Honors College

pittpolscialum
Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:27:38 +0000

First off Pitt is an excellent school. Don’t kid yourself into believing that a successful high school career is going to make Pitt easy. When I was a Freshman, I watched a Chancellor’s scholar fail out because he thought the classes were below him It’s a major university that has excellent and demanding courses, and committed faculty. True there are a few courses that are easy, but they are few and far between.

In general, the faculty provides high quality teaching. There is not a lot of interaction in lecture courses the fulfill requirements because there are 200+ people in the class. There are recitations where groups of 15-20 students discuss the week’s material and are usually led by grad students.

The best professors will come in at night and discuss the material over dinner in the cafeteria and/or have discussion/study sessions on the weekends. One professor did all of that my Freshman year. He was truly a wonderful teacher, but he died in 2001. Still, there are others who follow his model. But, like most things in life, they have to be sought out.

I was not in the honors program (I was more interested in working on campaigns, which are plentiful in Pittsburgh). But many of my friends were. Most, if not all, of them did something called the Breckenridge fellowship. They spent the summer doing research, produced a paper, and defended it in front of faculty. It’s sort of a min-grad student experience. Several of those friends are in graduate programs around the country. One went into the peace corps and teaches math to kids in Africa last I heard.

The department I was in required a 25 page paper written over the course of a semester to graduate. The professor provided excellent feedback over several drafts. It ended up being a pretty good paper. For another class, not in my major, I had to write a book of poetry (around 60 poems). The average course in the arts and sciences consisted of a mid-term, a final, a 5 page paper, and a 15 page term paper.

I’ve since went to graduate school and earned a MPA. Pitt left me well prepared for graduate school. Fellow students in my class went to UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Penn State and UVA among others. Again, Pitt left me as prepared, if not better prepared, as my peers.

Finally, even though semester at sea sailed elsewhere, Pitt has a long list of interesting study abroad opportunities. Several friends went on something called “Pitt in China.” When I was there, a foundation provided generous aid to students that significantly reduced the cost of the program.

Best wishes.