<p>They look at all of your grades (including freshman year). They unweight your GPA (so they take out any extra points you get for honors or AP). Your school transcript should include a GPA that is weighted and unweighted, Pitt basically looks at your unweighted.</p>
<p>Basically: Your school will say you have a 3.8 GPA but you took 4 AP classes. So Pitt will take out the extra points your AP classes provided and recalculate your GPA and maybe it will be like a 3.65 instead. That’s what they consider your GPA to be when they look at your application.</p>
<p>AwesomeOpossum, I don’t exactly follow your description of how they evaluate your GPA. Many schools unweight your GPA but then they state they consider the rigor of your courseload. Otherwise, why take any honor or AP classes?</p>
<p>Right. So they’re a bit more forgiving of a lower GPA if all your classes were harder.</p>
<p>So basically, two students have a 3.5 UW GPA. One student took like 3 APs and all honors. One student took none. The 3 APs/all honors student is clearly the better candidate because in harder classes they did just as well as the other student.</p>
<p>I applied to Pitt in July. On the application, it asks for my intended major and I listed pre med (I know it isn’t a major but they said if you are intending to go pre med, list that). I know they see a ton of pre med students who come in and at least half of them aren’t pre med by the time they get out. My SATs are 680 math 570 critical reading 620 writing, my weighted GPA is ~3.92 and unweighted is ~3.90 (not a huge change). I have a pretty hefty workload, about as hard as I can get out of my school. I handed in a teacher and guidance letter of recommendation and an essay. What I’m getting at is: would it be worth my time to switch off of the pre med major? Just for the sake of getting in, or do you think I’d be leaving it and I’ll be accepted just fine?</p>
<p>Not really. There are so many ways to be pre-med. Engineering, Chem, Bio, Psychology, History, etc. etc. Basically, any major can be pre-med. So taking it off and being a generic undecided really makes no difference.</p>
<p>Plus, like you said, they get a lot of it, and they also get a lot of undecideds. So really, it’s basically the same.</p>
<p>I was reading with interest your post on how Pitt calculates GPA’s. Our school does not assign letter grades but percentages so I am trying to figure out on a 4.0 scale what my son’s GPA would be. I am wondering how Pitt would interpret 93% for example on a transcript as a final grade. At our school that is considered a B…but I read that most universities interpret that as an A. This would make a big difference in his GPA and why I am asking. Can you shed any light on this? Also, are you saying that Pitt only considers the unweighted GPA?</p>
<p>Thank you Lakemom…not sure if that is how they do it but a 3.7 is better than a 3.3! I read elsewhere that a 93% is considered an A (4.0) while 90-92% is considered an A- (3.7) but again…not sure that is how Pitt does it. It sure would be nice if Pitt posted somewhere online how they calculate this.</p>
<p>I’d say the easiest way to look at it is by converting percents to 4.0 Range. As Lakemom said, a 93% is a 3.72. Pitt classifies 3.75 (or 93.75%) as an A-. Basically a 93% is the highest end of the B+ grade/the lowest end of the A- range.</p>
<p>GPAs suck. I went to a school where 90-93 was B+, 94-100 was A, and A+ did not exist. </p>
<p>Also, for future reference, here is how the 4.0 scale breaks down. No, I don’t know why Pitt was ■■■■■■■■ and made 3.25 a B+ but 3.75 an A-…</p>
<p>p.s. It doesn’t say it, but generally a grade of 98-100% is given an A+. While Pitt calculates an A+ as 4.0, certain programs, like the LSAC (for students applying to law school) will weight any A+s on a transcript as a 4.1 I believe. So there is a purpose after all! Just FYI</p>
<p>I was wondering (and I know a few other people who are too)…when I applied and got accepted to Pitt, it was for the nursing school (as a freshman). Since then, I realize that I do love the school, but I’m not as in love with the profession and would like to transfer to the School of Arts and Sciences…do you by chance know how I should go about doing that/who I should talk to?</p>
<p>I am a first semester freshman nursing student and have decided that nursing is not for me. I instead want to go the pre-dental route. I had to meet with my nursing advisor and request a transfer. My guess is that you should contact the nursing school first. I will transfer into arts and sciences.</p>
<p>That’s my advise too. Contact your nursing school school advisor and mention that you want to switch. They should be able to help you through the process and then get you connected to an A&S advisor.</p>
<p>There is definitely paperwork to fill out to take classes at CMU. My daughter really had no interest in doing it once she arrived at Pitt. The schedules (when the semester starts and ends) can vary some, so that may cause issues as well.</p>
<p>Pitt is one of my top 3 choices, all of which I haven’t visited yet…so it may be #1. But I really would be interested in taking classes at CMU because it is such a top notch university. This isn’t saying that I don’t think Pitt is a good school, but I think anyone would agree that CMU is a better school. I would like to take CS classes at CMU, because of its great reputation.</p>
<p>I appreciate MD Mom’s response… now I know that it really isn’t something that is really easy to do. If anyone else has any information on taking classes at CMU through please respond… thankyou.</p>
<p>No offense, but how can Pitt be a top school if you’re going to be taking major classes at CMU?</p>
<p>Anyways, to answer your question: it’s super difficult to get classes at CMU. For the first thing: you can only take 1 class there per semester. Another requirement is that an equivalent/similar class cannot exist at Pitt. Considering we have a pretty extensive CS department here at Pitt, I’m not sure you’d be able to take CS classes at CMU.</p>
<p>Also, have you considered the distance factor? Although CMU and Pitt are <em>close</em> campuses, they’re still 1-2 miles apart, depending where on each campus you go. If you schedule a class at CMU right between two Pitt classes, the commuting to/from the campuses can get to be a pain, and you’d be entirely dependent on buses, assuming they run on time.</p>