty loud in this area, lots of parties and what not. So that is why i decided to get an apartment further away from campus, so that it is quiet and less undergrads.
So in general i would say that you can either find housing north of campus or south of campus. So to give you an idea where a lot of the apartment complexes are (the ones geared for grad students and the like) there are many off of North Atherton , and many off of South Atherton. A few of the areas that have a lot of housing in the North Atherton area would be around streets like Vairo Boulevard, Toftrees, and like Park Forest Ave. ALso on South Atherton there are a lot of places near Waupalani. I would recommend you do a google search for apartments in state college, and sort of look around at the different realators and check for availability. There is a site that will probably show up called apartment ratings .com where you can read reviews on different apartments (although sometimes its hard to get an idea cause online comments are biased negatively). I mean i would say use google. As far as price from what i have been looking for which is a 1 bedroom place, i have seen about 650 - 700/ish a month. So i think anything more than low 700's a month is a bit high for one bedroom. A few names that rent out properties you may want to look into are Copper Beech, Lions Gate, Vairo Village.
Yeah sorry if i have been rambling and such, but basically i would recommend just looking through the different apartment companies in state college and finding out what is available. Then maybe call the different places, and if they are further from campus ie like a 5-10 minute drive then they are probably not as loud and populated with undergrads. So you can call the places and find out more info. yeah...also the bus system in state college is the cata bus, so if that is important to you, you would want to check out if the apt is near a bus stop etc...
i guess if you have any more questions, ive been here for 4 years and can try and answer send me an email at bres6486@yahoo.com
