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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?
You might be surprised re: when and why you need this stuff.
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?
I didn't know Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne were crappy schools...thanks for the tip.
I suspect from your commentary that you are or were a business school student. People with your disposition seem to be under the impression that the point of going to college is to get training to get a job. That is absolutely false. The point of going to a university is to become educated, thereby becoming a more learned and skillful individual, and, by extension, a more employable person.
As the original poster intimated, he is looking for the better school. All factors related to a university, whether they are directly applicable to a given major or not, collectively form its reputation, and, hence, the worth of a degree. Pitt has more factors in its favor than Penn State.
So, why should a business student care about UPMC? Maybe one day he will be at an interview, and his employer will see that he graduated from Pitt. The interviewer inquires, "Is that affiliated with UPMC?" And the former Pitt student answers, "Yes, it's the medical center associated with the university." "I thought so. My wife was diagnosed with cancer a few years back. Our doctor said there wasn't much hope for her, other than a clinical trial for a new treatment over at UPMC..."
Maybe the student would want to be near a world class medical facility, just in case something happens while he is far from home. Maybe he might decide to switch majors in the course of his studies, in which case he would be glad to be at a large, comprehensive university. Or, maybe the student would like to take his business degree and go into the health services sector; I'll bet he'd be glad for UPMC then. Who knows?
The name of the game in college education is options, my friend. Pitt has more of them than Penn State...that's all I'm saying. And that is also why it is a plus that it allows its students to explore coursework at other universities.
I didn't know Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne were crappy schools...thanks for the tip.
rofl.. I can't speak for all the other programs, but Duquesne Pharmacy Students are country-wide reknown and are HEAVILY sought after. I met a recruiter in Tampa that said Duquesne was without question her all time favorite Pharmacy School EVER. :P So at least I'm golden!! All the schools in Pittsburgh have different strengths and what's even better is that they all work together. I'm sure there is some compeition or whatever, which is kind of stupid considering all three of Duquesne, CMU, and Pitt are so completely different it's like comparing apples to oranges - but there is so much more collaboration for the betterment of each school and for the students. Duquesne has an extremely respected Pharmacy, Forensics, Physician Assistant, and Music program (to name a few). Pitt is world-leading in a lot of the Medicine fields and bio/chem technology (although I believe very much most Pharmacy chains would take a Duquesne Pharmacist over Pitt any day), and CMU is world-leading in many robotics and engineering. I mean I won't get specific because I don't know enough about each one to do so, but each one has strengths that the other can actually benefit from. I wouldn't trade my time in at Duquesne for the world, and at Duquesne there are always tons of Pitt or CMU students and likewise at the other schools, we are almost like one, big, loose-knit, educational, mega-center.
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.
Just one little example on top of my longer post. Once upon a time I had a hard class called Biochemistry with a really hard professor. Well over a dozen students failed the course. Pitt was the only school that offered it in the summer but because there was so many Duquesne students Pitt and Duquesne made a special agreement and Pitt opened the class to more students than it should have (due to size limitations etc) and made special accomodations for the Duqusene students.
I didn't know Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne were crappy schools...thanks for the tip.
I suspect from your commentary that you are or were a business school student. People with your disposition seem to be under the impression that the point of going to college is to get training to get a job. That is absolutely false. The point of going to a university is to become educated, thereby becoming a more learned and skillful individual, and, by extension, a more employable person.
As the original poster intimated, he is looking for the better school. All factors related to a university, whether they are directly applicable to a given major or not, collectively form its reputation, and, hence, the worth of a degree. Pitt has more factors in its favor than Penn State.
So, why should a business student care about UPMC? Maybe one day he will be at an interview, and his employer will see that he graduated from Pitt. The interviewer inquires, "Is that affiliated with UPMC?" And the former Pitt student answers, "Yes, it's the medical center associated with the university." "I thought so. My wife was diagnosed with cancer a few years back. Our doctor said there wasn't much hope for her, other than a clinical trial for a new treatment over at UPMC..."
Maybe the student would want to be near a world class medical facility, just in case something happens while he is far from home. Maybe he might decide to switch majors in the course of his studies, in which case he would be glad to be at a large, comprehensive university. Or, maybe the student would like to take his business degree and go into the health services sector; I'll bet he'd be glad for UPMC then. Who knows?
The name of the game in college education is options, my friend. Pitt has more of them than Penn State...that's all I'm saying. And that is also why it is a plus that it allows its students to explore coursework at other universities.
