Notre Dame vs. UPitt

wgmcp101
Mon, 24 Mar 2014 19:27:42 +0000

Pitt and Notre Dame are pretty different schools in very different settings and you have competing issues that you need to consider.

Notre Dame is a small, private, Catholic, university in a mostly rural bucolic setting. It is has a great reputation for undergrad liberal arts education. Pitt is significantly larger (10K more undergrads), has a substantially greater research component, is very urban, and is essentially public (although technically it is a hybrid). If Notre Dame is your dream school, then Pitt is going to feel very different because of its definitive urban setting. And while it has some really outstanding buildings, inside and out, like the [Cathedral of Learning and Heinz Chapel](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-pittsburgh/1610822-pitt-tour-in-pictures.html), its core is bisected by major city streets and is adjacent to its giant and bustling medical center on one side and Carnegie Mellon University on the other (although it has advantages of being adjacent to the city’s major museums, which are free to Pitt students, etc). Notre Dame has one of the more beautiful traditional campuses in the country, with traditional quads and stone buildings, etc, but there isn’t much in South Bend aside from Notre Dame. And obviously, you have a secular Pitt vs Notre Dame where Catholic influences are prevalent. The urban vs rural feels of the two schools, the sizes of the student body…they will make for a very different college experience and you may not have two more different choices to decide from. What worries me is that Notre Dame is your dream school, and that Pitt is just going to be a very different experience, and that is not an unimportant consideration.

If your goal is pre-med, you can obtain your goal at either school. Neither school is going to keep you from attending a top medical school, although with Pitt having its medical facilities right there, you’ll be much better able to explore what a career in medicine would be like and that will help you to make your decision about wether to attend med school or pursue other health or biosciences. Notre Dame’s strengths are not really in the bio or health sciences because they are largely research fields and ND doesn’t have the major graduate research infrastructure. Pitt, academically, is going to be better for you if you goal is bioengineering or other biosciences or health sciences, simply because it has one of the better bio/health centers in the country. Pitt is 6th in National Institutes of Health research funding with $396.7 million in federally sponsored research projects while Notre Dame is 212th with $14.0 million. That a huge difference and it reflects some of the differences in opportunities for you to get involved in actual research projects at the two schools as an undergrad. Chemical engineering is quite a bit different than bioengineering, so I’d be cautious about one or the other…bioengineering is more likely to lead you into the health sciences. Regarding engineering, overall, Notre Dame’s school of engineering by US New grad rankings that are freely available, is ranked just behind Pitt’s school, although the rankings are close so I wouldn’t use that as any deciding factor, but rather, know that they are probably about equivalent.

Of course, the financial differences between the two are pretty large. It looks like you are talking about $100K difference over four years. If you stay in the health sciences, you are likely going to be heading towards some graduate education too (professional schools like med school will cost you, but graduate research programs…ie PhD programs… will not). In any case, the difference in debt that you are potentially starting off with is significant.

It’s tough though; you only get one chance at being an undergrad. You have to decide if going to your dream school is worth it considering your costs and academic goals. For someone that doesn’t necessarily have it figured out in regards to exactly what they want to do in the health sciences, I’d personally direct them to Pitt because of the better opportunities to explore and gain experiences across different fields. But for Pitt, you have to comfortable with the larger school size and urban setting. If you are going to be miserable there, and have regrets because of not going to your dream school, there is a chance you won’t perform as well and that will benefit no one.