Pitt Pays You Back, Says The Princeton Review

Issue Date: 
February 9, 2015

The University of Pittsburgh is profiled in Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Best Value Colleges and What It Takes to Get In—2015 Edition, published Feb. 3 by The Princeton Review. The book and online resource are guides to the nation’s academically best and most affordable colleges that also have excellent records of alumni employment.

“The University of Pittsburgh continues to draw top students who are ready to embrace academic challenges and meaningful learning experiences both inside and outside classrooms,” said Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher. “The value of a Pitt education prepares students for futures of high impact.”   

The Princeton Review selected the “best value” schools by measuring 40 weighted data points: everything from academics, cost, financial aid, and student debt to statistics on graduation rates, alumni salaries, and job satisfaction. The company used data collected in 2013-14 from its surveys of administrators and students at 650 colleges, plus surveys conducted by PayScale.com through April 2014 of alumni of the same schools.

The Princeton Review’s profile of Pitt praises the University as an “academic powerhouse” and includes comments from student surveys: 

A few of the most common words students at The University of Pittsburgh use to describe their alma mater are: “value,” “research,” “academics,” and “home.”

When asked to summarize their school, many students simply state “hail to Pitt!” And hail they certainly do!

“Pitt is one of the best schools to help students with experiential learning, whether it be through an internship, research experience, or even service learning experience.” 

Many also extol Pittsburgh itself as a hotbed of “career opportunities.”

The 2015 “Colleges That Pay You Back” project is an expansion of The Princeton Review’s annual “Best Value Colleges” list and book first published in 2004. The Princeton Review is an academic tutoring, test preparation, and college admission services company.