@mi2019 - Did your child interview with UPitt GAP medical program?
Isn’t there an alumni scholarship?
https://www.alumni.pitt.edu/s/1729/alumni/interior.aspx?sid=1729&gid=2&pgid=3168
Not yet planned later this month.
@mi2019
S also has a planned GAP interview. He was contacted a couple of days ago by a current GAP student who will be leading the post interview tour. Other than that, he doesn’t know what to expect. No one from his school has gone through a BSMD program before, and this is the only BSMD program he applied for.
Do you have any insights into the interview itself?
No we do not
@Peimom My daughter was accepted the first week of November with SAT of 1540, GPA 4.25 out of 4.3 UW, #1 in her class, lots of focused ECs, did all the essays, attended Blue and Gold day and she waited four months hoping for merit and nothing was received. This is the only school out of her six acceptances (so far) that has offered her nothing. It has been a major disappointment as she probably would have attended had she received something as she really liked Pitt. Before readers comment that I sound entitled, it isn’t that we feel she deserved money, it’s that she had to wait so long after her acceptance just to receive nothing. It would have been much less of a disappointment to know right from acceptance, or shortly thereafter, that you have to pay full price and thus cannot attend.
@Topcat123 I don’t think you sound entitled. I think based on all historical posts about merit, it’s reasonable to think she would be in the running for at least a bit of merit. I get your disappointment. Has she reached out to a regional admissions officer somehow?
@carachel2 Thank you. She actually held out hope until yesterday that her letter was coming in the mail. She was hoping letters were mailed on 3/1 and because we live several states away, her letter was just taking longer. Home dimmed on Friday and was extinguished yesterday. I will suggest to her that she contact her admissions officer.
I’ve heard that Pitt no longer does committee evaluations for pre-med students? I looked everywhere but could not find why that is the case. Do you know why Pitt stopped doing committee evaluations and how it would affect current/incoming Pitt students going into med school? I know a lot of top uni’s like JHU do committee evaluations still. Won’t it help for pre-med students since you kinda get another set of hands to verify that you are a competitive applicant.
@Topcat123
I saw many excellent students here but not everyone received merit. Their scholarship website gave us hope that she might get something.
I understand your disappointment and hope she finds her best fit.
You do not sound entitled to me. Your daughter has great stats! I posted MANY weeks ago that I found the scholarship info very vague on the Pitt site, so I definitely understand your disappointment.
Hopefully, your daughter will find the right place for her, and they will be lucky to have her.
An update for those who followed son’s Pitt saga that began with post #7.
58 Vanderbilt: tuition-free after Cornelius Vanderbilt merit scholarship
($19K in direct costs for room/board/fees)
Just goes to shows how crazy unpredictable the game is.
@TheVulcan congrats!
@TwoHighSchoolers Thank you. She has a couple of great options now and hopefully 3 or 4 more by the end of March. However, the great options are coming with great big price tags as we aren’t eligible for financial aid. Her goal was to graduate from undergrad with no debt between what we can give her and merit aid, which is why she applied to Pitt. It is now looking like she will have to incur some debt.
@TheVulcan Congratulations to your son! They are all wonderful options. I know he was planning on visiting some schools in April but so many have cancelled tours and accepted student days. Depending on how things work out with the late March decisions we were planning on visiting more schools in April. It will be challenging to select a school without visiting. The atmosphere on campus is something my daughter really considers.
Thanks, @Topcat123.
For him, it doesn’t make the decision harder (he and we are set on MIT, even with Vandy’s CV offer), mostly just takes away the fun experiences he was looking forward to at Caltech’s PFE and MIT’s CPW - and free swag:)
At least Delta let us cancel the tickets. Sheesh… Hopefully this blows over by Fall so schools can open normally.
Good luck to everyone with final decisions during this crazy time!
@TheVulcan I know of a Vanderbilt Cornelius scholarship winner who turned down MIT in favor of taking the $$ at Vanderbilt. The student has not suffered for lack of opportunities. You have lots of choices!
Great offer from Vandy!
By coincidence, I was just at dinner with a bunch of senior moms and one announced that her child had received notice yesterday that she got a full tuition offer at Vanderbilt. That same student was offered full tuition, room & board at Tulane, but was NOT awarded full tuition at UT Knoxville (expected to be a safety). Now their challenge is that Vanderbilt has closed their campus for tours, and the high school student hasn’t been there in YEARS.
It is definitely an unpredictable game.
And now you will know of one who chose to go the other way, thirsty to drink from the proverbial firehose:-)
https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/drinking-from-a-firehose
We certainly are happy to have the choices we do. They aren’t the ones we expected to have, but - no complaints.
Same thing happened to my OOS kid @Peimom . We were stunned. What I have heard is that Pitt has made a philosophical decision to limit almost all of their aid to need-based aid – leaving only very limited merit-based aid available, which isn’t sufficient to trickle down to a lot of kids who otherwise qualify for and receive substantial merit-based offers from other peer schools. Reasonable minds can certainly disagree on that philosophical choice. I find it an odd choice for a place like Pitt. That approach has typically been reserved to the Ivy League schools and top shelf places like CMU or MIT – while we certainly like and respect Pitt very much as an option for our kid, enjoyed our Blue & Gold day visit, and were very interested in sending our kid there, we don’t view Pitt as being in the same category as the Ivy’s, CMU or MIT. Paying full freight at CMU or MIT is a very different relative proposition from paying full freight at Pitt. My kid has other great options at places that are peers of Pitt (or higher) and which have offered substantial merit-based aid, honors and research opportunities – including a SUNY school like your D @Peimom – so we are fortunate and grateful and happy. We are also fortunate enough to have the resources to pay full freight at Pitt on an OOS basis, so Pitt is still an option. But obviously, we are now weighing the respective value propositions of our kid’s other opportunities as compared to Pitt, and as a parent I frankly struggle to see how Pitt survives as an option in that regard. I’d like to understand how Pitt sees itself surviving as an option in that regard – maybe they do and maybe they have little problem attracting OOS kids who are made to pay full freight, but I struggle to see it. Just one opinion.
@trhbnhgth
I would disagree that CMU is worth the full price if you are a full-pay family and you have a student with amazing stats! From experience, you can most certainly get better offers elsewhere. With regards to comparing Pitt to CMU it depends on what major. When it comes to pre-med and anything to do with the Med School, CMU often collaborates with Pitt, in that order. The comparison is definitely not apples to apples for every major. If you are talking about Computer Science and Musical Theater, something CMU is really known for, again, there are plenty of schools that offer a lot merit in these 2 majors, including University of Michigan, which bounces between the number 1 and 2 theater school with CMU. It really boils down to who really wants your kid and for what reasons. Full pay OOS Pitt is definitely cheaper than full pay CMU $75K!