How is Pitt? (Pittsburgh, Carnegie, Duquesne: colleges, pharmacist, inspection)

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by Tallysmom

My husband and I are grads of Penn State with BA's in Advertising. But in school terms, it was in the early Pleistocene era... 1982. We felt we got a good education, but the time we graduated, jobs were very hard to get.... we liked the area, but the campus revolved around Greek life... and we weren't into that at all. Once again -- this was ages ago -- and not too far away from the movie Animal House.... so all the frat boys had the same names.

I know PSU Main is huge so it's unlikely that you would have known my sister. She was a double major in advertising and journalism around the same time you attended PSU. She was the manager of the Train Station for quite a few years and married a bartender from there who went on to Rutgers for his PhD in Political Science. She ended up an editor of a magazine in NYC.

Originally Posted by Pittnurse

But when Pitt or anyone else plays Penn State, you know which side he's for.

Since my father attended Pitt, my sister and he would have a rivalry during the games. He or she would call and they would tease each other. Our family is weird though. We do the same thing during presidential elections. (The year Perot ran, my family was split equally among all three candidates! One of my sisters voted for Clinton for no reason other than she thought Gore was attractive! Her reasoning.....none of the candidates were worthy so it was better to at least have someone attactive to look at for the next 4 years. ) Rilvary is fun in families.

[Katarina Witt]

Since my father attended Pitt, my sister and he would have a rivalry during the games. He or she would call and they would tease each other. Our family is weird though. We do the same thing during presidential elections. (The year Perot ran, my family was split equally among all three candidates! One of my sisters voted for Clinton for no reason other than she thought Gore was attractive! Her reasoning.....none of the candidates were worthy so it was better to at least have someone attactive to look at for the next 4 years. ) Rilvary is fun in families.

Well, I thought Gore was a hottie too! Your family sounds somewhat like mine. My husband is a loyal son of Nebraska (you thought I was going to say something else, didn't you? Sometimes he's that, too!). Anyway, a few yrs ago Penn State played Nebraska at PSU. My bro took 25 c bets on the game. My DH and my turncoat kids all bet on Nebraska (in same league as U of CO), while bro and I bet on PSU. Nebraska was highly favored, but PSU won. DD sent my bro a quarter, cost more in postage! A year or two later, Nebraska played Pitt in Pittsburgh during some flood. Little DD had a gymnastics meet, we took a TV along and watched the game. Some of the other parents watched with us!

[djjaae]

Many of my children's friends applied to both Pitt and Penn State. Most were accepted at Pitt. Only a few were accepted at Penn State...and most of them were accepted at a branch campus. Penn State must be more competitive. PItt really is known for medical areas, though.

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by djjaae

Many of my children's friends applied to both Pitt and Penn State. Most were accepted at Pitt. Only a few were accepted at Penn State...and most of them were accepted at a branch campus. Penn State must be more competitive. PItt really is known for medical areas, though.

The latest "US News and World Report" college rankings just came out last week. While USNWR ranks Penn State 48 among "National Universities" and Pitt #59, there are a lot of disrepencies. For example, PSU has a freshman class with 37% of students from the top 10% of their high school classes; Pitt has 43%. Penn State has a "selectivity rank" of 93 out of 117 (the lower the number the better). Pitt's is not listed b/c only the "selectivity" of the top 50 is noted. However, The college just ahead of PSU (U Texas at Austin) has a selectivity rate of 48, and the one just behind (U of Florida), has a rating of 44. I don't get it. Year after year, Penn State is highly rated, yet its statistics say otherwise. (Note to all PSU grads, I'm not saying it's a bad school.) Its acceptance rate is 58%, Pitt's is 56%. [Please note I am talking about PSU at University Park.] Maybe Penn State just encourages more people to apply. Penn State is even ranked higher than Colorado School of Mines, which I honestly find very hard to believe. I mean, I can understand it being comparable to Pitt, but come on! CSM is a very tough school; the most difficult public college in Colorado by all accounts. So, Penn State has something going for it, but I don't know what it is.

[zip95]

Originally Posted by pittnurse70

I mean, I can understand it being comparable to Pitt, but come on! CSM is a very tough school; the most difficult public college in Colorado by all accounts. So, Penn State has something going for it, but I don't know what it is.

I think the answer lies with the fact that many rankings consider things like strength of the grad school programs, number of Ph.D's produced, prestige of the faculty, number of papers published in referred journals, total research expenditures...etc. Even thought the rankings are for undergraduates, all of these other factors come into play.

