Many schools will have the whole class schedule online and searchable and visible to everyone. Some require a login. After a student applies, their portal login may work to get them into the system so that they can see the class schedule (it worked this way for some of S23’s schools). It’s different for every school and you may have to search around.
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I’ve been going on each college’s website & I do a search for “schedule of classes.” It usually brings up an online schedule of classes to search from, and you can enter various search criteria, like what semester, what department, what specific course number. Then I do searches for various required courses for whichever the major is (based on required courses listed for that major in the college’s course catalog, which is also online on the college’s website).
For example, at 1 school, this one class (required for the major) had 6 sections available for Fall 2025 semester. 2 of the 6 sections were in person, the remaining 4 online. And for the 2 in person sections, it’s a max of 40 students per class. AND for the online sections, there’s no set time of day…which tells me that it’s pre-recorded lectures that you watch on your own at any time. Therefore, zero interaction with people.
At U of A, for example, in some of their pre-med classes, it’s become quite commonplace for the course to be listed as ‘hybrid’ instruction. Ok sounds great, right? But by ‘hybrid,’ what it COULD mean is that ALL of the lectures are self-paced online pre-recorded lectures, you go to lab once a week, and the only time you go in person with the entire class is for a once a week quiz or test.
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Thanks for highlighting this. D19 only had online classes/ hybrid during covid and immediately after they went back in person and this is something that just didn’t occur to me. Definitely something to ask about on admissions tours as well.
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It’s an actual campus, but it blends in well w/the surrounding downtown. It’s not a closed campus (with, you know, a fence around it like you might see at USC or Rhodes College).
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Doesnt UF have online classes if you don’t study abroad?
My sophomore son is a business major at UF (on campus) and the majority of his classes are online. Some provide the option of in-person and some do not. He definitely likes the flexibility, but prefers learning in-person. Said there seems to be a bit of cheating happening with online testing. He may or may not study abroad, he’s still deciding.
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D19 hated online classes and met almost all her good college friends in class (some in dorms). That would be a big negative for me, and probably not a great idea for my adhd kid either.
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We’ve run into the online class thing with S25 – he’s at a medium-sized in-state public. It wasn’t on my radar at all because D22 is at a small private school, and online classes are not a thing there.
Thankfully, S25 only has a math class fully online and asynchronous this semester. It’s a basic class and the only math he needs for his major, so he just needs to get through it. We learned when he was registering this summer that it was only offered online, but it really wasn’t worth taking a higher-level class to find something in in-person.
Then, he registered for what he thought was an in-person Intro to Mass Comm class, but he learned after class started that it was hybrid. It’s in person on Tuesdays, then the Thursday lesson/work is asynchronous. He’s not thrilled with that – even though Tuesday is a big lecture class, he enjoys the professor and his teaching style.
S25 struggles as a student anyway, and online classes are not great for him. Unfortunately he has to take one next semester – history or government, I can’t remember which. It does seem like a lot of the core classes that many students have to take are offered online.
He does have English, astronomy, astronomy lab and a film class fully in person right now – and he’s naturally made the most connections in those classes.
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I was a business minor at UF way back in the dark ages, lol. Even back then (1991-1995), the big lecture classes like macro, micro, management and marketing were taught live during first period, and then that video was replayed every period during the day. Students could show up to any section they wanted.
If you missed a class, you could go watch it at the library. (I think? It was offered somewhere.) And if you still didn’t manage to do that, you could purchase the VHS tapes with each week’s worth of lectures on it. I may have done that a time or two before exams when I didn’t get it together. 
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My aunt (who is now a professor emeritus) went to UCB for undergrad, and started out as a bio major. This was in the mid 1960s. The required classes were so large that they had overflow classrooms where you could watch the professor on video… on a little TV screen! She didn’t like this, changed her major to geophysics because it was a smaller department, and that turned out to be a great field for her. But yeah… this sort of thing has been going on a long time 
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When we did the tours of UCSB and UCSD I was surprised how many OOS people there were, UCLA/Cal I get. Globally recognized names, and hey I love UCSB but that OOS tuition is so high. Then again USC cost is crazy to me.
And Californians are often the largest OOS group at many other good public universities too! You’d think they’d figure out a tuition exchange, but the $$ are probably pretty significant income at all of them.
I had no idea this was even a thing. I think I assumed that all courses that are required (for major or core curriculum) could be taken in person by any full time residential student. I never imagined that students would be required to take online classes as opposed to it being an option for those who prefer it for a particular subject.
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It was eye opening for us when we stumbled across this 2 yr ago when D24 was applying to college. We’d made the same assumptions and I saw one Youtube video where a college student was talking about the online vs in-person course topic. And based on a gut/instinct sort of thing, we started asking about it in all of the tours we went on. But what we also learned was that some of the tours guides glossed over it…so then we started looking at class schedules online, to (as my lawyer sister says) ‘trust but verify’ what we’d been told.
It was eye opening.
D24 learned during COVID that she does NOT like online instruction and does NOT absorb the material as well compared to in person instruction. D26, on the other hand, would prefer in person but handles online instruction a lot better than D24 does.
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I presume one of these should be 26? 
For C26 it would probably vary by subject. They’d be fine with math and probably physics, but social science or humanities courses would almost certainly be better in person.
oops yes, I’m going to go fix that
Pitt plays in the same stadium as the Steelers, so stadium capacity a bit under 70K, as far as scale. Not the Big House or Beaver Stadium, but large.
She wouldn’t see the stadium on a tour and it isn’t adjacent to campus. However, it is worth a visit to see the campus and to take a look at the surrounding area to get the vibe.
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It’s amazing how many kids from our CA district choose OOS public schools. Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin are the big draws. But Indiana, Vermont, Utah, Montana, Oregon State, Michigan State are catching on these days, too. Typically very few choose to go to southern OOS publics. The kids who want the south are usually picking privates – Wake Forest, Miami, SMU, TCU, Tulane.
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Ours tend to be Colorado (biggest non-CA destination from our school), Oregon, Washington, Oregon state, Indiana, Purdue, Michigan, the Arizonas. Also some at UMass Amherst and UMD. No Vermont or MSU in the recent years list. Not sure if UVA and UNC-CH count as “southern” (in the sense I think of it) but those are popular for those who get in, but agree southern is usually private - Vandy and Rice in addition to the ones you mention, but a few do go to UT Austin.
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The Pitt college of nursing is part of the main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. There are three major hospitals right there and the Children’s Hospital is not far. The nursing school is actually part if the UPMC hospital complex, which makes most clinicals super convenient.
I grew up in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh, and visited the campus once already with D26. She likes an urban campus, so she liked it. We are headed back for a Nursing Admitted Student thing on 11/1. It will be fun to see it during the school year (on Halloween night no less!)
Anyone: Let me know if you have any burning questions. I can try to ask while we are there (insofar as D26 lets me without dying of embarrassment first).
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