Got accepted into Pitt honors despite my low stats. Congrats to everyone who made it ?.
On my Pitt PS Mobile App, I am able to accept admission into school of engineering, confirm residency, and pay tuition enrollment fee. I haven’t received anything official, Does this indicate I was accepted??
Did anyone get a denial from Honors College? It’s unusual to see only acceptances and waitlists on here.
Congrats to everyone!
@lucapuleo0009 I think so! Congratulations!! According to many other postings in this thread, you should receive something “official” within the next 6-7 days.
So happy that I was accepted to the Honors College! Pitt is definetly high on my list now.
i wonder when they’ll send out info about the Chancellor’s scholarship
My email also went to promotions. How does gmail decide that something like an acceptance email is a promotion?
Accepted into Pitt honors!
Act:34
GPA:4.3
Lots of ECs and my essays showed the most important ones
Not to downplay anybody’s hard work, but playing the devil’s advocate, it seems like they changed the way they do honors college acceptances this year. Haven’t seen much rejections yet… although that might be the inherent bias of posts in a very visible public forum
I applied to Pitt Honors when I submitted my common application on October 1st. Throughout December and the past week, especially, I have been checking the mail frantically every day, expecting the decision to be sent through mail. I checked this forum and realized that some people found the decision in a special folder in their email so I decided to check the spam folder, where I found the decision! I was accepted to Pitt Honors, which I am so thankful for. For those of you who are curious about my stats; I have a 32 ACT (33 super score), 1310 SAT, 3.92 unweighted GPA, and when I graduate I will have taken 9 AP classes. My extra curricular activities are strong overall but not necessarily consistent; Tennis, Marching Band, Art Club, Part time jobs. I have never held any leadership positions. I think what mostly helped my application were the essay questions and short answers, as well as the fact that my mom and I publish our own community magazine which features youth doing good things in our community and around the world. If you are curious, you can check this link 
https://thegoodstuffiscontagious.■■■■■■■■■■/. I have been writing in this magazine since I was a freshman. I am going to school for writing and was accepted to the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. So in a nutshell this is my situation. I hope this has helped anyone who is curious about what kind of students are accepted to Pitt Honors. I wish everyone good luck in this process, even for those of you who are wait listed, there is still hope and never stop being motivated. Anything is possible.
@flewan123 what do you mean by changed they changed how they do acceptances
@imabigOof I think @flewan123 means that this year, a lot of the student who have low sat/act scores (compare to last year’s applicants) is getting accepted into Pitt honors. I’m going to guess that they might just completely ignore the sat/act sections and only focus on your essay.
i think that is a move in the right direction. kudos to the acting dean for the changes.
@gruebleen I agree. While i don’t think they completely disregard test scores, i think it’s good that they’ve started focusing more on the essays as that’s how you can tell what type of student you’re accepted.
@imabigOof I think you are right. My daughter was wait-listed for honors last year, while my son was accepted this year. She had scores, grades, and activities equal to th9ose of my son, and was even a finalist for the Stamps/Nordenberg Scholarship (she did not win them).
If you only look at the grades and test scores then all the applications look the same @Bromptonboy
Isn’t it hard to tell whether they are looking at the honors program differently if we’re only looking at a very small sample size of this year’s honor’s kids? Did I read there are about 400 in the honor’s program and maybe 10 or 15 have talked here about scores? And we really have no idea how their ECs, essays, and dreams look in terms of being interesting people who will add to the program?
The honors college selection process definitely changed last year.
It used to be that you were automatically considered for honors eligibility, based on stats.
Honors eligible students could choose to live in honors LLC, or not, and had to apply.
But there was no application process to get into honors college.
Let’s say Pitt gets 30,000 applications and accepts 16,000. If the top 5% based on stats were selected for honors, that would be 800.
There isn’t enough room in Sutherland East (home of honors LLC) for that many students. And I think all honors students need to live in honors LLC now.
Pitt has been criticized in the past that their honors program was not very defined or structured, honors students could choose whether to take honors courses and live in honors housing, or not.
Maybe by having a smaller honors community, and having them all live together, they are forming a more cohesive honors program.
Requiring an application ensures that the students who apply are interested in participating in honors courses and housing.
This is what the website says:
https://www.honorscollege.pitt.edu/frequently-asked-questions
@mommdc that is helpful. Thank you. On the honor’s email they asked the student to ‘accept’ the offer for honors. They said it is non-binding, of course, but they are getting an idea of whether you would want the offer IF you chose Pitt. I guess that is so that they can offer the position to someone else if the student is not interested.