Being a college town, there is lots of short-term housing available in and around State College.
However, as I found, due to the huge demand from the extremely large student population, it can prove
tricky to find a place.
You can rent 1-, 2-, 3- even 4-bed apartments, rent ranging from ~$450 for a 1-bed to potentially
well over $1000 for a four.
There are also ‘townhouses’ (or what I would just call houses), also of varying sizes, usually 2, 3, 4, 5 or even
more bedrooms. Rents range from ~$300 upwards. Townhouse room rents can be cheaper for 1-bed places, since
you might be taking a room in an e.g. 6-bed house that is being shared by e.g. 5 other people already.
The main undergraduate student areas are on and around E. Beaver street and to the blocks to the South-East from here. These areas can get pretty noisy. However, this area seems to be quite concentrated and walking even 10 mins away from here can put you in relatively quiet surroundings.
A popular place for Grad students is north of Campus, in the areas off North Atherton. Depending on how far
up N Atherton you go, you'll probably either need a bike, a car, or have to really on the (pretty decent) CATA buses.
Popular place for first-time house buyers are (apparently) Houserville and Lemont, but these are further again out of
town with poorer buses.
Satellite towns and villages of State College, in approximate increasing distance are, Pine Grove Mills, Boalsburg, Pleasant Gap
and Bellefonte.
Some Useful URLS:
Check out the Apartment/Rental/Classified sections for these links. N.B. Renting usually has a section code
of 600:
http://www.statecollege.com/
http://www.state-college.com/
http://www.centredaily.com/
http://www.apartments.com/
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/
The Toftrees Complex also seems popular with Postdocs:
http://www.toftreesapartments.com/ (Cooper's Pond and Turtle Creek)
Toftrees, (http://www.toftrees.net)
A good PSU resource to look for room-mates etc. is:
http://www.sa.psu.edu/ocl/
