University of Pittsburgh vs Grinnell College

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer group:
Grinnell: 1480, 51% submitting
Pittsburgh: 1360, 50% submitting

Grinnell's median and percent submitting are on par with schools like BC, UVA, W&M, BU, WFU, etc. while Pittsburgh's stats are closer to Virginia Tech's.

Grinnell has about 400 students per class. You’d better hope they’re all top notch because there’s no one else for miles.

Pitt has about 4500 students per class. You could just hang out with the top 10% at Pitt and have a larger peer group than the entire school at Grinnell.

I am a Pitt grad. That's exactly how it feels. There are plenty of top of the class students. Anyway, college is mainly about what the student themself puts into it, not the credentials of the people seated behind the student in the lecture hall. Btw, I left PSU Honors College for Pitt because University Park was not a fun place...too isolated, too socially focused on watching sports and drinking, and the Honors Program was too slanted towards guys & engineers at that time. I hear they have fixed it. But I really think it makes a big difference to be in a city where you can escape from an undergrad monoculture.

I also think it's true that many SLACs have low national brand awareness and they do best in their home regions. That doesn't mean they aren't good schools - it means no immediate recognition bump from an HR person/employer unless tapping the alumni network or in region.

I also feel Pitt will have more internship and research opportunities. The scale of a major research university is much different.

As opposed to state schools? I have 0 dog in this fight as an Ivy grad, but even you’d have to concur that most Pitt grads end up right back in the rust belt/Pennsylvania area? This is just how colleges work unless you are recruiting from across the world like Harvard.

Pittsburgh is a great place to land.

Didn’t say it wasn’t. Boston and Chicago are the most common locations for Grinnell alum. Seems everyone ends up fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did I miss the part where OP say their kid wanted a Ph.D.?

If youre interested in public health, it’s pretty stupid not to get a PhD. Most of the jobs are gatekept by a masters qualification and that’s with significant losses to your career progression and options without a PhD. Getting an undergrad degree in bio and going into industry is a plain stupid decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only person who determines if a PhD is wanted is the student themselves.

I would phrase it as "Students who might want to get PhD's have a greater likelihood to matriculate at a SLAC" rather than an institution generates them.

I realize that a student can be moved to pursue a PhD by an excellent undergrad education. But it's more likely a compounded legacy effect and that the type of person who welcomes high contact academics will become a PhD.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/#:~:text=Nearly%20a%20quarter%20(22.2%25),D.

"faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction."

The PhD data refutes the earlier claim that Pitt has superior academics. It certainly does not. PhD programs are among the most selective and favor rigorous academic prep. Now, a good argument can be made that so do law and med programs, but there isn’t a central authority publishing undergrad origin for all law or med school graduates the way there is for PhD earners, which is monitored by the NSF. (Grinnell does say they med school acceptance rate is about 66%, couldn’t find an equivalent measure for Pitt.)

We are talking about OPs kid and that kids' interests. OP said nothing about phd, law, or medicine, but did say the kid wasn't keen or rural middle of nowhere. The kid wants public health and biology, and at Pitt the kid has access to world class hospitals and a hub of biotech and medial innovation in Pittsburgh. I love Grinnell, but not for this kid.

Not relevant to OP, but on the med school question, the last data I saw was 80% admission success. Incidentally, the acceptance rate for Pitt Med is only 3%, but they take a high number of Pitt undergrads into the program (relatively speaking), so that is also a bonus. Pitt Med has a 98% success rate for senior medical students seeking matches in the 2024 National Resident Matching Program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only person who determines if a PhD is wanted is the student themselves.

I would phrase it as "Students who might want to get PhD's have a greater likelihood to matriculate at a SLAC" rather than an institution generates them.

I realize that a student can be moved to pursue a PhD by an excellent undergrad education. But it's more likely a compounded legacy effect and that the type of person who welcomes high contact academics will become a PhD.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/#:~:text=Nearly%20a%20quarter%20(22.2%25),D.

"faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction."

The PhD data refutes the earlier claim that Pitt has superior academics. It certainly does not. PhD programs are among the most selective and favor rigorous academic prep. Now, a good argument can be made that so do law and med programs, but there isn’t a central authority publishing undergrad origin for all law or med school graduates the way there is for PhD earners, which is monitored by the NSF. (Grinnell does say they med school acceptance rate is about 66%, couldn’t find an equivalent measure for Pitt.)

