UPitt vs Penn State

luvthej
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 01:00:06 +0000

I’m glad your children have done well. To answer your question thoroughly would take more time than I can give to the explanation. It’s long, complicated and unless you’ve been in the environments it is difficult to wrap your head around.
The major points to two issues you raised.
NIH funding rankings: It is true Pitt medical school routinely can be found in the #5-10 slot every year. It’s a great medical school made up of multiple hospitals. The funding, based on total costs is high at medical schools due to factors that do not translate into opportunities for UGs. The sizes of the grants funding clinical studies are huge compared to basic science grants. This is due to the high costs of patient research and very large salaries of the MDs supported by the grants. This type of research is difficult for students to get involved due to regulations (HIPA and IRB controls). So large dollars usually do not translate into the type of work that is easy for UGs to be involved.
Medical school environment/model. Medical schools are very concerned about square foot per dollar. A sq ft of clinical space will always bring in more money than a sq ft of research space. Research space, especially basic science research, is kept to a minimum. Thus, each lab run by a professor is comparatively small compared to that in a University setting and space is at a premium. To accommodate UGs is difficult for most investigators. In addition, there is no UG teaching mission associated with medical schools. This type of activity is not valued. Some basic researchers do this nonetheless.

I recommend looking into the numbers of students doing research at each university.