There is no additional merit tied automatically to an honors college acceptance.
There is a Chancellor’s Scholarship which is very selective and only available to those admitted to the honors college. 50 accepted honors college students are interviewed and only 15 receive the scholarship.
$20K/yr
Swanson undeclared engineering
OOS/southern Midwest
4.0 UW
36 ACT (superscore)
2 varsity sports + drama program, quick recall
Some leadership
Applied 9/13 (NMSF)
Merit letter 10/17 (didn’t see til today)
Also applied for tuition exchange so unclear how that might impact things as those are super rare. Really interested in honors. Pitt is very high on the list so this is so exciting.
My D24 just received a merit award in her doc center from today’s review (10/24). She was accepted to School of Computing and Info on Sept 28. She has a 98 UW/103W GPA, 1540 SAT, and I think 12 AP and a couple DE post AP math classes. She is OOS and has not yet submitted her honors college app. Her award is 10,000/year.
We applied around the very beginning of September and heard back that same month of his acceptance.
DS received merit aid letter today. 10k per year. Dietrich.
Applied 9/24
OOS
35 ACT
3.9 UW / 4.3 W
NMSF
8 APs
Varsity Athlete
No, my D hasn’t submitted her honors essay yet
5k per year- Dietrich-Is there a way to appeal this?
NMSF
GPA 4.0 unweighted
SAT 1550
Many ECs and leadership positions
Selective summer program at UPMC
OOS
You can always try contacting Financial Aid to negotiate. I note long ago I successfully negotiated a higher law school merit offer by telling them about a competing offer.
Will that work with Pitt? No idea, but if it would potentially make a difference in where you enroll, I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving them an opportunity to become more competitive.
BTW, it looks like the Week 2 Wave is also, at least anecdotally, mostly OOS.
Again, it appears to me that in prior years, it was maybe Week 3 before a significant number of in-state merit started appearing. So we shall see if the pattern holds.
applied 8/11, accepted 8/31 CS in state, merit for 5k/ yr (20ktotal) 10/24 in doc center.
4.95
1510
Applied 9/18 and got accepted 9/28.
This is surprising given your kid’s credential. Some of the things I can think of are:
Are you from a neighboring state? Maybe Pitt already enrolls a lot of kids from there.
Did your kid take AP classes? You did not mention the wgpa.
Is the major super competitive? Maybe the yield is already high that Pitt does not see merit awards further increasing enrollment.
If your kid is seriously considering Pitt then it would not hurt to ask. The worst that can happen is they say no. Good luck!
Sorry for the basic/stupid question here, but we are new to this. Can someone explain what would be the actual cost of attendance for OOS student attending Swanson School of Engineering?
As per this link:
'23–'24 Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering Undergraduate Cost of Attendance | Tuition Rates and Fees It is “Per-Term” 21,032 tuition + 685 mandatory fee + 8940 other expenses = 30657
I assume that there are 3 terms (Fall/Spring/Summer) = 91K which seems very high
We ran NPC in Pitt and the COA came back with 36,930 tuition + 12,646 room + 3588 indirect cost = 53164. Is this for 1 year total? There is no clear indication in the NPC data which is why I am confused
What is our yearly cost going to be? "NPC - $Merit award? " ?
FWIW, My son got 20K per year merit and is in Swanson Bioengineering
I think it’s tuition(two terms)+fees(two terms)+other expenses(two terms)-merit. For Swanson, it is $42064+$1370+$17880-$20000=$41314
The NPC is probably set up for two semesters at Dietrich.
The annual cost is for fall and spring semesters. Any summer school is extra.
He is a US citizen studying overseas. US universities treat him as domestic-OOS for tuition purposes. He studies in the British System which is very regiours. He has a very heavy course load with the top grades (A*) across subjects. Applying molecular biology.
I see, Thanks!. So we need to consider for only two-terms, and not summer. So, are all summers usually reserved for outside school activities such as internships etc. ?
So a few years ago with my S18 we successfully negotiated more aid from $10k up to $15k. Not sure if this will work today but this is what we did.
There was a form to request a review of aid. It required competing offers from peer schools. My son had full tuition from U of AZ and Stony Brook and large awards from Minnesota, Fordham and RPI. Some of these schools were on a list of peers schools we found in a peer comparison document from the Chancellors/Presidents office. So we put those awards on the form
However, what I think may have mattered more was that we went to accepted students day and we requested a f2f meeting with Financial Aid. We made the argument that he applied the first week of August (literally days after the app opened), so was clearly interested, and here we were in March still interested. Ball was in their court. That did it - he got. $5k bump, he enrolled, and has since graduated.
Are you prepared to commit if they offer more?
If not, they have very little incentive to do so, and they rarely negotiate merit these days.
As @NiceUnparticularMan explained in a long post above, Pitt likely uses a sophisticated enrollment management tool to determine for which students certain levels of merit may be effective in moving the dial so that the student enrolls. In your student’s case, their calculations may well show that no amount of aid usually sways applicants with your student’s profile.
If Pitt is your student’s #1 choice and more merit will mean they will commit, then it is worth asking. It’s early enough in the cycle that they might have wiggle room. There is no formal appeal process, but your student could call/email…but they need to be prepared to honestly say that Pitt is their #1 choice and they will commit with more merit.
Are the OOS merit offers going to specific states, or geographic areas? Trying to see if there are any patterns with respect to areas or zip codes seeing merit awards.