@imabigOof, son received honors acceptance email January 10.
@vki821, yes, they mail a letter and a poster.
Thank you!
@hailtopitt1787 do you have insight or info you can share as to the # of kids (not including GAP) from Pitt undergrad who were offered seats at Pitt medical school last year? Additionally how many kids were accepted into top 20 medical schools from last year’s class? Our son is having hard time deciding what is right for him between the opportunity at Pitt with honors and scholarships vs his full pay acceptance at Harvard. Harvard has a 94% acceptance to med school of which 40% are accepted into top 20 med schools. This is impressive, perhaps it’s the student not the school or perhaps a bit of both.? It would help to know how Pitt Honors students do in this regard.
Anyone else with insight please weigh in.
@hailtopitt1787
Hello, my D received an email said she’s on the waitlist for PItt Honors. Does this mean there’s no merit scholarship for her? Thank you!
Hey! OOS student here, just received my acceptance to Pitt Honors, so excited! To answer a previous query, I got $10,000 per year in merit (not counting need based financial aid). When looking at their website, I think there are a lot more opportunities for merit if you are in state. Hope this helps!
@g154555 Congratulations!
May I ask your status? We are OOS. We lived in Pittsburgh area before but moved to New York. Still have family there , was hoping to get back to Pitt.
Thank you! I’m actually also from NY, haha. If you were curious about stats, my GPA is around a 3.97 UW and 4.53 W translated from a 0-100 scale. My SAT was a 1540 superscore, but I think what really sold me were my essays.
@PAdude great question! I recommend reaching out to the Interprofessional Center for Health Careers for the most up to date statistics at 412-624-2656. I have not yet received the 2019 statistics.
@Peimom the last day for merit scholarship awards was March 1 so if she didn’t receive a letter with an award then it’s likely that she did not receive one.
@PAdude and anyone else looking for med school stats. Please send me a private message requesting those and I will get them to you via email.
Hello. I would also like this information please. I do not know how to PM you. Sorry. New to this.
I think you can pm after 15 posts
@PAdude Congrats on your son being accepted to Harvard! It is truly exceptional as only very few kids can have that option. If you can support him for a full pay undergrad, I think it is worthwhile as that would provide him an extraordinary experience that would provide him a good foundation for his future medical school. However, I want to share some other experiences that I have personally been aware of for him to make a final college decision. My nephew went to Stanford for four years and did not make into Med school until after two gap years, including working with no pay (after BS degree) at another elite university lab for extra experience and volunteer work as he did not have “enough” during his undergrad years (he was doing other activities). He did apply after Y1 and Y2 during that gap but only made it in the very end. Stanford published 70-75% acceptance rate to Med school, much lower than its peers (most Ivies) and JHU (which posts 90% acceptance rate). Nowadays, getting into Stanford undergrad is equally as hard as (if not harder than) all Ivies. That makes you wonder why. I have heard the explanation is Stanford does not have a required pre-medical evaluation committee like Harvard where they review each candidate before allowing the college’s professors to write letters of recommendations for the applicant. Only students who can pass this first round can be recommended to apply for Med schools. I have also heard from my circle of friends that kids from JHU were told to take gap year(s) to work or do more activities (applying for Fulbright Study/Research awards,…) as they were not strong enough or quite ready for Med schools. Colleges have this process in place to make their medical school stats look more impressive. Once the facts are laid out, you can see the cream of the crop at Harvard can surely achieve the 95% admission rate. Pitt has the same pre-evaluation process but only publishes a 60% admission rate as you can imagine. However, the odds of passing the first round at Pitt will be much easier than Harvard for obvious reasons. Pitt is a Top 10-20 medical school, depending on which rankings you look at, and Pitt also “favors” its own undergrad applicants like a lot of schools. In addition, Pitt is consistently ranked in the Top 10 of the NIH-funding for bio-medical research, hence your son will have some good exposure. Here are a few links about NIH funding.
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/most-research-money-rankings
https://www.report.nih.gov/award/index.cfm?ot=&fy=2019&state=&ic=&fm=&orgid=2059801&distr=&rfa=&om=y&pid=&view=state
https://www.genengnews.com/a-lists/top-50-nih-funded-institutions-of-2019/
My daughter, who did not apply for any elite schools last year as the odd was too low for her (essentially zero), is currently a Pitt Honors freshman going for Pharmacy GAP, and she has already started FER in Spring with a research lab run by a Med school professor who had his MD from an Ivy Med school. She is not unique as many of her Honors friends also had something similar. Like I said, if you can afford the money for undergrad, go for it as the Harvard brand is a lifetime achievement that only a few elite students can claim. Economically speaking, going to Pitt will save lots of money that could be used for grad school. That is what my daughter had decided after hearing the “money” discussion from her parents as she did have some more prestigious options but would not have been 100% covered for her grad school as we only have a fixed budget for college. After one year, we still both think that is the best decision we have made. She would not have had all the good opportunities at all the other colleges she was accepted to. Btw, we are OOS, and we have to pay for the travel costs multiple times a year, but it is still cheaper thanks to Pitt’s merit scholarship.
`Thank you for the info. Definitely things to consider.
@hailtopitt1787
Does UPitt provide a committee letter for pre med student applying to medical school?
@worriedcat thank you very much for taking time to share your story. Very helpful. Yes we can afford to support Harvard however in same breath if he went the route of Pitt we would then be able to fully pay med school or simply give him that money to “start life”.
As for Harvard and really others (Yale etc…) grade inflation is a reality…it’s a good amount of work but in the end GPA isn’t a great concern. We have a number of students from our high school at Harvard, Princeton who are there due to athletics…they we ok but not great students in high school they all have 3.7-3.8 GPA in comp science or mathematics. So in that regard I feel comfortable…that said however I feel he can likely do just as well from gpa standpoint at Pitt too. He did apply for the GAP in medicine but was not a finalist. I believe if he were selected his decision to attend Pitt would have been solidified. However he was not so now he is deciding what path would make him most competitive for a top tier med school. He and I do like all the research opportunity at Pitt and the close hospital affiliations. Also UPitt has be great in terms of contacting him, offering him scholarship etc…they have been tremendous which is why he is still going back and forth in his decision.
Am interested in the med stats too.
@PAdude It looks like your family has done all the fact findings. I am sure he’ll be fine in whichever path he chooses. The Harvard prestige is very hard to beat in all aspects, I have to admit.
Has anyone received merit via snail mail in the last week?
Hello everyone!
I am totally new to this but I am a current freshman at Pitt and it’s been so exciting to read the acceptance posts- it’s cool to see that Pitt is a #1 choice for a lot of students! With that being said, as someone that’s spent the better part seven months going to school here and learning the ins and outs, I would love to answer any questions about living on campus, class sizes, difficult professors, Pittsburgh, etc!
Congratulations and I hope you pick Pitt!