As most of my readers should know, I attend the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Everyone asks me if I'm planning on transferring to Pitt's main campus before I graduate, and I always give them a hard no. "No, I just don't think Pitt Main is for me." And that is always met with disbelief. "But why? Wouldn't you have more opportunities at the main campus? Wouldn't being in the city and getting away from home be better?"
Sorry, but I respectfully disagree.
Pitt-Johnstown might not be for everybody - I know a lot of people who couldn't imagine going to a school like mine - but it's right for me for a wide variety of reasons.
The class sizes.
Pitt-Johnstown's enrollment is about 3,000 students, according to their website. Pitt Main, on the other hand, has about 24,000 undergraduate students currently enrolled (not counting graduate students!). When you go to school with just a couple thousand students as opposed to tens of thousands of students, your class sizes tend to be very small. Pitt-Johnstown prides itself on having very few lecture style classes (a student might have one or two over the course of their college career), and our average class size is 24 students. This means that you have an opportunity to personally get to know every student in all of your classes, which is a great networking opportunity and helps make your college experience better.
The professors.
Most of my friends at big schools have never spoken to a lot of their professors, only their TAs. At Pitt-Johnstown, I love knowing that I can walk into my professor's office during their office hours and get to talk to them about my homework or our upcoming exam, not their TA. My professors all know me by name, and they know how to help me succeed in their class when I'm struggling. Knowing your professors personally can also open the doors to job leads and scholarship information that you might not have heard about on your own.
The campus size.
For me, the size of the physical campus is important. I went to a small school in a small town (born and raisd right here in Johnstown, PA), so while I love visiting cities, they can be too much for me for long periods of time. I toured at Pitt's main campus and at Penn State, and I found the massive campuses to be very overwhelming. I love Pitt-Johnstown, where I'm never farther than ten minutes from any of the academic buildings or residence halls. I'm a notoriously lazy person (I know, shame on me, right?), and I love that I don't have to walk very far to get to any of my classes or to my car at the end of the day.
Safety.
I feel much safer at Pitt-Johnstown than I would at a larger campus. Because the campus itself is so much smaller, you're never outside at night for longer than ten minutes, and you're always walking right past a building that has people in it. Campus police are also faster to respond to a call because there are fewer calls coming in because of the small number of students.
Scholarship opportunities, financial aid, and tuition.
Everyone's favorite words. Pitt-Johnstown tends to give more scholarships because fewer people are applying here. That, combined with tuition being much, much lower than a bigger school's, makes a smaller school a much cheaper option, while still giving you a quality education (Our diplomas are the same as Pitt Main's!).
Location, location, location!
Pitt-Johnstown is located in prime real estate in Johnstown. The campus itself is covered in trees and forests, making it a great rural escape for anybody who enjoys nature (read: everybody ever). Seeing Pitt-Johnstown in the fall will make anyone fall in love with the campus. But even though we're surrounded by woods, five minutes down the road is a shopping complex with a Walmart and other stores, and ten minutes from campus is the mall. You get the best of everything Johnstown has to offer in a short distance from campus. And Pitt-Johnstown is a public bus stop, so you don't even need a car to get to all of these places! If you venture a little farther from campus, you'll find yourself downtown, where you can walk through Central Park or check out the Johnstown Flood Museum.
A small school certainly isn't for everybody, just like a big school isn't for everybody. For me, my school was and is a perfect fit. Pitt-Johnstown feels like home to me every time I step foot onto campus, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
