<p>So this may seem weird. Two small LACs compared to a big University like pittsburgh. I want to go pre med I’ve been accepted into all three. One thing to consider I like the idea of going greek. So i’m just really stuck for which school to go to. Holy Cross is the cheapest but it’s also farthest away, Allegheny has an offer for me to play soccer and pittsburgh has the location benefit I loved the city. All three will be affordable.</p>
<p>Are you talking about College of Holy Cross or Holy Cross College ? I am gonna assume its College of Holy Cross. </p>
<p>Holy Cross is the best on that list and cheapest for you. It has very high 4 year graduation rate. It is also more diverse than the other two. University of Pittsburgh comes second. What is your home state ? What is the transportation cost to each of these schools ? Save your money for medical school. Join Holy Cross.</p>
<p>If you feel you can be academically successful at a larger school like Pitt, than Pitt is the better school for developing a competitive medical school application because of all the research and medical volunteering you can get involved in right on campus. Medical and health sciences are Pitt’s forte and the environment for them is one of the best in the world. The advantages Pitt possesses really doesn’t even make the other two close in this regard. But that said, you still need a great GPA, so if you don’t feel you’ll be able to do that in a larger, urban setting, than a comparatively small LACs should perhaps be where you should go.</p>
<p>You can be Greek anywhere. That really is a non-factor.</p>
<p>If your heart is in playing soccer, then it may be hard to turn down Allegheny. Pitt does have a competitive [women’s</a> club soccer team](<a href=“https://sites.google.com/site/ladypanthersclubsoccer/]women’s”>https://sites.google.com/site/ladypanthersclubsoccer/) if you don’t feel you can’t or don’t want to try to walk on for the varsity team. Holy Cross apparently has a [club</a> team too](<a href=“http://holycross.collegiatelink.net/organization/womens-club-soccer]club”>http://holycross.collegiatelink.net/organization/womens-club-soccer).</p>
<p>Academically Holy Cross is superior to the other two and has a great premed program.</p>
<p>Holy Cross has no reputation among med schools admission committees that advantage it over the other schools. I can guarantee you that. Holy Cross really has no real reputation in medical/biosciences community because Holy Cross doesn’t get a dime in research or training appropriations from the National Institutes of Health. It has no graduate or professional programs and its community of scientists is almost non-existent. There are virtually no publications coming out of Holy Cross…and you can search for them on PubMed. It is considered a good LAC in its region, but outside of it…even in the mid-Atlantic, no one really knows about it.</p>
<p>Whether one school is an academically superior all-around school is subjective. I can tell you that it is a good idea to check and compare the variety of departments and course offerings of the programs you are interesting in studying. Do the subjects have dedicated faculty? Are they offered frequently? Looking at Holy Cross’ Dept of Biology [url=<a href=“http://academics.holycross.edu/files/biology/0910handbook.pdf]handbook[/url”>http://academics.holycross.edu/files/biology/0910handbook.pdf]handbook[/url</a>], there are only 12 total faculty members. Course offerings are sparse and infrequent. Also compare research opportunities in departments that you might be interested and relevant facilities. Research opportunities at Holy Cross, looking at their website, are extremely limited, which isn’t surprising due to the small faculty and lack of extramural research funding. It seems that most undergrad research has to be done at UMASS or in a summer program at another school, which are limiting because of the restrictive time frame that prevents summer-only student researchers from getting involved in any sort of substantial research project that actually results in publication authorships that admissions committees love to see. </p>
<p>Allegheny faces similar issues, but has a good rep around Western PA as a LAC, but no one outside of the area has heard of it. That isn’t a necessarily going to ding you in a med school application, but these schools aren’t going to get you any bonus points either.</p>
<p>I’m biased toward research institutions because that’s the field I’ve been in. I did my undergrad at Pitt (and was published), I did my PhD at a private research institution in the South, my post-doc and taught at an Ivy and I’ve also taught in a small Catholic LAC like Holy Cross (on the West Coast) and worked at a large public research institution on the West Coast. But regarding Pitt, only four other undergrad universities in the nation do more medical/biological science research than Pitt, Pitt’s medical center is one of the top 10 in the US, its med school is in the top 20 every year as are most all of its health science schools and programs, and the bulk of its facilities are minutes by foot from freshman dorms. The faculty you are learning from are among the top in their field, and they are faculty and medical professionals that you can get recommendations from and volunteer or work with in their labs using cutting edge equipment and techniques. The major hospital is right on campus to get volunteering hours in. There is no better place to be pre-med or pre-bioscience research than Pitt as long as the student is comfortable with the setting and has some measure of independence. There are equivalent places, but Pitt is right at the top with all of them in these particular fields.</p>