For example, if Albert Einstein is a professor at school A, then School A will be ranked higher. It's good for undergrads to bump up against the likes of Einstein. If school B has a world class research program in whatever, then school B will be ranked higher. It's good for undergrads to be around world class research programs.

Schools like PSU (and Big Ten Schools in general) are Ph.D factories. Since Ph.D students do a lot of the research these Ph.D factories produce research by the truckload. This greatly adds to the prestige factor, and the school is deemed to be a desireable place for undergraduates.

As an example:
CSM has 41 Physics Ph.D Students
PITT has 91 Physics Ph.D Students
PSU has 130 Physics Ph.D Students
Berkeley has 244 Physics Ph.D Students.

[Katarina Witt]

Well, that is one possible explanation. It is also another example of how to manage statistical data to prove whatever you want. No offense meant to Penn State, it is USNews that is doing this. BTW, how many PhD physicists does CalTech have? They are #5 and DH's undergrad alma mater. Just curious. Also, are you a physicist?

[zip95]

Originally Posted by pittnurse70

BTW, how many PhD physicists does CalTech have?

Sorry, couldn't find the data.

[Katarina Witt]

OK, Thanks. Talk to you later.

[hyperion1110]

As an employee of the University of Pittsburgh, I can tell you that this university is far more prestigious than Penn State - University Park. Pitt ranks in the top ten of National Institutes of Health funding, and top twenty in National Science Foundation funding. It's health system, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), is the 4th largest such system in the world, with facilities in Europe and Asia. It's Schools of the Health Sciences are second to none, with programs in Rehabilitation Science, Public Health, Medicine, and many more ranking in the top ten in the nation.

Pitt was recently ranked 37th out of the 100 most prestigious universities in the world by Newsweek; Penn State ranked in the last tier.

In the Humanities and Social Sciences, Pitt is incredibly high in the rankings. It's Philosophy Department is second only to Princeton; it's Anthropology program is one of the most prestigious in the world (ranking 6th, I believe, but don't quote me on that). Pitt has an entire graduate school dedicated to political science, public policy, and international affairs. What's more, Pitt now contains the largest collection of European Union documents anywhere in the world, outside of Brussels. Those millions of volumes of documents are available to Pitt students and faculty.

As for the basic sciences, the Departments of Biological Sciences and Chemistry are among the largest and most respect in the country. My own department, Computational Biology, recruits grad students from all over the world. They choose to come to Pitt over Cornell, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, NYU, just to name a few (I know...I am the admin for grad studies). The Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, encompassing several departments from Pitt and CMU, is one of the largest and most well-respected neuroscience centers in existence.

Last year alone, Pitt received over $700 million in external funding (read: research grants). Combined with UPMC, it is an $8 billion a year research behemoth.

Pitt is a founding member of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, home to the most powerfully academically based supercomputers in the world. It's Cray XT3 system, known as Big Ben, is a 20 TFLOP machine (that's fast!), and it is about to be replaced again by a machine 10 times faster. You may also appreciate the fact that one of the primary internet backbones runs through Pittsburgh. In fact, the entire Penn State systems buys it's bandwidth from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, whose founding co-director is Ralph Roskies, my old physics professor at Pitt.

Pitt shares library resources with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, giving you access to more than 10 million volumes of material. Additionally, as a Pitt student, you would have access to classes at Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, Carlow University, Chatham University, Point Park University, and Robert Morris University, through the Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education.

A degree from the University of Pittsburgh will be recognized anywhere in the world as impressive. I mean, it does produce more Rhodes and Marshall Scholars than any other university in PA (including Penn and CMU). And if none of that is enough for you, Pitt also happens to be located in America's Most Liveable City.

Penn State is a glorified agricultural school in the middle of nowhere. You do the math...see how it adds up.

[barneyg]

Originally Posted by hyperion1110

Pitt shares library resources with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, giving you access to more than 10 million volumes of material. Additionally, as a Pitt student, you would have access to classes at Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University, Carlow University, Chatham University, Point Park University, and Robert Morris University, through the Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education.

If Pitt is so great, why the hell would you want to take courses in all those other crappy schools that produce so few Rhodes scholars?

In all seriousness, I think global university rankings are terribly useless for any individual prospective student. If I'm a business school student, why should I care about UPMC or EU documents?