At a Glance
Pitt admits 59.4% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
What families actually pay, by income level
After grants and scholarships. Before loans. Public school prices shown at in-state rates.
Source: College Scorecard / IPEDS, 2024-25
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Based on average need-based grant. Actual cost varies by family income — see chart above.
Shown at in-state rates.
Debt at Graduation
39%
receive need-based grant aid
$40,791
average debt at graduation
Pitt graduates carry an average of $40,791 in debt.
Merit Aid
1,372
students received merit aid
$7,435
average merit award
Getting In
Pitt admits 59.4% of applicants.
This school reports SAT section scores but leaves the composite range blank, so there is no mid-50% band to chart.
Mid-50% by section: Reading 650–720 · Math 630–730.
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 8% of the class submitted
40% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
University of Pittsburgh rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Important — showing genuine engagement with this school may help your application.
Student Life
36.3% of Pitt classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At Pitt, 36.3% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
14:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
44%
Men in fraternities
9%
Women in sororities
12%
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
Pitt's student body is 60.4% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
Pitt graduates 71.8% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
Pitt graduates 71.8% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
Pitt
71.8%
4-yr grad rate
Extra year cost: $38,105*
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
85.8%
Overall 6-yr rate
80.4%
Pell recipient rate
There's a 5.4 point gap between overall and Pell Grant graduation rates. Worth asking the school about support resources.
Freshman Retention
92.5%
92.5% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Pittsburgh.
Pitt has no perimeter — the campus is simply part of Oakland, the dense district three miles east of downtown that also holds UPMC's hospitals, Carnegie Mellon, the Carnegie Museums and Schenley Park. That means a student's daily life looks more like living in a city neighborhood than living on a campus: apartments and restaurants sit between academic buildings, buses run everywhere, and a car is unnecessary. Pittsburgh itself is a mid-sized city that got cheap and interesting at the same time, rebuilt around health care, robotics and universities after the steel industry left. The trade-off is that there is no quad-and-lawn version of college here, and winters are long and grey.
Notable Alumni
Wangari Maathai
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement, who earned a master's in biological sciences at Pitt before returning to Nairobi.
Class of 1966
Gene Kelly
Dancer, actor and director behind Singin' in the Rain, who studied economics at Pitt while teaching dance in Pittsburgh.
Class of 1933
Michael Chabon
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, whose first novel grew out of the writing he did as an English major here.
Class of 1984
Dan Marino
Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, a Pittsburgh native who played his college football at Pitt before seventeen seasons with the Miami Dolphins.
Class of 1983
Jonas Salk
Developed the first effective polio vaccine in a Pitt laboratory in the early 1950s, as a member of the university's medical faculty rather than as an alumnus.
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
Major city
Pittsburgh, PA
Best For
Traditions
The Victory Lights
After a Panthers win, the top of the 42-story Cathedral of Learning is floodlit in gold with a blue beam shooting straight up — visible from most of the city, so the whole of Pittsburgh finds out the result.
Studying in the Commons Room
The Cathedral of Learning's ground floor is a four-story Gothic hall of stone arches built without steel supports, used as an ordinary student study space. It is the most photographed room on campus and students work in it every day.
The Nationality Rooms
Thirty working classrooms inside the Cathedral, each designed and funded by one of Pittsburgh's immigrant communities to represent its homeland. Classes are genuinely taught in them, and they draw tens of thousands of visitors a year — especially in December, when each room is decorated for its own holiday traditions.
Pitt Make A Difference Day
The university's largest day of service, when thousands of students fan out into Pittsburgh neighborhoods for a single Saturday of volunteer work each fall.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Pittsburgh
Ohiopyle State Park
1.5 hoursWhitewater on the Youghiogheny River, waterfalls and miles of trail in the Laurel Highlands — the standard Pittsburgh outdoor day trip.
Fallingwater
1.5 hoursFrank Lloyd Wright's house built over a waterfall, a UNESCO World Heritage site, close enough to pair with Ohiopyle in one day.
Seven Springs and the Laurel Highlands
1.5 hoursThe nearest downhill skiing and snowboarding, which matters in a city with a long winter.
Cleveland, OH
2 hoursThe closest other big city, with its own museums, lakefront and pro sports.
Washington, DC
4 hoursFar enough to be a long-weekend trip rather than a day out, but the nearest major East Coast hub.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT)
35 minutes from campus
Flies international — you can start a trip abroad from here.
Pro sports nearby
- Pittsburgh Steelers NFL
- Pittsburgh Penguins NHL
- Pittsburgh Pirates MLB
Career Proximity
Pitt's biggest career advantage is physical: UPMC, the largest non-government employer in western Pennsylvania at more than 63,000 people, runs its flagship hospitals on the same handful of blocks as the campus, so clinical and research placements are a walk rather than a commute. The city's second engine is technology — Pittsburgh's robotics and AI sector grew out of the universities here and now includes large Google and Duolingo offices along with a dense layer of autonomy and robotics companies. Finance and corporate headquarters sit downtown, three miles and a bus ride away.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- UPMC
- Highmark Health
- Duolingo
- PNC Financial Services
Downtown Pittsburgh — about 10 minutes by bus; the campus itself sits inside the city's largest employment district
Who Thrives Here
Pitt's campus has no gates and barely any edges — it runs straight into Oakland, the neighborhood it shares with UPMC's hospitals, Carnegie Mellon and the Carnegie museums — and 44% of undergraduates live in college housing, so a large share of students end up renting a few blocks away and treating the neighborhood as campus. Greek life is a minority pursuit here, drawing 9% of men and 12% of women, which puts the social centre of gravity in the city rather than a chapter house: good for a student who wants a foothold in a real place, thin for one who wants campus to hand them a ready-made crowd. The academics track the hospitals next door — biology at 11.8% of bachelor's degrees, psychology at 10.9%, engineering at 10.5% and the health professions at 10.2% together outweigh business at 12.5% — though class sizes are ordinary for a public this size, with 36.3% of sections enrolling under 20 students at a 14:1 ratio. Outcomes are solid rather than spectacular: 92.5% of first-years return, 71.8% finish in four years and 85.8% in six, and Pell recipients finish at 80.4% — a gap of about five points rather than the ten you see at some big publics. Cost is where Pitt asks the most of a family. In-state tuition and fees run $23,746 — steep for a public — and the school meets 58.2% of demonstrated need, leaving its borrowers with $40,791 on average.