<p>Congrats to your daughter! Fingers crossed for some scholarship money!</p>
<p>Thanks! We are really happy as Pitt was one of her top choices. I guess she should get busy on some of those independent scholarships too. It was so great to see her excitement as she opened her first acceptance envelope! :)</p>
<p>RE: Score cutoffs for scholarships, etc.</p>
<p>Today I spent some time reading through last year’s applicant thread and a few things stood out:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I am leaning towards agreeing with LurkNessMonster about score cutoffs in general, but with a caveat.
It seems as though applicants with an ACT of 33+ and SAT of 1450+ were typically offered full ride scholarships and honors college acceptances, provided that their GPAs were in the 3.9++ range and that they had taken significant higher level course work (APs, IBs, and Honors).</p></li>
<li><p>The cutoffs don’t apply to all students. It seems as though students who were accepted to the honors college but didn’t make the “cutoffs” had really random ranges of scholarship awards, from full tuition to nothing.</p></li>
<li><p>The possibility of the 2nd Review for scholarships! One parent said that his daughter requested a second review by the scholarship committee (after she initially received nothing) and ended up receiving a full tuition scholarship :)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Also, it seems as though we won’t know about scholarships until late Oct. or early Nov., which is when it seems like the scholarship committee starts reviewing apps.</p>
<p>Best of luck to all!</p>
<p>There are two tiers of basic merit scholarships at Pitt. As folks have noted above, the full-tuition scholarships seem to come in at the 1450 SAT score level. (At least, that was the clearly stated hard number two years ago.) There is also a lower merit scholarship which used to start at about the 1350 SAT score. In this case there were two different dollar amounts - $2,000 for in state and $10,000 for out of state. Part of what confuses everyone is that people don’t state if they are IS or OOS when they discuss their scholarships.</p>
<p>Of course there are other programs in place as well, such as departmental scholarships and other more targeted scholarships, but in general, there are really only two basic merit scholarships - full tuition and the $2,000 IS/$10,000 OOS.</p>
<p>Congrats Ikf725 to you and your daughter!! Hope she gets her top choice.</p>
<p>Do they give full-tuition scholarships to OOS students, too?</p>
<p>@ Quiet Type:</p>
<p>One thing I couldn’t come up with an answer for was what ACT score was the equivalent for a 1450 at Pitt (for full tuition scholarships). It seemed to be around a 33, but I don’t really know. Do you think a 34 would qualify for full tuition OOS?</p>
<p>The problem with the merit scholarships at Pitt is that the school never really spells out what the criteria are. The closest “official” proclamation was from an information session. That’s where the 1450 SAT (CR/M) comes from. It wasn’t made clear if that’s in-state or OOS.</p>
<p>So some kids who seem to us to be in the zone don’t receive anything, while others with lesser stats get money. There is a randomness to it, at least from the outside. The committee may have logical standards that it adheres to, but we are not made privy to the decision-making process.</p>
<p>And then the other problem is that we don’t know from year to year if the number of scholarships will remain the same, lessen, or grow. With the economy, I am betting that scholarships will be harder to get, and thus more competitive as more kids find themselves in need of money. But that’s just a hunch too!</p>
<p>That said, a 34 ACT is a terrific, terrific score, and I would be surprised if the student DIDN’T get full-tuition! I think I recall a poster from Ohio last year with a 33 who didn’t get full-tuition. She (?) was very disappointed, but she just couldn’t swing Pitt financially without the scholarship, so she stayed in-state. A difficulty is that it isn’t possible to accurately convert an ACT score to a SAT score, because the tests are so different.</p>
<p>I wish we knew more about what Pitt was looking for. As it is, it is a guessing game every year. But it makes sense that Pitt is trying to attract more out-of-staters, to become more like UMich or UVa. And so I think the OOS kids, especially from a state that’s underrepresented at Pitt like California or Nevada, etc., would have a better chance than a kid with similar stats from Ohio. But who really knows? The people who know aren’t saying! ;)</p>
<p>That’s very interesting what Smart Cookie said about the second review for scholarships. I recommended last year that a couple of kids press Pitt a little harder about why they didn’t get money, but I never heard if anyone was successful. I’m glad at least one student was! I always feel that it doesn’t hurt to ask.</p>
<p>Small note for those interested in Nursing at Pitt. My wife and daughter were at Pitt admissions yesterday to arrange a tour of the dorms and were told that there were 1100 EA applicants for the School of Nursing this year. Perhaps an economic effect?</p>
<p>^ WOW! And all 1100 have already submitted apps? Yikes.
