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<p>For the longest time it just wasn’t well known outside of the area. I grew up in the DC Metro area and had never heard of Pitt (or even been to Pittsburgh) until I was looking at colleges, saw CMU, and decided that I might as well apply to Pitt too. You’ll notice a trend lately of more people from OOS applying to Pitt- it’s getting a bigger/better reputation and the word-of-mouth is spreading that it gives some serious love (i.e. scholarships) to good OOS students who might not get anything from their own state school or from a “better” school (i.e. Ivy league). A lot of those things combined with how far Pittsburgh as a city has come lately (ex. Google offices, cleaning up the surrounding neighborhoods, rising music/food scene) help to attract out-of-towners who would otherwise have passed up the school.</p>