We are talking about OPs kid and that kids' interests. OP said nothing about phd, law, or medicine, but did say the kid wasn't keen or rural middle of nowhere. The kid wants public health and biology, and at Pitt the kid has access to world class hospitals and a hub of biotech and medial innovation in Pittsburgh. I love Grinnell, but not for this kid.

Not relevant to OP, but on the med school question, the last data I saw was 80% admission success. Incidentally, the acceptance rate for Pitt Med is only 3%, but they take a high number of Pitt undergrads into the program (relatively speaking), so that is also a bonus. Pitt Med has a 98% success rate for senior medical students seeking matches in the 2024 National Resident Matching Program.

I don’t really get the hospital point or biotech points. Most students going into public health and bio programs need research, and you usually do research programs at universities. Medical research institutes don’t give preferences to undergrads, they search nationally for students to do research with them and the spots are few. Biotech is just going into a different industry.

You also want professors as recommenders, not hospital researchers. The advantages you listed are important when you’re in grad school and looking at your employment opportunities, not for an undergrad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer group:
Grinnell: 1480, 51% submitting
Pittsburgh: 1360, 50% submitting

Grinnell's median and percent submitting are on par with schools like BC, UVA, W&M, BU, WFU, etc. while Pittsburgh's stats are closer to Virginia Tech's.

Grinnell has about 400 students per class. You’d better hope they’re all top notch because there’s no one else for miles.

Pitt has about 4500 students per class. You could just hang out with the top 10% at Pitt and have a larger peer group than the entire school at Grinnell.

I am a Pitt grad. That's exactly how it feels. There are plenty of top of the class students. Anyway, college is mainly about what the student themself puts into it, not the credentials of the people seated behind the student in the lecture hall. Btw, I left PSU Honors College for Pitt because University Park was not a fun place...too isolated, too socially focused on watching sports and drinking, and the Honors Program was too slanted towards guys & engineers at that time. I hear they have fixed it. But I really think it makes a big difference to be in a city where you can escape from an undergrad monoculture.

I also think it's true that many SLACs have low national brand awareness and they do best in their home regions. That doesn't mean they aren't good schools - it means no immediate recognition bump from an HR person/employer unless tapping the alumni network or in region.

I also feel Pitt will have more internship and research opportunities. The scale of a major research university is much different.

As opposed to state schools? I have 0 dog in this fight as an Ivy grad, but even you’d have to concur that most Pitt grads end up right back in the rust belt/Pennsylvania area? This is just how colleges work unless you are recruiting from across the world like Harvard.

PP. You are right, other PP, many schools place regionally. Pitt's grads are localized around Pittsburgh. DMV is well within that circle because DC is a jobs magnet for professions that aren't common in Pittsburgh. There's also a NYC/Northern NJ contingent.

There's a large NBER-published study on this topic that shows some schools have a different pattern and place more than expected outside their region. It's quite interesting although it doesn't give data for either Pitt or Grinnell. That could be gotten from the researchers. However, any college with alumni databases has the info for their people and sometimes you can tell just from where the alumni club chapters are.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w30088

Regarding Pitt and public health...I know that the Pittsburgh medical community has global awareness. And medical-related professions are nationally mobile. A public health grad could stay in a tight radius near Grinnell or near Pitt, but my hypothesis is they might either return to DMV or go anywhere in the US. I just think a research university has a better background for employers. Perhaps there's no difference or one or the other has an advantage for grad school admission...that is not something I have a background in.

Geographic proximity to where you want to work and the location of anyone you want to build your life around is important. For many people, college choice does have a big influence on where you move next. I think geography should be considered. But so far we only know what OP's kid thinks about the immediate community. The kid should think about post-grad a bit too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More Pitt students go on to earn Ph.D.s than Grinnell students.

https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-phd-programs

Grinnell students go on to Ph.D.s at a higher rate, of course, which is what PP’s link shows. But which is more of an “academic powerhouse” depends on whether you value absolute numbers (which favors Pitt) or percentages (which favors Grinnell).

