Is there any huge difference between these two schools for a BSN? They are both in Pittsburg and both are direct entry. Both have rolling admissions. One is private and smaller. But as far as the actual BSN program….we are not able to visit right now. My dd applied to Duquesne and I want her to apply to Univ of Pitt. Esp since she expressed no small schools and they have to have a fb team. So, right now I don’t understand her mind but something turned her off when looking at the website. (which is not logical).
You might also want to compare the curriculum between the 2 programs. Both are available online. You can also compare the NCLEX pass rates.
Pitt has approx 1300 clinical hours and Duquesne has approx 800. The average stats for accepted students at Duquesne is 1000 SAT vs 1321 SAT for Pitt. The entering class size at Pitt is approx 115-120. I’m not sure about Duquesne.
she got into duquesne with lots of merit scholarship and I want her to apply to Pitt but she is being stubborn cause of time. My point was to keep options open. Thanks for the info, i could not find it all online for Pitt. I don’t see the curriculum at all for Pitt. I did learn about duquesne from this forum. Ryan, where is your child at?
@ryan, I am not sure your avg SAT stats are accurate unless you are talking about Nursing program only which I can’t speak to. Pitt has an overall has about a 1200 avg, Duquesne 1130. Pitt inflates their average, there is not too much difference between the schools student body wise.
I should clarify that the 1000 SAT is the stated minimum requirement for nursing at Duquesne. The 1321 is the actual average SAT of accepted nursing students at Pitt. So not quite a direct comparison.
I’m a lot like your daughter. I also wanted a huge school (15-25k students) because I attend a huge high school (2.5k students) and I just love the feeling of being surrounded by so many different people. I also wanted to a school with lots of school spirit, so a football team was also a must. Which is weird, because I rarely keep up with football. I guess I felt like it wouldn’t be a good college experience without it.
After visiting Duquesne( which actually isn’t THAT small. It has 10k students so it’s more medium) it opened my eyes to smaller schools. The class sizes are smaller and the nursing major seems very close knit so I don’t think I’d ever feel alone. The students I spoke to told me they still have lots of fun on AND off campus, despite it not being a huge school. It’s hard to capture the greatness of the school in this post, hopefully you visit soon! They have a football team but I think their basketball team is more popular and well known.
I do know that Pitt is ranked higher, is probably cheaper, has more diversity, and probably has more school spirit than Duquesne, however. But Duquesne is isn’t a mediocre school at all
Not having visited either, she is actually excited about Duquesne and heard good things from kids at school. WE learned more about Pitt and she will prob apply to Pitt since they don’t require much. So if she is accepted then she can visit both since it is close. It seems the test scores and GPA is more important at Pitt and they don’t do a holistic review like most schools.
Thanks @RyanG1207 I found more info and talked to admissions.
Thanks @teiluuuj cause she sound the same. Are you a senior? Does your HS include the middle school cause that is insanely huge!
@cali60 yeah, I’m a senior! And nope, we actually have 2 separate middle schools each with about 800 kids! I live in a huge suburb that everyone loves to move to
@cali60 Glad you were able to find the information you needed. You and your daughter should definitely visit both schools. Even though they are both in Pittsburgh, they are located in different parts of the city and have different types of campuses. If you can, I would recommend attending the “So you want to be a nurse?” presentation at Pitt to get a better sense of the nursing program. Good luck!
are you a PA resident? My D was accepted to both DU and Pitt. We ended up choosing Duquesne because of the huge academic scholarship they awarded. Pitt was exorbitant for nursing for out of state students and they did not award as large a scholarship. Do NOT use the PItt Prestige application if offered, as you will not get as large an academic scholarship. We learned this the hard way, when we tried to negotiate more scholarship money and it was already awarded. My D used the Pitt Prestige app, which did not require you to include the ECs, which might have gotten us more academic $$$. Use the long application if you have lots of ECs to showcase.
It came down to the finances in the end, and for a public school, it did not make sense to attend Pitt financially. We receive no financial aid and the academic scholarship from Duquesne, was just too much to ignore. The new Dean at Duquesne is really making a lot of improvements to the program and has added new courses. Their recent NCLEX pass rate is 92.23% and the program enrolls about 120-130 each year. Both schools have clinical rotations at UPMC hospitals as well as other healthcare systems in Pittsburgh. UPMC hires Pitt and Duquesne nurses and both schools have a good reputation in Pittsburgh. I would also encourage you to attend the nursing preview days at both schools. You can succeed in nursing in any program, as long as you are willing to work your tail off and dedicate yourself to studying.
So here is my pitch, your daughter may or may not be interested in but if I was going to nursing school now instead of 30 years ago, I would want to do this.
Duquesne has a dual BSN BioMed Engineering program. They are the only school in the country that does.
thanks for the info and I suggested the engineering dual major since she took classes common to engineers like AP Physics and now Ap Calc. But she was not interested in the dual major. She will go on for Nurse Prac. after working awhile.