University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus Top Questions

Academics at Pitt is hit-or-miss. Some professors are EXCELLENT, but most are not. There is no recourse for bad professors (I've had a prof abandon a class, flip out in class, never give out a syllabus, and force students to watch inappropriate movies). Moreover, Pitt also hires foreign graduate students as Teaching Assistants- unfortunately most of them do not speak English. Class size varies greatly depending on the course and semester. Oh and be prepared to buy about 5 mandatory books per class ($200) that you never use and can't sell back.

Professors know your name outside of the big introductory classes and pre-req courses. Some classes are completely about class participation such as writing and language courses. Intellectual conversations outside of class really depends on your crowd of friends, but they always find ways to sneak up when needed before an exam or midterm. Students are extremely competitive, especially if the class is for their major. The most unique class I've taking it a swimming class. I got credit for working out. I also took a class where I had to go to the Peterson Events Center (our huge gym in the basketball facility) and work out for credit. I spend time with professors when I need to. I meet with all of them at least a few times during the semester. Pitt's academic requirements are reasonable, and are getting more challenging every year. It is becoming increasingly competitive. More example I declared one of my majors, Political Science, this year because they are adding many more classes to the requirements for the major before next year. I plan to dual major in Finance/ Political Science to set me on my way for a Law Degree. I am also planning to minor in International Relations and grab a Leadership Certificate in the process. I feel the education is geared for getting a job and learning for different people who feel differently. Teachers are happy to sit with you and discuss in depth issues regarding the topics of their classes. Obviously if a class is for your major you are more interested in learning about all aspects of the topic rather than just trying to get the grade.

Classes can be big, especially freshman year. Despite this, for the most part, professors care. They will take the time to assist you or direct you to a place where you can be helped.

So why should you study at Pitt? First and foremost, Pitt is definitely a research college. If you go into business, medicine, or other research-intensive fields, Pitt's definitely going to give you a lot of real-world experience. Last year, I had motion sensors all over me for a few hours, for a kinesiology experiment (and made $30 doing it). I'm in the business school right now, and have been thoroughly underwhelmed. I've dealt with a lot of TA's and professors who don't use English as their first language. If you can understand Indian accents well, you'll be fine; but it's been a little tough understanding some of them. That being said, the American teachers I've had are always accessible, and genuinely want to talk with you. They know you're spending $20,000 a year to go to Pitt; they want to help. Most are very casual and relaxed about post-class conversations. The academic requirements are appropriate. Pitt's big on "diversifying yourself." So, you accounting majors will have to take some science and English courses; and you English majors will have to take courses that may actually help you find work later in life. The Pitt foreign language department is excellent. I've taken Mandarin Chinese for the past two years, and understand the language pretty well. Other languages offered are your standard Spanish, French, German; but also Indian, Arabic, even Icelandic! There are a ton of classes; and largely, you design your own schedule (within the confines of your major). Some unique classes include the History of Sci-Fi, Vampirism, Islamic Culture, and others.

Students are competitive, and usually very smart. the only major that's known to not be so smart is the business majors, but someof them are ok. a lot of kids like to brag about how hard they have it, but its all pretty equal, unless you're an engineer, that's probably the hardest major at Pitt. I'm a double major, political science and fiction writing. In the liberal arts majors, its failrly easy to meet with professors outside of class, or meet intellectual students and discuss things with them outside of class. the academic requirements can sometimes be tough, and class registration is usually pretty hassling, but other than that, there's not a whole lot of red tape. i've changed my major four times, but i'll still graduate on time because Pitt's credit transfer system is pretty uncomplicated. as a large school though, professors sometimes don't care that much about their classes, but all that does is work towards making your own experience more self-reliant, so you will develop independantly and maturely.

The professors were very nice. They all knew me, and the classes were small enough that everyone in my program knew each other. Education at Pitt, in my opinion (for my program, anyways), is basically learning for its own sake. I do not view it as geared towards getting a job.