In the context of an individual selecting a college, rates are implied because data at the level of an individual is more relevant. That’s why it would be odd to say Arizona State’s graduating class starting salary regularly surpasses Princeton’s.

+100
The PP suggesting raw numbers are of use is a dumb-ss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only person who determines if a PhD is wanted is the student themselves.

I would phrase it as "Students who might want to get PhD's have a greater likelihood to matriculate at a SLAC" rather than an institution generates them.

I realize that a student can be moved to pursue a PhD by an excellent undergrad education. But it's more likely a compounded legacy effect and that the type of person who welcomes high contact academics will become a PhD.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9755046/#:~:text=Nearly%20a%20quarter%20(22.2%25),D.

"faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction."

The PhD data refutes the earlier claim that Pitt has superior academics. It certainly does not. PhD programs are among the most selective and favor rigorous academic prep. Now, a good argument can be made that so do law and med programs, but there isn’t a central authority publishing undergrad origin for all law or med school graduates the way there is for PhD earners, which is monitored by the NSF. (Grinnell does say they med school acceptance rate is about 66%, couldn’t find an equivalent measure for Pitt.)

We are talking about OPs kid and that kids' interests. OP said nothing about phd, law, or medicine, but did say the kid wasn't keen or rural middle of nowhere. The kid wants public health and biology, and at Pitt the kid has access to world class hospitals and a hub of biotech and medial innovation in Pittsburgh. I love Grinnell, but not for this kid.

Not relevant to OP, but on the med school question, the last data I saw was 80% admission success. Incidentally, the acceptance rate for Pitt Med is only 3%, but they take a high number of Pitt undergrads into the program (relatively speaking), so that is also a bonus. Pitt Med has a 98% success rate for senior medical students seeking matches in the 2024 National Resident Matching Program.

I don’t really get the hospital point or biotech points. Most students going into public health and bio programs need research, and you usually do research programs at universities. Medical research institutes don’t give preferences to undergrads, they search nationally for students to do research with them and the spots are few. Biotech is just going into a different industry.

You also want professors as recommenders, not hospital researchers. The advantages you listed are important when you’re in grad school and looking at your employment opportunities, not for an undergrad.

Also Pitt only presents the results of students approved by the pre health advisory committee. Their data is incomplete and doesn’t show the full picture of med school admission from their undergrads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer group:
Grinnell: 1480, 51% submitting
Pittsburgh: 1360, 50% submitting

Grinnell's median and percent submitting are on par with schools like BC, UVA, W&M, BU, WFU, etc. while Pittsburgh's stats are closer to Virginia Tech's.

Grinnell has about 400 students per class. You’d better hope they’re all top notch because there’s no one else for miles.

Pitt has about 4500 students per class. You could just hang out with the top 10% at Pitt and have a larger peer group than the entire school at Grinnell.

I am a Pitt grad. That's exactly how it feels. There are plenty of top of the class students. Anyway, college is mainly about what the student themself puts into it, not the credentials of the people seated behind the student in the lecture hall. Btw, I left PSU Honors College for Pitt because University Park was not a fun place...too isolated, too socially focused on watching sports and drinking, and the Honors Program was too slanted towards guys & engineers at that time. I hear they have fixed it. But I really think it makes a big difference to be in a city where you can escape from an undergrad monoculture.

I also think it's true that many SLACs have low national brand awareness and they do best in their home regions. That doesn't mean they aren't good schools - it means no immediate recognition bump from an HR person/employer unless tapping the alumni network or in region.

I also feel Pitt will have more internship and research opportunities. The scale of a major research university is much different.

As opposed to state schools? I have 0 dog in this fight as an Ivy grad, but even you’d have to concur that most Pitt grads end up right back in the rust belt/Pennsylvania area? This is just how colleges work unless you are recruiting from across the world like Harvard.

PP. You are right, other PP, many schools place regionally. Pitt's grads are localized around Pittsburgh. DMV is well within that circle because DC is a jobs magnet for professions that aren't common in Pittsburgh. There's also a NYC/Northern NJ contingent.

