Unless you were, uh, thinking it might be a good moment to get your Elantra out of Moscow???!!!
I hear your point though and I agree, if I lived in NE PA and had chosen to go to grad school in Western Washington, I’d fly for sure, though it is a beast of a flight/drive. Hour and a half drive to Spokane, at least six hours to Newark NJ (EWR) if you hit the connection perfectly and that’s rare, and then at least two hours drive to Effort, PA, best case. This is more likely a 12-24H undertaking even flying. In an underlying way this brings up something I don’t know if we’ve talked about, which is - why WSU? Desales isn’t blow-the-lights-out academically (source link:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/desales-university-3986), but he was Dean’s List there (source link:
Dean’s List for Spring 2019: Traditional Undergraduate Students). Why WSU for PhD track? Unconventional choice, geographically.