Freshman year classes are about 350 which can be overwhelming, but by junior year my classes were about 50 each. You can get to know your teacher if you truly want to. They have manditory office hours and there are always TA's that will help you, there are often times study sessions held by the teacher before tests, there are 2-3 Peer Leading sessions a week in certain classes (physics, chemistry, o-chem, physics, and biology), which are really helpful because they are led by students that have already taken the class, there is the Academic Resource Center, a tutoring center that is free for all Pitt students and will help you in any subject, and most majors have their own tutoring center as well. Pitt really prepares you for a career in my field (physical therapy) and has so many organizations that it is hard to not get involved.

Academic life at Pitt varies immensely depending on what your major is. As a business major, I found that I was able to party more than I studied and still get good grades. Science and engineering majors, though, all spend hours and hours on studying and homework every week. They spend more time in their room or at the library than anywhere else.

Every professor I have had thus far at Pitt has been of a different nationality. I have been taught by men and women of varying ages, disciplines, interests and genders. Each and every one of them has known my name and each and every one has had a great impact on my academic goals, beliefs and success. Class participation is not incredibly common. Usually, it is a small group of students that run the class. Teachers often urge the shy ones to chime in, however, thus creating more of a balance in an already excited and charged atmosphere. I am a person who can never learn enough. I am an English Major, Psych Minor and am completing a Children's Literature Certificate. I have earned pre-graduate school acceptance and plan to complete a 5 year MAT program to earn my masters and teaching certification in secondary education at Pitt's Graduate School of Education. Someday I hope to augment my studies and certification to teach at the college level. I also aim to both publish some day, and record my music in the areas of piano and vocals. Pitt absolutely meets my academic needs. Both semesters, I filled my schedule with English and Philosophy courses of which I relished every moment. I also take a biological science course each semester to satisfy a great interest of mine. I was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which I was able to earn A's my freshman year. I was definitely challenged in my classes, but I didn't find any of them to be difficult or time-consuming. Rather, I enjoyed them with great gusto and did a lot of outside work simply for the personal satisfaction that it brought. My professors were all uniquely phenomenal and I know that I will keep in contact with some of them throughout my stay at Pitt.

One thing that has dissapointed me about Pitt is the large class sizes. I understand with a University the size of Pitt that intro courses are large, but even in my junior year I have found that classes are still well over 100 students and teachers are lucky to learn 5 names a semester. Furthermore, it has been my experience that most teachers enjoy the subject they teach but could care less about the students since each one is only one of hundreds each semester. For example, some courses have 450 students in them. If a professor has multiple classes with that volume of students, where is the individual attention. Also, many classes aren't even taught by professors, rather by Teacher Assistants. I feel scammed in some courses because I'm being taught by a grad student and not even a real professor.

The academics here really differ. I've had classes where the professor wouldn't have known if I showed up or not but I've had classes where the professor was really interested in my studies and myself as a person. Overall, it just really depends. My best advice would be to be prepared for anything. Not many schools offer classes like 'Magic, Medicine, and Science', Neurosurgery, and Intro to Massage. Keep an open mind.

During my freshmen year, the classes were taught in a good environmental setting. There was never any hostility. All of the teachers were approachable. I was not a big fan of the scheduling. I came into college expecting to take classes I was interested in. It almost felt like I was back in high school again when I met with my academic adviser and she told me I had to take certain classes. Students are very competitive, but in a helpful way. Everyone wants to earn a better grade than the next person, but people are always willing to help.

Professors make an effort to know as many students in the class as they can but they're not going to learn your name if you sit in the back of lecture every day. I've gotten to know most of my professors on a name to name basis but smaller classes (such as seminars and honors sections) provide more opportunities to get close to your teachers. My least favorite class was seminar in composition because my teacher was a hardcore feminist lesbian and wasn't very open minded. My absolute favorite class was Dr.Stricker's intro to neuro class. I've never been so excited to go to a class before. He oriented the class towards logic based learning of neuroscience and research and it stimulated my thinking more than anything. I don't study very much and that simply varies from person to person and what their majors are. Students are very competitive in the pre-med sections but I don't know about others. The most unique class I took was Russian Fairy Tales, very interesting but also bizzare. At Pitt, if you want an extremely challenging and interesting class there are plenty to choose from but if you want a blow off class there are plenty of those too. It just depends on what you want.