<p>Again, LACs can provide a great education, but I’m going to be honest here in that it is simply impossible for them to provide the same type of educational experience as a research institution for research fields like biology, chemistry, neuroscience, etc… and this is simply because the same opportunities don’t exist at the same level as they do at major research institutions. It just a simple matter of faculty, money, and facilities. It is just much easier to get these experiences at major research universities, particularly those that have everything right on the undergrad campus. And while these experiences are the end all, the do strengthen med school applications.</p>
<p>What I perhaps should have said was that Holy Cross is much more selective when to comes to admissions and so would have stronger students academically overall. According to US News & World Reports:</p>
<p>Holy Cross Acceptance Rate: 33.1 % (ranked 32 for LACs)
Pittsburgh Acceptance Rate: 57.9%(ranked 58 for national unis)
Allegheny Acceptance Rate: 57.6% (ranked 82 for LACs)</p>
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<p>Not necessarily true. Just because Holy Cross accepts 30% of its students doesn’t make them better than the 58% Pitt accepts. This freshman class had an <em>average</em> HS GPA of 3.93. I have a hard time believing that the average student at Holy Cross had a higher GPA.</p>
<p>Also I agree with everything wgmcp101 said. Unfortunately if you want to get into med school, your undergraduate institute will matter in the sense that you will want strong core classes as well as plenty of opportunities to do research and volunteer. Pitt’s strong medical presence, plus the abundance of UMPC hospitals, aid in that.</p>
<p>Holy Cross Average Enrolled Freshmen GPA - 3.88</p>
<p><a href=“http://offices.holycross.edu/sites/all/modules/tinytinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/planningbudget/CDS20122013Publish.pdf[/url]”>http://offices.holycross.edu/sites/all/modules/tinytinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/planningbudget/CDS20122013Publish.pdf</a></p>
<p>Pitt: 3.93</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ir.pitt.edu/cds/documents/CDS2012_13PghCampus.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ir.pitt.edu/cds/documents/CDS2012_13PghCampus.pdf</a></p>
<p>I am quite surprised by this since my son (who now attends Penn State) had only a 3.45 GPA and was also accepted at Pitt as were several of his friends with comparable GPAs. Perhaps Pitt highly respects the high schools in Northern Virginia?</p>
<p>It’s interesting. At both schools, approximately 85% of enrolled freshmen had GPAs of 3.5 or higher. Pitt’s percentage at 3.75 or higher is 69% v. Holy Cross’s 63.5%. I believe Pitt does take into account the difficulty and reputation of the high school attended and looks for geographic diversity.</p>
<p>I believe that I could do fine at either a large or small school I’m pretty adaptable to my surroundings. I’m thinking about majoring either chemistry or biology and getting my med school requirements out of the way. Honestly I like Pitt a lot it’s close enough (I live in WNY about 40 minutes south of buffalo) but not so close where I would go home every weekend. Also, I’m a guy idk if you were just mention a club team or thought maybe I would have a better chance of making the girls team haah.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help guys. I’m just a little torn right now. I do like the size of pitt for its opportunities but one worry (my mothers not mine) is that I will get lost in at a place like pitt (this may be that fact my parents only have experience with LACs) I like the campuses of allegheny and holy cross. To answer the travel thing holy cross is an 8 hour drive one way and like 200 dollars in gas for a round trip. the other two are only about 2-2.5 hours away and obviously much cheaper to get to.</p>
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<p>Pitt’s campus is actually pretty small. Since it’s “urban” a lot of the buildings build up instead of out. This means that you can literally walk anywhere on campus in under 15-20 minutes. End to end Forbes/Fifth is probably no longer than a mile. From lower campus to upper is maybe 3/4 mile. It’s relatively small.</p>
<p>Also, I too used to worry about being 1 of 17,000 students-- but I’ve never once felt overwhelmed. In fact, I almost always ran into someone I knew while walking to/from class daily. It definitely feels much smaller than it is.</p>
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<p>Pitt places a lot of emphasis on high school class rigor and performance in their admissions evaluation. It also loves out-of-state kids. NoVa is no exception.</p>
