Pitt facilities are subpar.
I mean, I'll admit that the beige flooring needs to go and an area of the perio department still has wallpaper borders, but that's not something that's going to play into your clinical experience at all. Calling a school subpar based on an interview-day tour from over a year ago is rubbish. Pitt is an excellent school.
OP, don't let them scare you. I'm a third year at Pitt and if I had to go back, I'd choose Pitt again without hesitation. The facilities there are absolutely fine in terms of dentistry requirements and I haven't noticed anything lacking. Sim clinic's well taken care of, well stocked, and well utilized for your first and second year. We have phenomenal faculty and they do an exceptionally good job of preparing you for boards, which you'll take the August after your first year. My class had a 100% pass rate on the first go and most people only studied for 1-2 weeks before taking them. They start exposing you to clinic from day 1 and try as hard as they can to ease you in and support you at every step of the way.
Once you get to clinic, there's plenty of chairs, the clinic's constantly being cleaned (facilities staff rotates through multiple times a day), the dispensaries are stocked, staffed with extremely helpful personnel, and are easily accessible. If something breaks, it's fixed pretty much instantly or as soon as parts are in. Again, the faculty are phenomenal. I love my team leader and prosth faculty to bits. They'll help you out in any way that they can.
My only complaint about the building itself would honestly be that the prosth lab is overcrowded at times, but they've mentioned that they're planning on expanding that within the next year or so, so it's kind of a non-issue. Cafeteria and gym are literally next door (and the cafeteria food is actually awesome. They serve pretty legit cannolis. How awesome is that?), plenty of study space (including that brand new atrium), most lectures are recorded with the exception of a few professors who're still a little dodgy on the whole Cloud concept.
In addition to planning for a new undergrad prosth lab, they've also gone in within the past year and redone all of the computer labs w/ new computers (they just reopened a few weeks ago), 1/2 of the first floor (front entrance, patient waiting area, financial counselling office), patient registration, opened up a new atrium, multi-floored research wing, study area, and coffee shop, and redone the main lecture hall. Clinics are slotted to be freshened up over the coming winter holiday.
In terms of specialization, I think Pitt does a good job. I don't know placement numbers, but they have you rotate through all of the departments 2-3+ times during your third year and most departments are happy to see properly attired and respectful D1 and D2 students coming in during their spare time to shadow. The perio, prosth, ortho, and anesthesia departments in particular are always thrilled to hear that someone's interested in specializing and faculty there will go out of their way to discuss their specialty, introduce you to the staff and residents of their department, and many will offer advice on the application process/how to be a competitive applicant.
Selectives options are offered for most departments starting third year, which allow you to use up a clinic slot once a week to go to that specialty's department and get some additional experience and exposure. If clinically oriented selectives aren't your style, many of the departments will offer didactic selectives, research opportunities, or independent study sessions. The school itself is also very good about accommodating externships and will help you to schedule your course/clinic responsibilities around any absences.
If you have any questions about the school, let me know. I'd be happy to talk about my experiences here and answer any questions you may have.
