<p>My son got into UPitt with Full Scholarship, Engineering Scholarship and admission to Honors Program. He also got into Biomed Programs at JHU, NWU, UCSD (Regents Scholar) and UC Berkeley (Regents Scholar) and admission to MIT and CalTech - where you choose the department at the end of freshman year. He wants to pursue a MD/PhD program at a top Med school after doing Biomedical Engineering as Undergrad. After visiting all the schools he is leaning towards MIT and UPitt and he has to make a final choice - he has got about 20K scholarship from MIT. MIT has excellent Biomedical Research facilities on campus and also a lot more Biomed institutions in Boston. UPitt has UPMC.</p>
<p>Appreciate all of your inputs to decide between MIT and UPitt, the pros and cons.</p>
<p>I’m a senior premed student at MIT, and although UPitt never registered on my radar when I was applying to college, I interviewed at UPitt this cycle for med school and was subsequently accepted.</p>
<p>UPitt has an incredibly strong medical network (UPMC), and the opportunities there for research probably will not pale to those offered at MIT (it is another question of how accessible these resources are to undergraduates, which I am unsure about). I actually think that with the full scholarship and the honors distinction at UPitt, your son might be able to make a bright future there, given how he is going into the program with the highest accolades. </p>
<p>Of course, MIT is a great school and there is no question that we have more research opportunities that anyone can want - we also are generally quite successful at turning out MD/PhD candidates (often to the Harvard-MIT HST program). I guess I am just writing this post to say that UPitt may not be that bad of a choice - I was really impressed by Pittsburgh. </p>
<p>Either way, I think he has a great choice. It depends partly on tuition, but then I truly don’t think one will be easily “better” than the other. Other factors to take into consideration is the atmosphere (I’m fairly certain we have a much more distinct student culture than Pitt) and the academic rigor (I also think MIT will be tougher).</p>