My child was admitted to the undergraduate program at the Honors College at U Pitt - with a substantial financial help package, and University of Maryland College Park - with less attractive monetary offer. Both universities are ranked the same - # 62. Could anyone give me some information about each option? Did your child go to U Pitt or to UMd Honors College? How “marketable” is the designation and what is your overall experience? If you had the choice, which option would you choose for an undergraduate degree? I would truly appreciate your input, as I am a novice to all of this.
My children didn’t go to either, but they had friends who went to one or the other. They are both high-quality public universities, which means that a motivated, self-starting student can get a fantastic education and start on life, and that an unmotivated student who needs a lot of direction can get lost. UMCP is practically in Washington DC, which makes it a great place for government- and law-related internships. Pitt has world-class life sciences, a fun city where students are really appreciated, and a great college-oriented neighborhood (Carnegie-Mellon is almost literally next door). Both places have large student bodies and offer the full gamut of college experiences, from nerddom to hipsterdom to frats-and-sports.
Pitt is very popular in Philadelphia as the “safety” alternative for top performing academic public school kids who don’t win the lottery by getting into Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, or Penn. Urban kids, especially those interested in medicine (creative writing and theater, too), tend to prefer it to Penn State, and (as you have learned) Pitt has the funds to make it easy for good students to choose it. Pitt was one of the first publics to make a big deal of its honors college, and kids seem to like it, although it’s no guarantee of a successful college career. (That’s true everywhere.) My impression is that there’s more than average substance to Pitt’s honors program – lots of places, the honors college is pretty cosmetic – but I don’t really know the details, and I have no idea how Maryland measures up in that regard.
I have no idea how “marketable” either school is. Most of the kids I know who have gone to one of them have been successful at executing their plan (which tended to be “get in to medical school” or “get in to a good law school” or “work in government”). Not all of them loved it, but most were perfectly happy. I hear more enthusiasm for Pitt, but I know many more kids who went there, and only a few at UMCP. I also have the impression that overall Pitt has students with a wider range of abilities – kids who really should have been accepted at HYP to kids who maybe aren’t really ready for college – which makes the honors college more important, and makes the mere fact of having graduated from the school mean less.
Thank YOU so very much for taking the time to comment! I was trying to decide whether or not to make the trip to visit U Pitt on its “Honors” day. It sounds like wherever my son may end up going, U Pitt is worth the visit.
Both are awesome…go for the cheaper option.
My son is an honors college freshman studying engineering at Pitt. He loves it. Pittsburgh is such a great college town.
Awesome, thank you. We are coming for a visit next Friday and are looking forward to meeting the Panthers.
If the major is computer science, I’d go to U Maryland in a heartbeat. Even though Pitt’s cs is good, they suffer from being down the street and around the corner from CMU. It’s like being a normal person and living next door to a supermodel-it skews one’s perspective a bit.