<p>Son is Looking at academically which one is a better fit with pre-med track going to Medicine.
UPitt with Honors program or UM . Major will be neuroscience. Want to compare Research, Shadowing and Clinical aspect of both schools. </p>
<p>UPitt is ~6k/yr more as compare to UM . Both are OOS.</p>
<p>I got my undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Pitt and my PhD in Neuroscience at Miami so you will likely not run into anyone more familiar with both of these programs. And I can say, without hesitation, if the difference in money is not an issue (and money certainly is a legitimate factor), then Pitt should be your choice.</p>
<p>Pitt has substantially more neuroscience opportunities. Really, the two aren’t even comparable. Pitt has a full fledged Neuroscience department that offers a neuroscience undergraduate degree, which means it has its own faculty and resources dedicated to neuroscience training and instruction. Miami only has a program for its undergrad degree that is actually a part of its psychology department, and it is a relatively new program at that, which means it will offer classes that are more like psychobiology than ones from a dedicated neuroscience department. Miami doesn’t have nearly as many course or research offerings in neuroscience. Heck, Miami doesn’t even have its own graduate level department of neuroscience or neurobiology within its medical school: graduate level training is an interdisciplinary program that requires borrowing resources from other med school departments. For neuroscience, the difference in what is available between the two schools is very substantial. From my personal experience, more of my undergraduate neuroscience classes at Pitt were superior to the graduate-level classes that I had at Miami than vice versa. That should be very telling.</p>
<p>Regarding the research opportunities, almost all of the labs doing doing neuroscience-related work in Miami are on the med school campus at the Jackson Memorial/Civic center area of the city. That is on the metro line from Coral Gables, but even that several mile distance makes a big difference in the ability to conveniently and easily find research opportunities for undergrads in labs there and to undertake the shadowing and clinical opportunities of which you mention. When I was at Miami, there were almost no undergrads doing research in the labs of the medical center. The culture to have undergraduates in those settings was just not there. It is completely different at Pitt, where all the research and medical facilities are literally right on the undergrad campus and the culture is one of facilitating undergrad research, and where undergrads were more often working in the labs than not.</p>
<p>To put the quantity and variety of research opportunities in actual numbers, you can just look at the National Institutes of Health research funding that each receives. That is the largest and most prestigious source of health and biomedical funding in the US, and the numbers that institutions themselves use to compare because they are directly reflective of not just quantity but also the quality. Only the best studies (these days about the top 10% of proposals) get funded by NIH. In FY2013, Pitt was #6 out of all US institutions at $397 million while Miami’s School of Medicine was 58th at $104 million. That is at the med school campus, not the main undergrad campus in Coral Gables. The main campus at Coral Gables was ranked #267 with $8 million. The ability at Pitt to literally cross the street, in between your schedule of classes or other social activities, and go into a top 10 ranked hospital or major labs to facilitate the types of activities to which you spoke is a huge advantage. Whether you are prepping for med school or grad school, you will be better prepared at Pitt, and I say that from direct experience.</p>
<p>Now with all of that said, if med school is your goal, then you first need excellent grades and MCAT scores. If you son isn’t going to be happy at Pitt, then he shouldn’t go there, because if someone is miserable, they aren’t likely to perform as well. Certainly, you can be successful in pre-med at Miami and get into a good medical school because you can do that from any school, really. At the end it is up to the student. But there are differences in those other opportunities, and the facilitation of undergrad research opportunities is a big one. Likewise, cost is a legitimate issue. So you have to weigh each of the advantages and disadvantages to your particular situation and come up with the best plan for your son.</p>
<p>@wgmcp101 Great Post I really appreciated you taking time and explaining the difference. You are the best resource for this since you been to both places and knows the pros and cons…
Yes money is the deciding factor now since S want to proceed to med School after undergrad degree and that will come with lot more expenses then undergrad. </p>
<p>We made a big mistake and not shown much interest in Pitt initially and I Guess it reflects on the Scholarship He got. But we will decide in few weeks especially after the honor program tour on 4/11…</p>
<p>Thanks again for your informative post… </p>
<p>You can always try to plead your case for more help by leveraging competing offers. It may not work, but it may be worth a try. </p>