Do you think that they will be making decisions much slower because of the large volume of applications?</p>
<p>Congrats to all who’ve been accepted! </p>
<p>Yikes! is right regarding the 1100 applications for Nursing already. It won’t take long to fill those 100 spots. Thank goodness D2 got her app in early.</p>
<p>Two more envelopes from Pitt today. D2 is at work all day, so will have to wait to see what’s inside.</p>
<p>1100 seemed liked a lot to me also. Isn’t the entire freshmen class only about 4500? I know the Nursing program is small (110 + 20-30 transfer students) so perhaps it fills up early and the serious candidates apply earlier than the other majors? </p>
<p>Perhaps the admissions person was wrong (or purposely misleading) in order to make my wife and daughter feel better about not getting into the Honors Colleges or any merit aid?<grin></grin></p>
<p>Hmm…do you think they read apps based on the date that everything (LORs, transcript, etc) was received, or do they read them in order of application date?</p>
<p>Because I had my app in August 18th but my Transcript and LORs weren’t send until Sept. 21st…</p>
<p>It’s fascinating to see how much activity the Pitt forum gets. Being from the Pittsburgh area (and being an alumnus as well as having daughter #1 there) I probably overlook how much attention Pitt is drawing from across the country. It’s also exciting to read about the acceptances coming in - congratulations to all who are hearing the good news! The Pitt/Oakland community is a great place to go to school.</p>
<p>It would be nice if Pitt was a little clearer on their scholarship levels. As LurkNess mentioned, my daughter and I were explicitly told by an admissions officer in spring of 2008 that the 1450 was the minimum level for the full-tuition scholarship. (Quite frankly, we were trying to get more money from Pitt and we succeeded to an extent, so asking for a second review can pay off) That was also when we were told about the $2,000 IS vs. the $10,000 OOS scholarships. Pitt does have other scholarships that they can use if and when they need to as well as departmental scholarships. For instance, last year every engineering student received scholarship dollars, although I do not recall how much. I have to admit we never did inquire about ACT levels, since we were only talking about SAT scores, so I can’t really answer any questions on the equivalence between SAT and ACT scores. I can say firmly that Pitt is strongly trying to attract OOS students.</p>
<p>All of these variations on a theme do tend to confuse people. The best thing I can recommend is to talk directly to an admissions officer and ask what they can do for you in your situation. None of us responding in this forum can really answer specific questions for specific situations. As they say, every case is different.</p>
<p>“…my Transcript and LORs weren’t send until Sept. 21st…”
Does your application show complete on the Pitt portal? If it does then it will be just a short time before you get your acceptance letter. The admissions committee is probably still “choking” on your ACT score. <grin></grin></p>
<p>BTW - the date on the acceptance letter was Sept. 25, 2009, so they may have actually started meeting before the last of your paperwork arrived.</p>
<p>How important is it to submit the optional essay? Applying as an OOS student to engineering with SAT scores of: 680 Math, 650 CR and 580 Writing. Planning to retake SAT on 10/10.</p>
<p>^^^^, same question (although already posted…more people looking at this thread) oos, 33 act, 4.13 wgpa and have LOR ready to go, applying to chem , just submit now or do an essay? need merit if possible to make it work</p>
<p>I believe for scholarship consideration you’re supposed to submit an essay. What does it say on the application?</p>
<p>They do convert the ACT score to an SAT scale, I noticed that on my son’s Transfer Credit on peoplesoft. 36 would equal a 1600, 35 would be 1550 and so forth. I would agree with Lurkness that with the economy there may be less scholarship money this year. I believe Pitt keeps the qualification murky on purpose so they can be flexible with the awards. They do favor OOS candidates especially with the full tuition scholarships. Engineering does offer scholarships that is stackable with the full tuition award. So with my son’s full tuition scholarship, the engineering scholarship pays for his room and part of his board. I was worried about his decision to attend Pitt as all his friends went to our state flagship but he LOVES it there. I would definitely give Pitt two thumb up! :)</p>
<p>I would submit as soon as you can. It use to ask for an essay for scholarship consideration, have they changed that requirement? Pitt has rolling admissions so apply early! Last year, they over-enrolled by about 400 students so they may accept fewer kids to avoid this problem. They had students in lounges due to the lack of dorm rooms.</p>