What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$14,709 to $36,008 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $38,105 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $20,258.Aid and debt
39%
receive need-based grants
$40,791
average debt at graduation
1,372
students got merit aid
about 6% of undergraduates
$7,435
average merit award
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% by section: Reading 650–720 · Math 630–730. No combined range is published.
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 29–33 · 8% of the class submitted
40% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- Personal essay
- Important
- Special talent
- Character
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
- Considered
- Class rank
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- First-gen status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Not considered
- Legacy status
What this means for you
Pitt rates course rigor and your essay as Very Important, and demonstrated interest as Important.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. And showing genuine engagement with this school may help your application.
Pitt rates demonstrated interest 'Important' — real weight in the decision.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Pitt just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Pitt essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
36.3% of Pitt classes have fewer than 20 students.
36.3%
under 20 students
45.8%
20 to 49
17.9%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Pitt CDS 2025–26, I-3.
14:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
44%
live on campus
9%
of men in fraternities
12%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White60.4%
- Asian15.3%
- Hispanic7.3%
- Black5.2%
- Multiracial5%
- Unknown / other3%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Pitt CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
71.8% of Pitt students graduate in 4 years.
71.8%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
85.8%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
92.5%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
80.4% finish in 6 years, against 85.8% of all students.
A 5.4-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
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.
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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.
The City
Major city
Pittsburgh, PA
Best For
Notable alumni
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.
Traditions
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 from Pittsburgh
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 and game days
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
Internships and jobs nearby
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
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 59.5% of demonstrated need, leaving its borrowers with $40,791 on average.