Hi so I’ve been interested in attending Pitt for the past year now, and it’s easily one of my top choices for when I apply to college next year. Whenever I speak to my parents about Pitt, they say that it’s a bad school and it won’t help me get into a reputable graduate program (I want to go into clinical psych). When some people ask what school I want to go to and I say Pitt, they get confused because they don’t recognize the name or they think that I “could do better”. I thought Pitt was a great school with a great reputation, am I wrong?
I know asking the Pitt forum is going to get me a biased response, but I want to know if Pitt really has as good of a reputation as I thought it did.
1 - tell them you are planning to pursue Clinical Psychology and that Pitt is one of the top programs in the country for that. It’s graduate program is ranked higher than all the Ivy league except Yale.
2 - tell them you are planning to pursue Clinical Psychology and ask them what specific programs would be better choices than Pitt and then sit back and watch.
Western Psych is one of the best psych hospitals in the country and they offer internships and volunteer hours to Pitt students starting as early as their sophomore year. Doesn’t get much better than that.
U Pitt is a member of the Association of American Universities – an exclusive group of the top research universities in the country that get most of the research funding and are responsible for nearly half of all PhDs in the U.S. Only 60 universities in the entire U.S. belong to this group (along with 2 Canadian universities). Other members include Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, etc. Your parents are mistaken, but hopefully they will listen to facts. More information is here:
I have similar concerns as the OP. I know Pitt is a great school but I also struggle with its reputation. It is not a well known school where I live and does not have the prestige of private schools. However, the more I research Pitt, the more impressive it becomes. Are the business related majors as reputable as the health related ones? My son is undecided.
We are not from the Northeast so Pitt is not well known here either. That’s fine with D because she doesn’t really want to live here after graduation.
I just had this conversation with an acquaintance I saw yesterday at the store: “Hey…you know I never really knew much about Pitt but I was looking at the rankings the other day and I didn’t realize it was ranked higher than TAMU!”
Me: “Umm, yeah, and I’m pretty sure they get more healthcare research funding and there are like 5 hospitals in walking distance of the university and wayyyyy more to do there than in College Station.”
Pitt is one of the best places for someone with a healthcare (medicine, nursing, public health, dentist, pharmacy, psychology, etc)-related career goal. Others such as business, engineer, CS, etc. are also pretty good. Furthermore, both generous merit-based scholarships and great location are attractive to many if not all who seriously search the best place for their college education/life with purposes.
To OP, Pitt is a pioneer in clinical psychology with the greatest WPIC.
Data is data and anecdotes are anecdotes; other posters have provided the data, here is an anecdote.
DS '14 is a senior at Pitt studying neuroscience. He’s a had a really good, rich experience. In 4 or 5 months, he’ll have a final answer about getting into a good grad program, but so far:
He’s been able to do research in a lab since 2nd semester freshman year.
He’s working on a departmental honors thesis.
He was able to get a summer research position after his sophomore year at a Northwestern.
He was supported and helped while applying for a Goldwater scholarship for which he was named honorable mention.
He was supported and helped while applying for an Amgen scholarship which he received. He was at Caltech this summer.
He’s being supported and helped while applying to grad school, including several top programs in his field.
He participates in two club sports.
If you look around the Pitt website, you’ll see he’s not that unusual! Department wise, as others have said, Clinical Psychology is probably as strong or stronger than neuroscience at Pitt.
In my opinion, there are no limitations to your future if you attend Pitt, only opportunities that you can seize pretty easily!
(Sorry if this sounds too boastful, but there are no limits if you choose Pitt. It’s up to you!)
@Dave_N, you just presented an example how an ambitious young people flourishes in Pitt, but not BSO for your kid’s achievements, which you must (should) be very proud of. By the way, Amgen scholar alone will send your kid to a very top graduate program.
Pitt is #5 in nation for total NIH funding - among all donestic higher ed - this is mountains above some of the strong reputation household names - all that translates into immense research opportunities for those who seek it. My dd graduated with 3 publications from research and was accepted by 3 grad programs including Penn and chose UCberkeley/UCSF for her phd.
Any negatives about the school that are important to know? I would think large class sizes could be one. When my son and I visited we honestly couldn’t point one out, however, college tours are often overwhelming. We left with a very positive feeling.
Pitt does have some very large classes, though I suspect most other large schools do too. My D has had three lecture classes that are in the 300 person range - intro to psych, macroeconomics and microeconomics. She has also had several lecture classes that are in the 90 person range. This seems to be a common size for many intro courses. Most classes that are this large have weekly smaller meetings called recitations that allow students to discuss concepts and get more personalized help.
On the other hand, she has had several smaller classes, as well. For example, she is taking Chinese and has two weekly lectures that are about 30 people, and daily recitations with the professor (not a TA) that only has 12. So it really depends what you sign up for. There seem to be a lot of small classes in the humanities and social sciences once you get past the intro levels. Can’t speak for stem and business as that is not her area of interest.
@me29034 Our tour guide had mentioned similar class sizes for intro courses. My son liked that he would have a mixture of both large and smaller classes. Thank you for your detailed response!
Some freshmen classes are on the larger side. D is in engineering and it sounds like her engineering classes are maybe 100 or so? But to counteract that, her experience is that every large class has a smaller recitation section that meets at least twice section and she gets individualized instruction there.
She has smaller classes---her German class meets in a nationality room in the Cathedral and is less than 25 people.
Alcohol--just like at any other school the freshman seem to go off to college and go crazy. One can find the crime report by googling "Pitt campus crime report" and see that the freshman keep the university police busy with minor in possession charges, etc. She has found plenty of friends who do not drink or don't have time to drink so it hasn't been an issue with her specifically.
Crime--lots of reports of laundry being stolen from the Towers laundry facility specifically. Seems like that could be resolved by sitting there and waiting for your laundry to be completed.
We’ve sent 3 kids to Pitt so the positives really have far outweighed any negatives I’ve seen. But if looking for negatives? I would say large
intro classes and drinking would be on my list. I would also say diversity could be improved. Crime is actually really low for being in the middle of a major city. South Oakland should be cleaned up and slumlords thrown out…bit too gritty but I’ve
forced my kids to live off campus elsewhere - eg it is avoidable but my kids still socialize there and don’t have the issues I have. It’s a large school so you will have all types of students - some more partying than studying if you know what I mean but overall - none of my kids were unhappy at Pitt - there were so many options for everything - both socially and academically.
I honestly think partying is out of control at all major univeristies and colleges…I don’t know what the solution is but it’s definitely one of the worries I’ve had as a parent of young adults. I was hoping that Pitt would be a little less of a party atmosphere due to a smaller Greek life presence, but it’s not surprising that the party scene is all important there as well.