There's a large NBER-published study on this topic that shows some schools have a different pattern and place more than expected outside their region. It's quite interesting although it doesn't give data for either Pitt or Grinnell. That could be gotten from the researchers. However, any college with alumni databases has the info for their people and sometimes you can tell just from where the alumni club chapters are.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w30088

Regarding Pitt and public health...I know that the Pittsburgh medical community has global awareness. And medical-related professions are nationally mobile. A public health grad could stay in a tight radius near Grinnell or near Pitt, but my hypothesis is they might either return to DMV or go anywhere in the US. I just think a research university has a better background for employers. Perhaps there's no difference or one or the other has an advantage for grad school admission...that is not something I have a background in.

Geographic proximity to where you want to work and the location of anyone you want to build your life around is important. For many people, college choice does have a big influence on where you move next. I think geography should be considered. But so far we only know what OP's kid thinks about the immediate community. The kid should think about post-grad a bit too.

Most people in public health have a masters, and that’s where the training for those jobs comes from. DC is interested in biostats and basically has to do traditional CS internships until they get into grad schools, since the grad research advisors only approve graduate lab students and summer internships in biostats are quite rare if they aren’t for URM.

Health careers in general aren’t the typical path and most of your professional experience is delayed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Plus Pitt makes more sense for public health/bio majors.

+1000 how is the possibly a question??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peer group:
Grinnell: 1480, 51% submitting
Pittsburgh: 1360, 50% submitting

Grinnell's median and percent submitting are on par with schools like BC, UVA, W&M, BU, WFU, etc. while Pittsburgh's stats are closer to Virginia Tech's.

Grinnell has about 400 students per class. You’d better hope they’re all top notch because there’s no one else for miles.

Pitt has about 4500 students per class. You could just hang out with the top 10% at Pitt and have a larger peer group than the entire school at Grinnell.

I am a Pitt grad. That's exactly how it feels. There are plenty of top of the class students. Anyway, college is mainly about what the student themself puts into it, not the credentials of the people seated behind the student in the lecture hall. Btw, I left PSU Honors College for Pitt because University Park was not a fun place...too isolated, too socially focused on watching sports and drinking, and the Honors Program was too slanted towards guys & engineers at that time. I hear they have fixed it. But I really think it makes a big difference to be in a city where you can escape from an undergrad monoculture.

I also think it's true that many SLACs have low national brand awareness and they do best in their home regions. That doesn't mean they aren't good schools - it means no immediate recognition bump from an HR person/employer unless tapping the alumni network or in region.

I also feel Pitt will have more internship and research opportunities. The scale of a major research university is much different.

As opposed to state schools? I have 0 dog in this fight as an Ivy grad, but even you’d have to concur that most Pitt grads end up right back in the rust belt/Pennsylvania area? This is just how colleges work unless you are recruiting from across the world like Harvard.

PP. You are right, other PP, many schools place regionally. Pitt's grads are localized around Pittsburgh. DMV is well within that circle because DC is a jobs magnet for professions that aren't common in Pittsburgh. There's also a NYC/Northern NJ contingent.

There's a large NBER-published study on this topic that shows some schools have a different pattern and place more than expected outside their region. It's quite interesting although it doesn't give data for either Pitt or Grinnell. That could be gotten from the researchers. However, any college with alumni databases has the info for their people and sometimes you can tell just from where the alumni club chapters are.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w30088

Regarding Pitt and public health...I know that the Pittsburgh medical community has global awareness. And medical-related professions are nationally mobile. A public health grad could stay in a tight radius near Grinnell or near Pitt, but my hypothesis is they might either return to DMV or go anywhere in the US. I just think a research university has a better background for employers. Perhaps there's no difference or one or the other has an advantage for grad school admission...that is not something I have a background in.

Geographic proximity to where you want to work and the location of anyone you want to build your life around is important. For many people, college choice does have a big influence on where you move next. I think geography should be considered. But so far we only know what OP's kid thinks about the immediate community. The kid should think about post-grad a bit too.

Most people in public health have a masters, and that’s where the training for those jobs comes from. DC is interested in biostats and basically has to do traditional CS internships until they get into grad schools, since the grad research advisors only approve graduate lab students and summer internships in biostats are quite rare if they aren’t for URM.

Health careers in general aren’t the typical path and most of your professional experience is delayed.