<p>The reality is, Pitt has a lot more beds to fill than Holy Cross.</p>
<p>You can think of it this way too… If you look at the cohort of Pitt’s freshman pre-admitted to the honors college, it was 18% of the total 2012 freshman class, or about 655 freshman students. That compares to 763 total freshman at Holy Cross. Pitt’s population of students that were honors college pre-admits is almost as large as entire student population of the College of Holy Cross itself. And the average SAT of the Pitt Honors group was 1470 (CR+M) compared to Holy Cross’s student body approximate average of 1300. From this you can extrapolate that Pitt has a much larger community of higher SAT scoring students than Holy Cross. As is, Holy Cross only averages about 45 points more than the entire population of Pitt students which number over 6X as many. Pitt is also churning out many more Rhodes, Marshal, Truman, and Goldwater scholars from its Honors College than Holy Cross is.</p>
<p>I had no idea that Pitt had such impressive stats given my limited sample size of my son’s stats and a couple of his friends who got in who were good students but more B level and ranked in the middle of their class. Now you have me thinking. Why is Penn State(#46) ranked higher than Pitt (#58) on US News rankings? Penn State’s average GPA is only 3.54?</p>
<p>"Why is Penn State(#46) ranked higher than Pitt (#58) on US News rankings? Penn State’s average GPA is only 3.54? "</p>
<p>That’s nothing. Here are some other extreme examples. University of California-Irvine has an average SAT of 1760 but its ranked at #44 which is way above Pitt #58 which has average SAT of 1880. UC- Santa Barbara and Davis have average SAT’s of 1800 but Davis is considered one of the best UC’s after LA and Berkeley. UCSB and UCD are also ranked higher than Pitt. UIUC has average SAT of 1970 but its ranked way low at #46. So, freshman stats is just one of the many factors in deciding the ranking, NOT the only factor.</p>
<p>Why is Penn State ranked higher? Why is Pitt ranked higher than Penn State when you look at academic and admission quality scores in Princeton Review, or how the schools fair in The Center for Measuring University Performance’s report, or why is Pitt ranked higher in US News and QS World University Rankings, or why is Pitt ranked better in all the Best Value rankings that I’ve know of despite similar sticker prices?</p>
<p>The answer is simply: Methodology. They each emphasize different things.</p>
<p>US News’ Best College ranking, the one everyone in the US blindly follows, derives 22.5% of its score from what are essentially popularity surveys that have a less than 50% rate of return (and 7.5% of that is ridiculously scored by guidance councilors who know less than most people on these message boards about particular schools). That compares to 15% of a school’s overall score being based on selectivity information like SAT scores and class rank, you know, actual, tangible quantitative data. When a school has 3X as many students and a cult-like following (and that is not hyperbole as I grew up 30 mins from there), it probably is going to do better on surveys.</p>
<p>The real question is, when approximately [60%</a> of all Penn State students transfer in after 2 years at branch campuses]( <a href=“http://admissions.psu.edu/pennstate/campuses/2plus2/]60%”>http://admissions.psu.edu/pennstate/campuses/2plus2/) that have, comparatively, very low admissions standards but otherwise don’t get factored in any of these rankings, what are the real numbers?</p>
<p>here are Princeton Review ratings for academics:
Pitt 80
Allegheny 90
Holy Cross 95</p>
<p>here are Princeton Review ratings for admissions selectivity:
Pitt 93
Allegheny 91
Holy Cross 96</p>
<p>Penn State’s average GPA is only 3.54? </p>
<p>That’s unweighted GPA out of 4.0. Pitt’s unweighted GPA should/is similar to that according to college data, don’t know how reliable that is as Pitt only shares its weighted average GPA.</p>
<p>Another consideration may be actual med school applications after undergrad. It is my understanding that at Pitt, students who wish to apply to med school are ranked by a faculty committee and so you would have to stand out amongst a cohort of very high achieving students to get a good ranking and it would be unwise to underestimate these students. In any case, your ranking would have an impact on med school admissions. You are probably also an outstanding student in which case, providing you’re prepared for the competition from the start, you’ll probably be fine. Realistically, there’s also always a good chance you might change your mind about your future goals and there would certainly be great opportunities to explore at Pitt. Good luck with your decision if you’re still trying to decide.</p>
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<p>It’s not getting ranked by faculty but rather that they see your application first and use it to recommend (or not recommend) you to the schools you apply to. I think it’s more like an advisory committee. They don’t say “Onetogo2 4th best student at Pitt who is pre-med” but rather “we have many top pre-med students at Pitt and we believe Onetogo2 is among them”</p>