My Journey as an International Student at Pitt - Shruti Bhansali

Moving across the world for graduate school can be both exciting and overwhelming. In this post, I share my experiences as an international student—from the first few weeks of adjustment to discovering resources, building community, and learning the importance of self-care along the way.

The First Few Weeks: Finding My Footing

When I first arrived, I leaned heavily on my family here in the U.S. to guide me through everyday things—how things worked, what to expect, and how to adjust. At the same time, I stayed closely connected with my family back in India, speaking to them every day. That connection gave me comfort and stability during those first overwhelming weeks.

Building Community Through Student Organizations

One of the best decisions I made was reaching out to other international students. Talking to people who had gone through the same experience made me feel less alone. At Pitt, there are student organizations for students from many different countries. These groups are wonderful for finding a sense of belonging and for celebrating our cultures together. Cultural events not only keep traditions alive but also help us feel a little more at home, even when we’re far away.

Self-Care on Campus

Graduate school can feel stressful at times, so I quickly realized the importance of self-care. Starting grad school has helped me realize that self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate or time-consuming. It can simply be an activity that takes your mind off worry or anxiety. For me, that means a few minutes of meditation, working out, or even going for a walk. Just spending a few minutes on self-care can help reduce stress, prevent burnout, and build resilience.

Pitt’s campus makes it easy to explore different ways to unwind—whether that’s painting sessions, using the gym, joining workout classes, swimming, or trying yoga and meditation. Personally, I’ve found meditation and exercise to be my best tools for managing stress and staying focused. My advice to every new student is to find at least one activity that helps you recharge. And if you ever need additional support, the university and the School of Public Health have counselors available to talk to.

Resources for International Students

For specific guidance, the Office of International Services (OIS) is an incredible resource. Whether it’s about travel, maintaining your student status, or preparing for future work opportunities, the OIS staff are always ready to help. They also organize events and provide guides to help international students better understand American culture, food, language, and daily life.

After three years at Pitt, I’ve come to appreciate the huge adjustment that comes with moving to a new country. Everything—from lifestyle and traditions to social norms—can feel different at first. Talking to people who have been through it before, staying connected with family, and leaning on campus resources all made my transition much smoother. The program leadership have also been very understanding and supportive towards me, which has made a big difference in feeling supported as a student.

Looking back, the transition was never easy, but with the right support systems and a willingness to embrace new experiences, it becomes not just manageable—but incredibly rewarding.

Electives for a GC Student - Think Outside the (Boards) Box! - Rina Mahoney

As an alumna of Pitt’s MPH in Public Health Genetics program, I was thrilled when I found out I had matched to Pitt’s Genetic Counseling program. Not only did I get to return to a school that felt like home, but I also knew that given the overlap in the two programs’ curricula, I would have some room in my schedule to take electives. Ultimately, while much of our program curriculum is devoted to teaching us the things we need to know to pass the boards and to succeed in clinic, there are many other aspects of being a functioning genetic counselor that electives can help to cultivate.

My hope is that any future Pitt GC student who comes in to the program with existing graduate credits can use this list as a jumping-off point when thinking about what electives they might like to take. Or, perhaps this list can provide some elective inspiration to prospective GC students who are looking to round out their undergraduate educations.

Introduction to Community Health – BCHS 2554

If you’re thinking about applying to the Pitt GC Program, odds are that you have at least a casual interest in public health. For me, the most crucial aspect of any public health initiative is productively engaging and respecting the community where the program will take place. This course emphasized practical strategies for building trustworthiness with potential community partners and encouraged thoughtful reflection on what makes the populations with whom we are interested in working unique. We also read about many past and present examples of community-specific, participatory interventions. My favorite example was Freedom House, the first ever modern Emergency Medical Service in this country, which was run by Black Pittsburgh residents. The book detailing the story of Freedom House, American Sirens by Kevin Hazzard, should be required reading for any aspiring healthcare or public health professional. (Plus, the writing is phenomenal.) As a future genetic counselor, there may be times where I seek to engage different patient populations or expand services in different areas, and this course gave me some of the tools to think about how best to go about those endeavors collaboratively.

Introduction to R – EPIDEM 2186

I will be the first person to admit that I have no idea how computers work. Therefore, I have always felt a not-insignificant level of dread when I have to use any statistical software to do class assignments or research tasks. I decided to challenge myself and take a class in R to try to mitigate that dread, and this class did actually help! The professor started out very slowly, and I never felt like I was in over my head. I learned about objects, functions, packages, data cleaning and management, and even how to easily create publication-ready tables and figures. The course was very hands-on, and we practiced the things we learned each week in real-time. Genetic counselors are often involved in research projects, so it is nice to have at least some working knowledge of how the statistical software works in the background. I still prefer counseling over coding, but I now feel much more prepared to do the latter.

Genetic Conditions & Public Health Programs – HUGEN 2056

As someone with an MPH in Public Health Genetics, this course spoke directly to my soul. It covered both current public health genetics initiatives as well as the details of the genetic conditions that these initiatives address. Such initiatives covered included newborn screening, pharmacogenetics programs, and state cancer control plans. These lectures provided insight on where the patients we see as genetic counselors might first interface with genetics and why these programs are vital. The main assignments in this course were long-form presentations on different genetic conditions targeted to audiences of varying backgrounds. After preparing and delivering these presentations, I now feel quite comfortable with the conditions on which I presented (ask me anything about Long QT Syndrome, Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type 2, or Fabry Disease). I also feel more practiced at tailoring the information about a specific condition to a given audience. Genetic counselors share information not only with patients but also with other genetic counselors and other healthcare providers, so I felt that this practice in determining which pieces of information are most important to share and in delivering that information at the right level was invaluable. The presentations were also a great way to practice public speaking in a low-stakes environment, which is helpful in building confidence for the bigger presentations to come in my education and career.

