Trying to pick between University of Pittsburgh and University of Toronto (dual-citizenship)

College Search & Selection
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Hello Everyone,

I am a senior living in North Carolina, and I am trying to pick from U of Pitt, with a 40,000 scholarship over four years, or U of T, which cancelled my application and I am currently in the appeals process for, As my school sent transcripts late. If I were to get in, could you guys help me weigh the pros and cons of each university.

I am looking to study Molecular biology and Genetics in Undergrad (as of now), and want to take up a focus in medicine development in graduate schools

My stats are: UW GPA: 3.8 W GPA: 5.06, SAT:1500, ACT: 33, Two varsity sports (tennis and football) and some volunteer work building playgrounds for poor areas in the community

Side note: I was rejected at Emory; waitlisted at Tulane, William and Mary and Lehigh; accepted into Allegheny and Pittsburgh; waiting on a decision from Toronto.

A little surprised that I got into no schools with an acceptance rate lower than 50%, but them’s the brakes.

I have Canadian citizenship

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Given that you have Canadian (actually dual) citizenship, I would expect that anything in Canada is going to be way less expensive than anything in the US. There are a lot of very good universities in Canada but the application deadline is past for most (not all) of them.

U of T has a very strong biology program. I am not familiar with the subspecialities within this program.

The one issue with U of T is grade deflation. You will need to be a very strong student indeed to get high grades there. I do know someone who did undergrad there and grad school at Stanford, and someone else who did undergrad there and grad school at Princeton. Thus apparently it is possible to get sufficiently high grades at U of T to get into a top grad school, but it won’t be easy.

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@DadTwoGirls Yes I know the deadline has past. I submitted all my materials that I was able to on time, but my school sent out the midyear late. Now I have to appeal for my application to go under review and it takes much longer than I would anticipate. It is unfortunate but I guess that is the way things go.