<p>Generally, you can’t go wrong with either school. Both are well known for neuroscience field (research/grad level) and have ample opportunities for undergrad research or hospital volunteering, important things to help your med school application stand out, since both schools have medical facilities adjacent to their undergrad facilities, although at Michigan there are a lot of labs in the North Campus Research Complex where you’d have to catch a shuttle (minor point). The reality is, to the typical med school admissions committee, neither school is going to harm your chances for med school over the other. Neither would provide any substantial advantage for med school admissions over the other.</p>
<p>However, there is a pretty large difference between the two school’s undergraduate neuroscience programs.</p>
<p>Pitt has a full-fledged, independent *[Department](<a href=“http://www.neuroscience.pitt.edu/]Department[/url][/i”>http://www.neuroscience.pitt.edu/)[/i</a>] of Neuroscience within its School of Arts & Sciences with a dedicated undergraduate Neuroscience teaching faculty. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, and one of the largest undergrad neuroscience programs in the country. Being its own department means that its undergraduate Neuroscience degree program is very mature in both its curriculum, available course offerings, and degree standards. It does not have to borrow faculty from other departments at their convenience in order to create or teach neuro-themed classes. Michigan has only a neuroscience *[program](<a href=“http://www.lsa.umich.edu/neurosci/academics/undergraduateprogram]program[/url][/i”>http://www.lsa.umich.edu/neurosci/academics/undergraduateprogram)[/i</a>] for undergrads, which means it has to borrow resources from the school’s departments of psychology and biology in order to construct the curriculum for its neuroscience major. Such classes may not all be neuroscience-centric. For instance, a neuro-themed class offered primarily through a psychology department will almost assuredly have more of a neuropsych bent than a neuroscience one, and that can make for a very different class even if the titles of the courses otherwise sound similar. In addition, the faculty in a Neuroscience Department are all actively engaged, specifically, in neuroscience research, and all would be active in the actual field of Neuroscience; they’d likely all be training neuroscience PhDs in their labs and are all probably attending national neuroscience meetings with regularity. Not being an full fledged department can be a pretty substantial disadvantage from the perspective of providing an actual education that is specifically focused on the field of neuroscience itself. A school with a department is likely to give you a more in-depth background and training in neuroscience, and provide more neuro-centric seminars and other neuroscience learning/training opportunities that its students and faculty are actively engaged in, as opposed to more of an overview or sometimes tangential view of neuroscience topics that one might receive from an undergrad program that doesn’t have its own dedicated faculty or other resources otherwise found in an self-sufficient program with department status.</p>
<p>Really, you can’t go wrong with either school if your goal is pre-med. If your were primarily interested in just neuroscience as a career path, particularly with a scholarship in hand at Pitt, I would absolutely recommend Pitt’s because it’s undergrad program has full fledged department status with the resources that come along with that. Visit both, get the vibes of each, weigh the costs, look at the course offerings, and even look at potential research you might want to participate in by visiting some faculty websites. As others have pointed out, having less debt to pay off after 4 years of undergrad+4 years of med school should probably be given some thought as well.</p>