Transportation

The first step will be to get to United States in the first place. But you will need to make a few trade-offs. The options are as follows and each have their own advantages:

• Iran Air (to London or Paris or any other destination in Europe): Relatively cheap
• Emirates (To New York via Dubai): A reliable airline with very friendly crew. This is particularly important when you have a little extra weight on your luggage.
• Qatar Airlines (To Washington via Doha): one of the cheapest
• Turkish Airlines (To New York via Istanbul): relatively cheap, but also very good option because of the amount of luggage they allow on their American flights (two 32-kilos). It has flights from both Tehran and Tabriz once a week.
• Anyone of European Airlines (KLM, British Airways, Lufthansa):  A little expensive but reliable. Also an advantage with these airlines (KLM for example) is that they can also buy your ticket to State College (the airport code for State College is SCE) which other airlines usually don't do.

Entry Gates: Experience shows that European Airlines that come to JFK airport, New York City, usually arrive at Terminal 4 which has a longer special registration procedure (up to 4 or 5 hours). Dulles airport in Washington, D.C. (which some of European and Arabic airlines have flights to) has a similar procedure. Terminal 1 in JFK, New York City (with Turkish airlines) has had a typical special registration time which takes less than one hour. But you should bear in mind that these are all estimates and differ from case to case and depend on a lot of parameters (e.g. time of day, time of year, flight, number of passengers needing special registration,...)

Congratulations! Now you are inside United States of America. Next step is to get yourself to State College, PA. In this part, you have several options:

• Bus: The common bus service in US is Greyhound. It has bus trips to State College from Washington D.C., New York City, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and other major cities in North East. One disadvantage is that a usual trip takes up to 7,8 hours because of the stops in all the cities along the way. The fare is about 50$ one-way from Washington D.C. and New York City. Another bus company which has services from New York City to State College is Dragon Coach which comes directly to State College in 3-3.5 hours and has a reasonable price of $35 per person one-way but it leaves from Manhattan's china town and it would be hard if don't already have a place to stay in the city if there is a big gap between your arrival and the bus departure.
• Air: State College has a small airport with airport code of SCE. A flight would cost about $200. It is an easy and comfortable option specially if you don't know anyone in US and it is your first time coming to State College. But you might have to purchase it yourself, since most of international airlines won't buy it for you.
• Car: You may be able to find a shared ride with someone who is coming to State College from NYC or DC in this website: http://pennstate.craigslist.org/rid/ . The way it works is that you will contact that person and you'll arrange a pick up place which would be comfortable for both of you. Maybe even if you agree he can come and pick you up and then you'll share the travel expenses.

One of the advantages State College has in US is its complete and highly reliable public transportation. When you get here, during orientation week, ISS will give you some information on state college public transportation. All the buses are operated by CATA Bus which is State College's public transportation organization and you can access its website in http://www.catabus.com/ for more information. You can be almost needless for a car specially in the first year while you are still adopting to the new environment if you can schedule your rides with CATA Bus which gives you access to anywhere in State College.

After that you can either purchase a bicycle which is a common method of transportation in and around campus or start to look for a car with reasonable price.

Housing

Finding living accommodations in State College can be really DIFFICULT! Apartments generally get rented pretty fast, and by the time you get here most of them might be taken already. One option is to rent a place at White Course Apartments (on-campus graduate housing). You can find more information about White Course by referring to your admission package or visiting their website at: http://www.hfs.psu.edu/housing/graduates/whitecourse/  or http://www.hfs.psu.edu/housing/. Generally, graduate students tend to live in apartment complexes that have more graduate students and fewer undergraduates, since undergraduates are noisier. Here is the list of some apartment complexes that have a good number of graduate students (including some Iranian students):

Vairo Village: http://www.rentberger.com/bergerLocations/index.asp?propertyID=2010

Park Forest Apartments: http://www.apartmentsstatecollege.com/parkforest/index.html

Copper Beech: http://www.cbeech.com/

Parkway Plaza: http://www.parkwayplaza.com/

Regency Square: http://regency-square.com/

Executive House Apartments: http://www.apartmentsstatecollege.com/executive/index.html

Pennwood: www.pennwoodnorth.itcstore.com/

As a rough estimate, the rent for a one bedroom apartment in State College is in the range of $600-$800 (depending on the apartment and the location). Of course, you can expect to pay less if you choose to have roommates.  However, you should be careful because you are going to live with your roommate for one year, so pick wisely! For more information about off-campus housing, and to search for a place or a roommate, you can visit:

http://www.sa.psu.edu/ocl/

http://www.statecollege.com/apartments/
http://www.rent.com/  (This website gives $100 reward if the tenant mentions the property that they have found it on rent.com)

To rent an apartment, you will need to fill out an application form and put down a deposit.  If you cannot find a place before your arrival (which is highly possible), you can stay in one of the University’s temporary housing facilities. For more information, you can refer to  http://www.international.psu.edu/iss/pdf/Pre-A_UP.pdf

Food and shopping

If you know how to cook Iranian food, you will have no problem doing it here. For the first months, bringing some dry vegetables for making your cooking easier is a good option. Some special ingredients such as “Zereshk”, Iranian safron, roasted seeds such as sunflower seed and prune are rare but that doesn’t mean you can not find them. Iranian shopping centers are numerous in US but not in State College. However if you travel to Washington DC or some other big city you'll be able to find these stores and do some shopping there.

Do not waste your time buying a lot of jeans or shirts before coming here. Apparel is cheaper here. Just bring some for the first semester when you have a lot to do and don’t have time for shopping. Bring at least one warm coat and some jackets or hoodies, fall is short and winter tends to be long here. Bringing a scarf, hat and gloves is better than bringing thousands of shirts and pants. During your orientation you can go to some shopping centers and State College mall with other student by bus. They will guide you through it. The mall web site is: http://www.shopnittanymall.com/

Wal-Mart, Target, Giant and Wegmans are well-known chain stores which can provide you with almost all of your needs in State College. For going to all of them you can use CATA buses such as V route and N route. There is also a bigger Wal-Mart near Nittany Mall that you'll have a chance of going there during orientation or using M route buses.

Finally, the ISS orientation weblog contains good information for new students: http://issorientation.blogspot.com/

>> Download ISA manual for new students