Pitt Admission tips & dates

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pittsburgh
1

<p>These are from my notes from the Ready Set Pitt day we attended yesterday. I'm just a parental unit, so I may not have any answers to questions on details but I thought I'd share what I have anyway.</p>

<p>Deadlines:
Oct 15 - If you have a Fee Waiver from Pitt, all your app items must be submitted by this date. Ignore this if you are paying the app fee.</p>

<p>Jan 15 - Merit-based scholarships
- reviewing for merit scholarships begins in November
- you can be admitted before that, and then if you get new higher test scores that bump you up to merit level, they give you the merit scholarship</p>

<p>May 1 - National deadline for enrollment deposits</p>

<p>All apps are automatically reviewed for Admission, Honors eligibility, Merit-based scholarship, Freshman guarantees, Regional campuses.</p>

<p>How Pitt considers Apps:
- Transcripts & Scores are given equal weight
1) Transcripts
- class rank is looked at first
- followed by junior year (weighted GPA) and QPA
- course quality level and course challenge level
- strong senior year
*if you have a downward GPA trend, use essay to explain why</p>

<p>2) Scores:
- Pitt urges you to take both the SAT and the ACT- Writing
- they "mega-score" - get the highest from both SAT & ACT-Writing</p>

<p>3) Supplemental info is optional but recommended
- you must submit the supplemental info BEFORE they get your transcript or scores because they will review your app as soon as they have all the required items. They can be emailed or faxed
Supplemental info includes:
- answers to the short questions/essay
- resume / activities list
- recommendation letters - maximum 3 (please don't send a letter from a relative)</p>

<p>Anytime you email or fax the Admissions office, include your name, birthdate & address at the top so they can put it in the right folder.</p>

<p>The possible Admissions committee responses to your app are:
- admitted (will come as a fat packet in regular mail, not email)
- a request for more info (either senior year STA/ACT test score or senior mid-yr grades)
- admitted to regional campus
- denied admission</p>

<p>--
Hope that helps people who are applying!</p>

2

<p>This was very helpful! I just have a question about the admissions committee responses. If you are admitted, does your acceptance letter come with the fat packet in the mail? Or are you saying that the acceptance letter comes first and afterwards we receive a fat packet in the mail?</p>

3

<p>The admissions officer said you get your acceptance letter in one fat packet, everything together.
She mentioned that some students mistakenly keep checking email but it only comes by regular mail.</p>

4

<p>Thank you, this is very helpful, scholarme. We didn’t know to send rec letters or activities list. That wasn’t clear on the app DD received by email.</p>

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<p>Us either! I’m glad I attended that session. :)</p>

6

<p>The admissions envelope has been a large envelope (not thick, I forget how many pages but it wasn’t thick!) with words You’re Admitted on the outside. Kind of hard to miss. Letters re: merit come later but so do other letters from the dept. you are intending, various groups - the dean, etc. Once you are admitted, letters come from various sources about once every few weeks until May 1</p>

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<p>Thanks amandakayak - I was imagining a fat envelope. She might have said big and I pictured fat rather than large. LOL
She did mention the “You’re Admitted!” on the outside, I remember that.</p>

8

<p>Did they mention when special status applicants receive an admission decision? And also, do they send a letter if you aren’t immediately admitted and they are requesting grades/new scores?</p>

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</p>

<p>They said they will review apps as soon as they have app + transcript + all scores so my assumption is that the special status applicants will get a response within 3 weeks of them getting the final required piece of info.
(She mentioned that if on your app you said that you plan to take a future SAT/ACT, and your current scores are not enough to admit you, they will wait for the scores of that future test to come in.)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I don’t think she said and I didn’t think to ask. I sort of assumed all the possible responses will be in snail mail but I could be wrong.</p>

10

<p>The decision arrives in a big envelope (8 1/2 x 11) but it is not very thick. Everything comes snail mail. The full tuition scholarship offer also came in a big envelope from the Honors College.This was our experience from 2012-2013 college app. season.</p>

<p>Good luck everyone!</p>

11

<p>If I remember the big envelope says “Congratulations” and has a sketch of the cathedral. I believe that the same big envelope is used for admission to campuses other than main. </p>

12

<p>Kerri from Pitt Admissions here - @scholarme sounds like you attended my presentation and took great notes:)</p>

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<p>Kerri from Pitt Admissions here - @scholarme sounds like you attended my presentation and took great notes:)</p>

14

<p>Kerri, I think so - it was the one in the morning.
It was very informative. :)</p>

15

<p>It was either myself or Heather Abrams - happy to hear it was helpful.</p>

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<p>@hailtopitt1787‌ Kerri, by the way my kid has a question. How does she (get her teacher to) submit the optional rec letters?
Are there instructions when she logs on to her Pitt account? She’s at a camp with no internet right now so she wanted me to find out for her.</p>

<p>(I went to the first session in the morning, and we were waiting for the mike?)</p>

17

<p>@scholarme‌ I’m not h2p but I know the answer (if the process hasn’t changed from last year). When you do the application online, there will be a box to type in the teacher’s email address and it will send an email to the teacher. The teacher has a set amount of days to do it before the link expires, so be sure to talk to the teacher soon after you type in the teacher’s email. When the teacher receives it, she/he can upload a LOR onto the portal, and it’ll be all set. </p>

18

<p>If the link expires the teachers can email their letters of recommendation to admissions. Many schools do not open until after Labor Day and if the application is sent in now the link may expire (?). </p>

19

<p>@scholarme Ah so that was Heather’s session, not mine. The easiest thing to do is have the teacher email the letter to <a href=“mailto:oafa@pitt.edu”>oafa@pitt.edu</a> rather than use the online application submission system.</p>

20

<p>Thanks! She used the special sttus form and I don’t know if there was a link on it - at any rate you are right that school is still closed anyway. Emailing will be easiest.</p>