+100. Public health is a graduate path.

[andrew70912]

OP here. I truly appreciate all the responses. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the overwhelming support for Pitt over Grinnell. Considering that Grinnell is a highly ranked SLAC with an acceptance rate around 11%, compared to Pitt, a rather large public university with an acceptance rate nearly 50%, I expected more people to favor Grinnell. That said, DC has always been part of large public school systems, so it's not surprising to me that he's not comfortable with a smaller college environment, especially in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, it's going to be his decision, and as parents, we have to respect that.

[Anonymous]

andrew70912 wrote:OP here. I truly appreciate all the responses. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the overwhelming support for Pitt over Grinnell. Considering that Grinnell is a highly ranked SLAC with an acceptance rate around 11%, compared to Pitt, a rather large public university with an acceptance rate nearly 50%, I expected more people to favor Grinnell. That said, DC has always been part of large public school systems, so it's not surprising to me that he's not comfortable with a smaller college environment, especially in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, it's going to be his decision, and as parents, we have to respect that.

No skin in this game but bear in mind that at about 15x the size Pitt is bound to have far more boosters on a site such as this. Anyway, you are of course wise to defer to your child. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Grinnell has only released ED1 and Questbridge acceptances, right? If so, aren’t they obligated to go? This situation doesn’t add up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

andrew70912 wrote:OP here. I truly appreciate all the responses. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the overwhelming support for Pitt over Grinnell. Considering that Grinnell is a highly ranked SLAC with an acceptance rate around 11%, compared to Pitt, a rather large public university with an acceptance rate nearly 50%, I expected more people to favor Grinnell. That said, DC has always been part of large public school systems, so it's not surprising to me that he's not comfortable with a smaller college environment, especially in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, it's going to be his decision, and as parents, we have to respect that.

No skin in this game but bear in mind that at about 15x the size Pitt is bound to have far more boosters on a site such as this. Anyway, you are of course wise to defer to your child. Good luck!

PP above is correct. There is sampling bias here on DCUM and it's undoubtedly traceable to scale, geography, and brand awareness. I'm both a Pitt advocate and the person that said a lot of SLACs lack national brand awareness. That's meant to be a realistic, not an offensive, observation. Part of my professional background is market research, so I pay a lot of attention to what people know and don't know. My work also involves working with a lot of non-US people who did grad study in the US at big research universities. Their brand awareness is more like this:

https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2024

Pitt is 90th on this list FWIW.

A final thought...acceptance rates should be used just for a candidate determining their chances of acceptance. I don't believe students should go to the most selective school. They should go where they think they will be most successful based on self-knowledge and the resources associated with their choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

andrew70912 wrote:OP here. I truly appreciate all the responses. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the overwhelming support for Pitt over Grinnell. Considering that Grinnell is a highly ranked SLAC with an acceptance rate around 11%, compared to Pitt, a rather large public university with an acceptance rate nearly 50%, I expected more people to favor Grinnell. That said, DC has always been part of large public school systems, so it's not surprising to me that he's not comfortable with a smaller college environment, especially in the middle of nowhere. Ultimately, it's going to be his decision, and as parents, we have to respect that.

No skin in this game but bear in mind that at about 15x the size Pitt is bound to have far more boosters on a site such as this. Anyway, you are of course wise to defer to your child. Good luck!

PP above is correct. There is sampling bias here on DCUM and it's undoubtedly traceable to scale, geography, and brand awareness. I'm both a Pitt advocate and the person that said a lot of SLACs lack national brand awareness. That's meant to be a realistic, not an offensive, observation. Part of my professional background is market research, so I pay a lot of attention to what people know and don't know. My work also involves working with a lot of non-US people who did grad study in the US at big research universities. Their brand awareness is more like this:

https://www.shanghairanking.com/rankings/arwu/2024

Pitt is 90th on this list FWIW.

A final thought...acceptance rates should be used just for a candidate determining their chances of acceptance. I don't believe students should go to the most selective school. They should go where they think they will be most successful based on self-knowledge and the resources associated with their choice.

How much does brand awareness matter to most industries? I went to a non-top 5 lac, but every recruiter has heard of my college and talked well of it. No one should be concerned that Susan has heard of their degree.