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.

Anonymous wrote:PP...I also hear the job market is rough for a lot of PhD faculty.

The most lucrative PhD's, based on quick Googling, seem to be in fields that SLACS aren't known for.

Anonymous wrote:PP...I also hear the job market is rough for a lot of PhD faculty.

The most lucrative PhD's, based on quick Googling, seem to be in fields that SLACS aren't known for.

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."

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.

+1

People often forget that big schools often have 1,000 or 1,7000 top students who also had offers from T20 but the public school gave them major merit.

What that means is your potential cohort of high achievers is nearly the same or even larger at a public school.

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.

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).

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://publichealth.pitt.edu/academics/bachelors-program

Clearly, U Pitt offers superior academic, internship, and social opportunities than does tiny, but wealthy, Grinnell College.

Also, the students at Grinnell tend to be far left liberals. Tolerance of opposing viewpoints and political leanings may be an issue for the non-woke.

Grinnell is an academic powerhouse and regularly included in the top ~10 schools for generating future PhDs. Pitt isn’t in the top 100.

https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/institutional-effectiveness-research-assessment/Doct%20Rates%20Top%20100%20Tot%20Sci%20Rankings%20-Summary%20to%202022.pdf

FIRE ranks Pitt as “below average” in free speech and Grinnell as “slightly below average” (17 spots ahead of Pitt.)

https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2024/09/2025%20College%20Free%20Speech%20Rankings%20Report%20FINAL.pdf

Anonymous wrote:Is the kid going to college to study and learn? Or does she/he need a big city for more shops, bars and restaurants, to have a good social, bar and dance clubs life? I went to a liberal arts college similar to Grinnel and appreciated the lack of too many distractions off campus. Not to mention, the Midwest is generally cheaper for most things, unless you are loaded and don't care about the $$$.