<p>We went on a Pitt visit and I asked them how long you can receive the merit scholarship if you qualify for one.
Four years even if you do 2 years prepharmacy and P1 and P2? They said just the first 2 years because then you are considered a professional/ graduate student. But I thought since you don't have the bachelor's degree until your fourth year or P2, only the years P3, P4 were considered graduate student.</p>
<p>Does someone have first-hand experience with this?</p>
<p>D1, who just graduated with her PharmD this April, received her Pitt undergrad merit scholarship for all four years of her “undergrad” years. Pitt classifies the first two years of pharmacy school, P1 and P2, as undergrad for financial aid and scholarship purposes. Unfortunately, the tuition is at the grad school rate for the P1 and P2 years.</p>
<p>Quiettype, thank you, congratulations to your daughter! Did she like Pitt?
My daughter liked the visit alot, but we have to be able to afford it.</p>
<p>Yes, arts and sciences is about $16,000 tuition and pharmacy is $24,000. </p>
<p>The costs of attending any school are always of primary concern. And certainly Pitt is no exception. Having just seen D1 finish her six years at Pitt, we well know the cost impact of attending Pitt - even in-state! I just wanted to to mention the world of opportunity that attending Pitt for pharmacy can open up.</p>
<p>In D1’s six years at Pitt, she published research papers in peer-reviewed journals, had three research fellowships, three paid research and/or intern positions (including paid positions during every one of her summer breaks), two project grants from national pharmaceutical organizations, three named fellowship positions, as well as internships and/or rotations from Honduras to Australia to Utah and elsewhere. Currently she’s in a PGY-1 residency. (I’m not sure how this statistic stands against other schools, but 33% of the Class of 2014 went on to fellowships and/or residencies.) Pitt Pharmacy opens doors and provides unparalleled opportunities for their students.</p>
<p>Be sure to take everything into account when you decide on what school to attend. Pitt, especially in the health sciences, offers tremendous opportunities for students. Whether that’s worth any additional dollars vs. another pharmacy school is, of course, an individual decision… </p>
<p>Thank you quiettype for your information about the research and internship opportunities at Pitt.</p>
<p>It’s amazing what your daughter was able to accomplish.</p>
<p>I will definitely take that into consideration, but we do have two other children to plan for.</p>
<p>@mommdc I say Amen to everything quiet type said! My son is entering P2 in August, so he will be getting his fourth year of full tuition scholarship. He loves Pitt and Pittsburgh and just as an example of opportunities he attended the PA Pharmacists Association annual meeting and also the National Pharmacists meeting in Orlando. (And received money towards both of those for expenses). Those two events were just a few of the things open to him and are great networking opportunities for sure. He’s currently in an internship at URMC (University of Rochester --our hometown) and his education so far at Pitt seems to be is more in depth than other interns from two other Pharmacy schools in NY. He’s also thinking of doing a residency after P4. </p>
<p>He applied to 8 schools and I do recommend that you have your D or S apply to several. Cast a wide net, visit and see what happens from a financial perspective. </p>
<p>Thanks, titanmom16, it’s great that Pitt offers these opportunities.</p>
<p>Do you mind me asking which schools your son applied to? </p>
<p>For Pharmacy he applied to University at Buffalo, Northeastern, Duquesne, St. John Fisher, St. John’s, Univ of Sciences in Philadelphia,
He also applied to Alleghany and Binghamton in case he decided to go for Biology or Chemistry.
He got into all 8…Pitt was the highest ranked Pharmacy school and the best financial package. </p>
<p>Thank you titanmom16. I have looked into Buffalo, Northeastern and Duquesne. NEU would be significantly farther away though. Temple would offer full tuition scholarship, but I don’t know about the location, I would prefer urban Pitt to Philly. Buffalo offers good scholarship also, but requires more prerequisite credits. And I think their scholarship would only be for 2 years of prepharm? As far as I know P1-P4 is considered graduate level.
