High scores for applicants end Pitt’s “backup” status

The bar has officially been raised at the University of Pittsburgh. No longer do students… The bar has officially been raised at the University of Pittsburgh. No longer do students recognize Pitt as just a place to watch great college basketball and party – more and more, competitive students are considering Pitt their No. 1 choice in higher education.

Pitt’s admissions office receives 120 percent more applications than they did in 1995, with 43 percent of this year’s freshmen coming from the top 10 percent of their high school classes, according Pitt’s Web site.

“There are good students that we would love to admit, but we’re not able to, because you have 17,500 applications for 2,800 spaces,” said B.J. Ore, the director of Admissions and Financial Aid.

News of the increasingly competitive selection process at Pitt has reached regional students, who might once have considered Pitt a backup school.

“I hear a lot of good students in my class talk about how they’re afraid they won’t get into Pitt,” said Dominic Berardinelli, a Pitt applicant and high school senior at Franklin Regional.

The University credits the quality of undergraduate education as a major factor in the increase in top-ranked high school students, according to Ore.

There are even some students, accepted in previous years under less demanding standards, who wonder if they could get into Pitt now, under the school’s more competitive standards.

“If I had just graduated, I wouldn’t have gotten in,” said Jasmine Warner, a senior at Pitt. While Warner achieved A’s and B’s at her Philadelphia high school, her Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, scores might not have been good enough to get her into Pitt now.

“I took it (the SAT), and it barely added up,” Warner said, adding that she thinks Pitt’s rising standards will benefit the school’s reputation, but that she is concerned it will leave her pockets full of tuition bills and not cash.”She would’ve been saying, ‘You want fries with that?’,” Wynda Alexander, Warner’s friend, said jokingly. Alexander, a Pitt senior, added that she believes she would still be accepted at Pitt.

But some high school students looking at Pitt for the first time have a difficult time believing many Pitt seniors counted on the school as an easy acceptance.

“You think of Pitt as a really good school, with so many different options,” said Laura Bebko, another Franklin Regional senior who is applying to Pitt. “And to have a backup school like that? I just don’t know.”

Students who are interested in the sciences benefit from Pitt’s research facilities. The National Research Council, a national evaluator of academic programs, has ranked a number of Pitt programs among the tops of their fields.

Jennifer Dietrich, an incoming freshman, was in the top 10 percent of her class of more than 600 students. She chose Pitt’s engineering school as her No. 1 choice because of Pitt’s urban setting and many available options.

Pitt’s Medical Center also provides clinical learning opportunities for students interested in a health profession.

“I think that we will continue to build,” Ore said. “There is a powerhouse of energy here. If we continue to have good administration, we will continue to move forward.”