all of my professors knew my name after one class except the one class i took that was a gen ed science. and i'm pretty convinced that after the first test was handed back he knew my name even though it was a class of over 300 people and i never participated in lecture discussions. that could be because he was very italian, and i am too. all of my upper level english classes were amazing, but the best class i took, hands down, was queer theory. it's one of the capstone classes for the women, gender and sexuality certificate, and i highly recommend it to anyone in the women's studies department. i ran into a few competitive students, but mostly, they keep their grades to themselves either out of modesty or embarassment. the english department and the women's studies department are both incredible as far as advisors and classes go. i've heard complaints about the english advisors, but i have never had an issue.

Professors offer generous amounts of office hours so its easy to get to know them. I am studying mechanical engineering so I study frequently with a group of friends in my classes. (At least a few hours every weekday.) Class participation is very common and in most classes we have design project. This is how I got to know other students in my classes. For my major, many classes are geared to what we need to know to find a job in industry, but at the same time, we are encouraged to consider grad school. Also, a lot of the material has to be taught for the sake of learning because undergrad is the only time appropriate for learning that material. Our senior design class allows us to work with a professor, in my case the chairman of the ME department, to do some research, and produce a final product. Also, some electives I've take are the legendary history of jazz class, digital recording where we went into a studio and cut some tracks. Also, I've taken music lessons for the four years I've been here with one of the best bass players in the city.

Pitt academics are just amazing. We have amazing professors that are very interesting. I'm a psych/sociology major and we have really good professors. I think we also have a good mix of big and small classes.

Unless you take writing classes you are in a big class and the professors may not know your name, unless you visit them. I am in nursing school and most of the professors were good and knowledgeable. The clinical instructors (about 75{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c}) were very good. The teachers want you to participate but it ends up being a couple people who do most of the talking (there is about 100-120 people in your graduating class). Students can be competitive but a lot of people in nursing were friends. The only thing a lot of us didn't enjoy was the big push on research- so you will do a lot of evidenced based research papers. So they make you take the HESI every semester now to prepare you for the NCLEX- which is good but hard to take the extra time to study. Nursing school is very difficult and you will be studying a lot. You don't get the opportunity to take classes outside the requirements really but it is a liberal college so you do take non-nursing classes. It's geared toward getting a job. Umm...there's not to much intellectual conversation outside class that I have seen, but maybe in other majors. There are alot of clubs that bring awareness to different issues going on. The most unique class was swedish massage class.

My professors thus far are so wonderful. They have all helped me in their own way more than I would have ever expected in college. My favorite subjects are those that deal with my major which is psychology. There is a lot of help offered to us all outside of the classroom which I use quite frequently. I feel with all the knowledge I am entitled to knowing at Pitt, I will be able to get the job I desire after school.

Pitt is a big school, but if you communicate with your professors on a regular basis, they will know your name (which can be very helpful later on). Not all of the classes at Pitt are over 100 either. Spring of my sophomore year all of my classes were gen eds and they had 30 or less in all of them. Students study pretty much all through finals week, and it's pretty scattered during the week. There are quiet hours at night time, but depending on which residence hall you live in, it's unlikely to be quiet no matter what time. I got lucky freshman year but some people don't. it depends on the RA and whether they tolerate that kind of thing. Pitt students are very diverse too so you are pretty much guaranteed to find anything and everything on campus and off. The education at Pitt is geared towards learning for its own sake. Pitt strives to develop its students into educated adults that are successful in the real world, not simply getting a good job, which is also good.

Pitt is a large school. Enormous even. That being said, yes, there are going to be some lectures with 200+ students in them; some people cannot learn without one-on-one attention, without someone holding their hand....this isn't high school. Personally, I don't find it bothersome. I think it encourages people to take more challenging courses; the only classes with that many students are usually lower-level, introductory classes....upper levels, at least in my majors (political science and history) tend to have 35 or less students, and in that setting the professors usually get to know everyone's names, encourage participation and class discussions are common. The academic departments themselves are nationally recognized, enormous resources are available to students, and the professors are top-notch.