Yikes checked again and OOS is like $69,000. If you don’t mind me asking, did NEU or Duquesne offer him significant merit? I can’t find out concrete numbers from Duquesne site. Have you heard anything about Wilkes University in PA?</p>
<p>Are you in New York State? I would be very careful of UB. I would visit and ask a lot of questions before I seriously considered it. I know of 2 people who were accepted for Pre-Pharmacy as Freshman had at least a 3.8 GPA and didn’t get into the P1-P4 program. I also know of one person that a similar happened to in the Nursing Program. Our next door neighbor (who ended up going to Rutgers and is now going into her P3 year) had a rep at UB Pharmacy tell her to go somewhere else first for the first two years then apply to UB for the last four years. Crazy right?<br>
NEU only gave my son $10,000 grand a year, barely a dent. Duquesne was something like 7K a year. I would go ahead and apply to those schools though as it’s been 3 years since my son applied, so you never know they may give more money now.
We did visit Wilkes and we just weren’t impressed with the College as a whole at all. Academically, it didn’t seem very impressive. My DS decided along the way he wanted to be in a City and a larger school.<br>
Hope this helps!</p>
<p>Thank you, titanmom16, you were very helpful. We’re in PA. Yes that does sound troubling about UB.
I was trying to find schools with pre-/pharmacy in PA or nearby states with good scholarships.
Yes, I wasn’t sure about Wilkes either from what I gathered on the website.</p>
<p>Yes, I would avoid UB then because you’d be paying out of state tuition anyway. One thing to remember about Pitt Pharmacy is that there are scholarships available for years 5 and 6. My son will be applying for them this fall for his 5th and 6th year. I don’t have a good feel yet for what he’ll get…I can let you know. </p>
<p>If I recall correctly, D1 did receive scholarships for each of her final three semesters. They weren’t large, but they helped. Her last semester she did manage to get a full tuition scholarship. (WooHooo!!!) Pretty much all the scholarships in the Pharmacy school are endowed, and so there are certain criteria the school has to use to award them.</p>
<p>@mommdc: D1 applied to Pitt, Duquesne and Michigan and was accepted into each of their various early admissions programs for Pharmacy. (She was accepted to several other schools for biomedical engineering and/or chemistry - wasn’t 100% sure what she wanted out of high school.) I don’t recall how much Duquesne gave her in merit aid, but the out-of pocket cost for Duquesne and Pitt came out to within a few hundred dollars of each other. (This was six years ago now, so how it works now…) She didn’t choose Duquesne because she had spent a summer there doing a research project and decided that the campus was too confining for her.</p>
<p>Please don’t ask what OOS tuition would have been at Michigan - I was stunned. I even called Ann Arbor to ask what they offered that would be worth paying double what Pitt would have cost, and was told I needed to be a “good steward of my money” by the Michigan Dean of Pharmacy. Needless to say, my kid’s a Pitt alum now! </p>
<p>Titanmom16 and quiettype, thank you for telling me about the possibility of scholarships for year 5 and 6.
I wasn’t sure about that.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m sure Michigan would be expensive. It’s too far anyway.</p>
<p>We will keep Duquesne in mind and see what we might get.</p>
<p>Just wanted to update that my daughter was accepted into Pitt school of Arts and Sciences and got invitation to honors college and conditional acceptance to pharmacy program.</p>
<p>We are happy to have this acceptance. But of course the numbers also need to work out.</p>
<p>So far she hasn’t applied anywhere else, but she is planning on applying to Duquesne and some other schools instate for financial safeties.</p>
<p>Found a lot of helpful information! My D is interested in 6 year program and she applied U of Pitts, Purdue, NEU, Rutgers. I understand they all offer 6 year Pharmacy programs, just not sure if there are any difference among them? </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aacp.org/resources/student/pharmacyforyou/admissions/pages/psar.aspx”>http://www.aacp.org/resources/student/pharmacyforyou/admissions/pages/psar.aspx</a></p>
<p>You need to look at each school for the requirements of prerequisite courses, gpa required, etc. for pharmacy school. Also the costs for tuition for each of the years, prepharm and also P1-P4. If the schools are out of state that usually costs alot more.</p>