My student and I attended admitted students day for engineering and I guess it was helpful, but not in the way you’d expect. It was a beautiful day and overall the event was well organized. All students involved were great. As with this impression from a 2020 ASD, I thought the engineering presentation was lackluster. I’ve seen presentations recorded during covid that were much more convincing, focusing on first year student support for what is a rough curriculum. Someone asked about the engineering school being a weed-out program and the response was that students have lacked math skills due to covid and they are now catching this through a math assessment that is video recorded. That’s fair, but I wanted to hear more about the support system. The engineering tour was a lot of “this room is closed and the light is out, but if you could see in there…” (No fault of the student engineering ambassadors who were great.) The basement level halls were dark, dirty and littered with materials and it seemed like a safety hazard. I was surprised that the makerspaces weren’t open on a Saturday and they close on 5 on weekdays. I guess I’m used to the Sears Thinkbox at Case Western which is a bright, clean 7 story building that is open to the public, including on weekends and evenings. To be fair, their makerspace could be amazing; all we saw were the dark windows of the space. They did say that there were other makerspaces throughout campus and maybe those are open on weekends. I really wanted them to sell the program to me. My student even said that they failed to sell it as we were leaving. The welcome session which focused on cheers, recognizing parent groups in the audience, and a giant rock-paper-scissors game didn’t add value and were not for us. They did do a good job of selling the city through video. To be clear, I know Pitt is a great school with a renowned engineering program. It’s an honor for my student to have been admitted. I would love to hear from other families who may have attended the engineering sessions who had a different impression. I apologize that this post will 100% sound whiny to the families who are still waiting for a response. I’m sorry that some of the early applicants are still waiting. Best wishes to everyone!
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