Questions about UPitt?

Colleges & Universities University of Pittsburgh
1

I’m considering UPitt and had a couple questions about the school:

  1. How competitive is the school? How hard are the classes and how competitive are the students? If you’re willing to put the effort is it hard to an A?
  1. I eventually want to apply to med school, so how are the opportunities in terms of research?

Thanks!

2

If you are willing to put the effort in, I don’t know of any university where you can’t get an A. The problem is the definition of effort varies greatly from person to person. As far as atmosphere, I don’t think you’ll find Pitt as much competitive as collegial, but more recent students will need to speak to that.

As far as research opportunities in the bio and health sciences, the gold standard for comparing the size and quality of the research environment is the amount of National Institute of Health (NIH) funding has been awarded to a university. NIH funding is how faculty in these fields are evaluated and how institutions compare themselves to one another, because these are peer reviewed awards are the most prestigious and difficult to obtain.

Here’s the top 10’s final #s for FY2017 ($ in millions):

  1. Johns Hopkins $652
  2. UCSF $594
  3. Michigan $522
  4. UPenn $494
  5. Pitt $485
  6. Stanford $466
  7. UWashington $443
  8. Duke $440
  9. Washington St. Louis $436
  10. Yale $425

Most of that research at Pitt is done right on the undergrad campus as well, all squished into a convenient 150 acres. The region’s flagship health system (UPMC) is on-campus too and can be taken advantage of for clinical volunteering and shadowing experiences. In other words, there are few places that can match Pitt as far as research opportunities and opportunities to prepare ones self for a career in medicine or the health sciences.