<p>I'm sending in my app for Pitt in the next few days, and I had a few questions.</p>
<p>I'm instate, and Pitt really needs to be a financial safety for me. I love the school, but I'm applying ED to Rice. It would be fantastic if I got into the honors college...does anyone know the general criteria for it? And did I apply too late such that I screwed myself out of some merit aid based on how quickly people applied?</p>
<p>I have 4.0 unweighted, 2250 SAT w/ 720 CR 800 MA 730 WR and I'm applying to Swanson for Bioengineering.</p>
<p>u should not have any trouble getting into honors and should be in running for merit aid too. although no guarantees on the latter as it can be hard to get but u are fine on timing to be considered for merit aid. Good luck with your app at Rice; great university too! </p>
<p>also, don’t treat pitt as a financial safety. we are instate and costs would have been over 25K a year after a need based grant. they may have been closer to 30K. Scholarships that i saw last year generally ranged from 5K a year to full tuition for instate kids. pitt has a handful of full rides but they are hard to come by. the good news is once you apply, if you have a shot at scholarships, pitt will automatically consider u for scholarships and they will let u know you are in scholarship pool with your acceptance letter. if you are in the running for a full ride, they let you know, i want to say Novemberish, maybe it;s even later and there is extra paperwork you have to complete and if you get far enough, an interview. i think there are only 12 to 15 full rides a year(could be wrong, it might be higher) but there are considerably more full tuitions(do not know how many though) </p>
<p>My merit award letter said that less than 3% of applicants were given the full tuition scholarship. Assuming 30k students apply, that means less than 900 are offered (of course many less are accepted given that most people who receive them have competitive offers from other similar colleges or offers into far more prestigious colleges). Definitely a lot more awards at the 5k, 2k, and 10k level. If you need a financial safety, check out some of the automatic scholarships for other colleges (and choose at least 1 to apply to) and apply to colleges similarly ranked to Pitt (like Ohio State, Maryland, Miami, maybe Penn State, maybe Michigan). </p>
<p>temple has very nice merit aid for your stats. also, if you are williing to go to some of the smaller state schools, eg iup, lock haven, you may have better chance of merit aid there. one poster, i think OSS, noted they got a very nice merit aid package from ohio state. by all means, apply to pitt, but i would add at least one more school as a financial safety. </p>
<p>I’m not applying anywhere but Pitt as a safety - I like it and it has a good BioE program. I’m applying to UCs and schools like Stanford where costs would be way more than Pitt. My financial situation is enough to afford Pitt without aid, It’d just be great to get merit scholarships. Definitely considering IUP or those types of schools…I just don’t like them. Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>ok. if u can afford pitt go for it. no way mine wanted to go to uip either. just wanted to give u some options. and udef have shot of merit aid. </p>
<p>Admissions has said that the scholarship committee will begin to meet in early November and that scholarship letters will be mailed starting from late November through March.</p>
<p>I agree with aweoome: if you get merit aid, you will hear sometime between November and late Feb/early March. and Congrats on the accept letter!!! </p>
any more than it can be a safety if you cannot afford it.</p>