Penn State debuts online video series '1st Thirty' about realities of student life

University Park, Pa. – Penn State has released its first online video series. It’s the true story of four strangers, picked to live together by chance, who have their first 30 days of college life videotaped to find out what happens when people leave high school and become Penn Staters.

Known as "1st Thirty," the production is not MTV's creative version of reality, but it is believed to be an innovative way for admissions officers to show, in streaming video, what it's really like to attend one of the largest and most popular universities in the United States. Prospective Penn State students worldwide have been able to watch the first three-minute "webisode" since late December 2007.

A student camera crew from Penn State's College of Communications worked with an outside multimedia production company to record about 85 hours of real-time events of four women students, identified only by their first names. The women were selected among incoming first-year students who replied to inquiries during orientation programs held at the University Park campus during summer 2007.

" '1st Thirty' is a project that lets 18-year-olds who have just left home show their friends still back in high school what those first couple weeks of college life are actually like," said Cynthia Hall, assistant vice president of University Relations. “It’s such a tremendous time of transition and it’s no secret that high school students are nervous about what exactly they will experience and the challenges they may face as freshmen.

“This is just a way to provide them with information in a format they are familiar with. They’ve grown up with online video and are comfortable with learning about people's perspectives and life itself through this medium,” said Hall.

A total of seven episodes will be released incrementally in early 2008 and will chronicle the milestones of the four female high school graduates who hail from Pennsylvania and three other states as they transition to college life, starting with their arrival on campus and face-to-face introduction to their roommates.

"For this first video effort we selected all women and had them live next to each other in the same residence hall because it was easier to centralize the production from a single location, not to mention that we believed it might be easier for women to talk openly about their experiences," said Cyndee Graves, assistant director of University marketing and advertising, who oversaw the project.

The video clips aren't sanitized versions of campus life, either -- there are no model dormitory rooms or airbrushed foods in sight. Instead, viewers will get to see what eating in the dining halls is really like for any campus resident, and follow the women as they try out for clubs and organizations, pledge sororities, handle long-distance relationships and learn to manage their academic workload.

Episodes launch through Penn State's Go Ahead site at http://goahead.psu.edu, directly at http://firstthirty.psu.edu, and will air later as a half-hour program on the Big Ten Network. You can learn more about the four women -- Ainsley, Alex, Bianca and Lindsay -- from their bios and Q&As online.