My daughter is a senior in Highschool right now and applied in September to PITT (her dream school) and has been accepted. She has an ACT score of 34 and a GPA of 3.81. We are eager to hear of any scholarships she may have recieved.
I am new to this whole process as this is my first child to graduate. What are the requirements for merit scholarships for PITT? When will newly accepted incoming freshmen hear about scholarships? If she hasn’t heard anything, does that mean she has not recieved one?
When she was first accepted, did her letter mention that she was eligible for honors college and that her file would be reviewed for merit scholarships?
Generally that you are UHC Eligible. UHC Eligibility requires 1400 M+CR SAT or 32+ Math/English ACT, and top 5% of their graduating class (less strict on that one). Depending on her GPA (is that 3.8 weighted or unweighted) and her difficulty of class schedule, it seems like she would be eligible for the UHC upon admission.
Keep in mind that applications for scholarships were accepted up until a few weeks ago (Jan. 15) and that the scholarship committee does NOT meet daily. They have a lot of applications to look through in order to spread out the money they have. You can hear about scholarships up until March 1, so there is still almost 3.5 weeks of waiting to be had.
Keep in mind a lot of other factors go into who gets what scholarship (if any) such as: State of residence, gender, intended major, ethnicity, “hook” factors (interesting ECs, etc.). There seems to be a limitation on the number of scholarships given per state (ex. 15 people from VA can get a full tuition and 10 get a half, but if 30 excellent students from VA are in the pool, 5 will get shafted) although this has never been confirmed.
I will say this: it is probably easier to get money if you are OOS (particularly if you are from a farther away state) and/or a minority. Major does affect it too (SSOE has engineering-specific scholarships they give on top of the UHC ones, for example).
Feel free to contact admissions or OAFA to see where your daughters application stands in terms of scholarship review.
Can you call the OAFA and ask about specific applicants? I didnt want to call and ask and ruin any chances she may have.
Also you said 34 ACT but Pitt looks solely at Math and english subscores and converts them to SAT equivalents - and that needs to be 1400+ so if her subscores in those two are strong, and rank is top 5%, she should’ve been invited to honors college which her eligible (not necessarily getting them but eligible) for scholarship consideration. If you feel she didn’t get fairly assessed because say rank wasn’t explained in her app, or whatever, you can request reconsideration for honors college. (source: my son didn’t get honors until I requested reconsideration (way back in '11) because his GC didn’t list his rank)
@fabriz0771, As I mentioned in another thread, many students are still under review for Scholarships through February and all students selected to receive a scholarship will be notified by March 1. You are always welcome to call our office with any additional questions and we will be happy to assist you: 412-624-7488.
-A Pitt Admissions Staffer
If an accepted student doesn’t meet the SAT requirement, but has a 4.0 and in the top 10% of their class and very active in sports and clubs, does that mean they won’t be considered at all for any scholarships? Although we have paid our enrollment fee, she was accepted to Duquesne and UCF and was offered scholarship money that brings her costs down $5K less for Duquesne and $10K less for UCF. I know PItt is the better choice for nursing and favorite, but just wondering.
@dbsb11, I am not on the Scholarship Committee, so I can’t really give you a definite answer (they are still reviewing a lot of applications through February).
But I can tell you that in the past our scholarship recipients have possessed ALL of the following:
-minimum SAT score of 1450 (math and critical reading scores only) or 33 ACT (Math and English
subscores average)
-overall ‘A’ average
-top 5% class rank (if applicable) while participating in challenging high school curriculum consisting
of AP/IB/Honors courses
-record of excellence in various academic and nonacademic activities outside of the classroom
Best of luck!
-A Pitt Admissions Staffer