There's no need to be condescending; my point in making this joke was that while you probably gave the OP lots of relevant info to his/her decision, you added so many superlatives ("far more prestigious" ... "second to none" ... "incredibly high") that it made me wonder why someone would ever want to take courses somewhere else.
I am a business PhD student at CMU, so obviously I don't think CMU is a crappy school. (for the record, I don't see Duquesne as a crappy school either. In fact, I'd have a hard time characterizing _any_ college as "bad", and I surely wouldn't call PSU a "glorified agricultural school") Besides, whether or not I fit the b-school stereotype you described so well, you decide. I don't think so. I used business as an example, it could have been drama.
I agree with what you said about the point of going to college or graduate school, and the role of an alma mater's reputation in someone's employability. However, with my second (more serious) comment about the irrelevance of general university rankings for an individual's choice of school, I meant that most of the reasons you gave as to why Pitt is a great school (which, again, I don't disagree with) are at best of a very indirect interest to someone who's interested in getting the best possible education in a specific field such as medicine, social work (where UPMC obviously matters a lot), business or economics (where at the very least it doesn't matter as much).
As far as the rest of your reply goes, the point is well taken, although using the same employer's wife/cancer example, I could recommend Johns Hopkins over Princeton to someone who has no interest in medicine, which would obviously be pretty stupid.
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.
HEY! At Penn State we had First Rate ice cream from those cows at that glorified aggi school.... oh wait... maybe that proves your point...
There's no need to be condescending; my point in making this joke was that while you probably gave the OP lots of relevant info to his/her decision, you added so many superlatives ("far more prestigious" ... "second to none" ... "incredibly high") that it made me wonder why someone would ever want to take courses somewhere else.
I am a business PhD student at CMU, so obviously I don't think CMU is a crappy school. (for the record, I don't see Duquesne as a crappy school either. In fact, I'd have a hard time characterizing _any_ college as "bad", and I surely wouldn't call PSU a "glorified agricultural school") Besides, whether or not I fit the b-school stereotype you described so well, you decide. I don't think so. I used business as an example, it could have been drama.
I agree with what you said about the point of going to college or graduate school, and the role of an alma mater's reputation in someone's employability. However, with my second (more serious) comment about the irrelevance of general university rankings for an individual's choice of school, I meant that most of the reasons you gave as to why Pitt is a great school (which, again, I don't disagree with) are at best of a very indirect interest to someone who's interested in getting the best possible education in a specific field such as medicine, social work (where UPMC obviously matters a lot), business or economics (where at the very least it doesn't matter as much).
As far as the rest of your reply goes, the point is well taken, although using the same employer's wife/cancer example, I could recommend Johns Hopkins over Princeton to someone who has no interest in medicine, which would obviously be pretty stupid.
My apologies for sounding condescending. I kept reading post after post that said Penn State was a more respect school than Pitt, and I had to set the record straight. Anyone within 300 miles of Pittsburgh knows that the two universities are pretty big rivals! When you look at the locations of each school, though, they really are close together. Penn State is only about 2.5 hours from Pittsburgh.
Your a grad student at Tepper? Maybe it would surprise you to know that, if I were going into business, I would choose Tepper over Katz any day of the week and twice on Sunday
My apologies for sounding condescending. I kept reading post after post that said Penn State was a more respect school than Pitt, and I had to set the record straight. Anyone within 300 miles of Pittsburgh knows that the two universities are pretty big rivals!
These days the rivalry is one way. Penn State likes to compete with the rest of the Big Ten.
I am still thoroughly convinced that, outside of Western Pa, Penn State is the more respected school (that's true by inspection)....However, I will concede as I don't have the energy or time to rebutt your earlier statistical tour-de-force.
These days the rivalry is one way. Penn State likes to compete with the rest of the Big Ten.
I am still thoroughly convinced that, outside of Western Pa, Penn State is the more respected school (that's true by inspection)....However, I will concede as I don't have the energy or time to rebutt your earlier statistical tour-de-force.
I live outside of PA, way outside now. I also lived seven years in downstate Illinois and 2 years in upstate NY, and a year in Delaware. I can tell you that in these areas, no one gives much thought to either one. Colleges, like politics are local. Out here, people get Pitt and Penn State mixed up. They are more concerned about the U. of Colorado and all its scandals, stabbings, football rivalries with Nebraska, etc. There is a Pitt club in Denver (I have never attended a meeting), and a Penn State alumni group that gets together to watch football games at some bar.
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