The University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Campus

My time at the University of Pittsburgh has been the biggest waste of my life. The classes are horrendously boring and everyone is awful. Every building on campus smells like road kill and feces. Everyone tries so hard to be preppy and there are no hipsters anywhere. If you're someone with good fashion taste, DON'T go here!! My professors were horrible people who deserve to rot in hell. Every other student I encountered was ugly, and there's onions in all of the campus food!

1st Year Male -- Class 2018

LOW QUALITY UNIVERSITY.
Lecturers seem to be "researchers first, lecturers second". Some lecturers are pretty good, but most of them are absolutely terrible. Some stand there and read off slides, and then can't answer questions in class without fumbling over the question for at least 5 minutes. Some just can NOT speak English. Most classes are worthless: in some classes I probably could have gotten by just reading the textbook and doing the assigned work, and never even attending class; in fact, I've gone to entire courses never paying attention to the lecturer at all and gotten decent grades. I'm still not sure why I went to those classes.

Speaking of textbooks, most of the required textbooks are the newest, most expensive edition, while reviews on amazon and elsewhere for these books are very poor. It seems Pitt has partnerships and doesn't care much for the quality of your education - as long as you pay them money, they don't care. For example: one of the books listed as 'required' for me for a class starting one month from now is the 10th edition of a book that currently only has 9 editions, and the 9th edition got terrible reviews on amazon ("Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists" by Walpole).

The course content seems passable, at best. It's not amazing or anything. My friends who went to Case, Penn State, and CMU seem to have come out with much more knowledge than I did from their curriculum. There are very obvious holes in the computer engineering curriculum. Students are taught things like Java and C, which is fine for 2000's era "enterprisey" businesses, but aren't taught newer languages like Python or Ruby; web technology isn't required, databases aren't required, security isn't required, and I'm not sure if we even offer anything related to functional programming (not even LISP, which seems to be REQUIRED, FIRST SEMESTER for any computer science major elsewhere), no mention of design patterns. In fact, to me, it seems like I didn't learn either computer science theory OR the "engineering" side of computer engineering. It seems like I just learned a bunch of basic topics in computer technology.

Dorms are good; apartments around Oakland are generally shady as ****. I generally don't feel safe in South Oakland at night. School cafeteria is mediocre at best. Peers are generally very friendly - I had a lot of fun in the marching band. Some places on campus are beautiful, once you get past Pitt's awful Brutalist architecture. Overall, especially for computer engineers: go somewhere else if you can. Pitt should probably be a "backup school" for you.

4th Year Male -- Class 2014

Social Life: A+, Innovation: D-

I'm a freshman at Pitt having nearly completed my first semester here and I hate it. It's a good school with really strong academics, but it's just not the place for me. I thought i'd like it because everyone said they had a good experience here, and it's right by a city, but I was wrong. the campus is nice in fall but it's miserable in the cold. I prefer being sober during the week and going to class because on the weekends it's awful house parties and frat parties, if we're lucky. I rushed but dropped out because it wasn't for me, and i wish i stayed with it and joined a sorority. They lie when they say Greek Life doesn't have a huge presence on campus-- if you're underage and non-greek, weekends are boring while you try to desperately find a boring party. it's a state school and i'm from new jersey, so people here are all very close minded and simple. i appreciate the music scene here and i've met some cool people, but this school is just not the right fit for me. if you're into sweaty, sub-par house parties and sports, this is the place for you. it's a very big school so i feel very lonely, and am unsure why i picked such an ugly campus when I love nature. I'm hoping to transfer.

1st Year Female -- Class 2017

Faculty Accessibility: B, Campus Aesthetics: F