No need to camp out for Notre Dame this week.

In an effort to improve how tickets for away games are sold, Penn State is distributing all 250 student tickets for this weekend's football game through an online lottery.

Full-time students can continue to sign up for the random drawing by logging on to www.gopsusports.com. Registration will close at 5 p.m. today, and those receiving tickets will be notified by e-mail or telephone by 9 tonight. Tickets are $59 apiece.

"Any of the games that we anticipate where the demand would be far in excess of the tickets, we want to do it in the most fair way," said Greg Myford, associate athletic director of marketing. "And as time goes by year-by-year, it's more efficient if we can do it online."

In the past, tickets have been given out on a first-come, first-served basis at the Bryce Jordan Center. However, with the high demand for student tickets, Myford said the online lottery was a better choice for ticket sales.

According to Myford, about 1,740 students signed up for the lottery between the sign-up starting time, noon, and 10:00 p.m. yesterday.

The university had access to 5,000 tickets for the Notre Dame game and, as standard policy, 5 percent of those went to students. The rest were split between several groups, including players' families, administration, Blue Band, Alumni Association and the Nittany Lion Club.

Students lucky enough to be chosen will receive a voucher that they will have to present, along with their student IDs, to pick up their tickets at Notre Dame Stadium. The exact location of distribution has yet to be determined. Tickets will not be distributed at Penn State under any circumstances.

Notre Dame will have a list of ID numbers, Myford said, so students won't be able to scalp their tickets -- unless they go to the extreme of driving to South Bend, Ind., and picking up the tickets to sell them on game day. Currently, nonstudent tickets on eBay have been selling for about $450 each.

"It's just better that they're doing it online because I couldn't get [Orange Bowl] tickets last year because I had a final," Joe Dalfonso (junior-crime, law and justice) said.

Students expressed one particular concern over the random drawing because, unlike with the Orange Bowl, groups cannot apply for tickets together. So, in a group of eight friends, only one may actually receive a student ticket.

That may pose problems for fans who don't have their own transportation and would otherwise rely on friends. Quinn Roberts (freshman-journalism), for instance, doesn't have a car on campus.

"I'd totally go. I mean, I'd need a person to go out there. I'd need a ride," Roberts said. "But, honestly, I have no qualms about going there."

As of now, students will have to provide their own transportation for the 481-mile trip to South Bend. Roberts said she had a friend at Arizona State, where the Sun Devils provide student buses to some away games, and believed that would be a nice alternative to have at Penn State.

"Overall, as a former student myself, you have visions of traveling to the game and doing so with all your friends," Myford said. "But the reality of it with this demand for tickets and with the overall number of tickets ... it's just really, really difficult to do."

According to Myford, he and the ticket office were looking for the most efficient way to distribute student tickets for about a month. He said they knew it was going to be a lottery, it was just a matter of how to execute it.

Myford felt this would be easier, especially compared to last season's Orange Bowl game when students had to wait in line at the Bryce Jordan Center for a wristband.

"That consumed students' time, and it was an important time. As we all know, it ran into study week leading into finals and, obviously, we never have the intention of taking any student's study time away from them," he said. "The real advantage to doing it online ... is that no one's excluded. Students can do it completely on their own time."