Death & Dying – HHD 2023

Conversations that touch on death can be common in genetic counseling appointments, whether in talking to a patient about family members they have lost to cancer, discussing a person's pregnancy loss, or discussing how someone's genetic condition can increase the likelihood of an untimely death. I tend to get pretty emotional when talking about death, so I felt that it was important both to practice talking about death and to gain new perspectives on dying. This course covered many topics related to death, ranging from different cultures’ conceptualizations of death, death with dignity, and types of grief. Some of the most impactful assignments were those that encouraged us to reflect on our own relationships with death. We wrote our own obituaries and chronicled the significant losses we’ve experienced. These reflective assignments helped me think critically about what specific genetic counseling patient scenarios might bring up difficult feelings for me and open the door for countertransference. I know that the name of the course seems gloomy, but I really think the concepts covered will make me a better genetic counselor (and a better person). If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend watching some of the videos on the YouTube channel Ask a Mortician. We watched these videos a lot in class, and I found them quite approachable.

Overall, I feel very fortunate to have had the ability to take some of these less-traditional courses in tandem with my genetic counseling classes. Each provided practical skills, new perspectives, and opportunities for reflection. When searching for an elective next semester, I encourage you to think creatively about how each of your options might help you develop in a nonconventional way!

An Overview of Pitt GC’s First-Year Spring Curriculum - Brian Earle

If you’ve read my classmate Anna’s Fall Curriculum blog post from February, this format might seem familiar. I would encourage you to check out her post as well to get a sense of what the Fall half of the first year at Pitt GC is like. I’ll be giving my perspectives and thoughts about the courses from the first Spring of the program as shown on the right half of the image below:

 These courses are likely to change, and they have absolutely improved year-to-year based on student feedback. My perspectives represent what I thought of the courses when I took them in Spring 2025 as a non-dual degree student. I will yet again be leaving out genetics department seminar, clinical genetics case conference, and grand rounds for the sake of time, but they are relatively self-explanatory. I will also be leaving out Essentials of Public Health, which is a common class for most School of Public Health graduate students.

 Intervention Skills in Genetic Counseling (“Interventions”)

This course is like the sequel to Principles of GC from the Fall taught again by Pitt GC’s Jodie Vento and Dr. Robin Grubs, meaning it is one of two main genetic-counseling specific courses that students take in the Spring. It is divided into two sections: 1) prenatal genetic counseling and embryology and 2) genetic counseling theory, process, and psychosocial considerations.

In the prenatal module, topics included general reproduction and embryology (including embryo coloring pages!), teratogens, assisted reproductive technology, and prenatal genetic testing. These were taught by some of the wonderful prenatal genetic counselors from Magee Women's Hospital here in Pittsburgh, who really helped break down some of these complicated topics (as someone that has struggled with developmental biology in the past). There were multiple class days dedicated to clinical application practice problems, and I felt like this was when I felt my clinical application skills really start to grow. Some other impactful highlights were a guest lecture on perinatal supportive care/bereavement and a patient panel.

In the psychosocial module, we learned about counseling theories and psychosocial assessment. We also began building our toolbox of skills for specific parts of a genetic counseling session as well as psychosocial counseling skills for topics such as empathy, grief, coping, transference/countertransference, and delivering difficult news.

Assignments included part two of our genetic concept explanation assignment in which we were tasked with explaining complicated prenatal genetics topics in patient-friendly language both in writing and on video. We also wrote our first patient letter for an assignment, which has been such a useful experience to apply to real patient materials I have created during my first clinical rotation this summer. Lastly, we attended a support group of our choice and wrote a reflection of how that experience will inform our future career as a genetic counselor.

Cancer Genetic Counseling

Taught by Pitt GC’s Dr. Andrea Durst and many of the cancer genetic counselors around Pittsburgh, this is the other genetic counseling-specific Spring course. It focuses on the last of the three main genetic counseling specialties – cancer. The main cancer types related to genetic syndromes that we covered included breast, ovarian, pancreatic, gastrointestinal, endocrine, bone marrow failure/hematologic, and kidney. Some other interesting topics included learning about how to run many different types of cancer risk models, lectures on cancer management from physicians that work in the clinics we rotate in, and a lecture on somatic tumor testing. Overall, this course is fast-paced but full of useful information to take into your cancer rotation.

Chromosomes - Structure and Function (“Chromosomes”)

This course, co-taught by our department chair Dr. Quasar Padiath and Dr. F. Yesim Demirci, is essentially exactly what you think it would be; it’s everything you could want to know about chromosomes. This included chromosome structure, mitosis/meiosis, all the types of chromosome abnormalities with techniques to investigate and name them, imprinting disorders, sex chromosome differences, epigenetics, and cancer. There isn’t much to show from this class, as it was mostly traditional exams. However, enjoy this diagram I made with CyDAS, a website where you can create custom ideograms for any karyotype or derivative chromosome. This one shows a Robertsonian translocation between chromosomes 13 and 21, which represents one of the possible ways someone could have Down syndrome that isn’t caused by trisomy 21.

 

 

Ethical Issues in Genetic Counseling (“Ethics”)

This course was taught by Robin and Dr. Michael Deem, a bioethicist. As you could imagine, this class was mostly discussion based, with the only assignments being approximately-weekly quizzes about the readings. Some of these topics included informed consent, genetic screening, psychosocial and ethical aspects of genetic testing, disability studies, precision medicine/gene therapy, and consumer-driven genetic testing. My previous experience in bioethics and medical humanities in undergrad served as a great foundation to build these genetic-counseling specific considerations from. These conversations truly expanded my perspective about the role of genetic counselors and the broad ethical discussions that are taking place at the forefront of the field in which there is not often one simple answer.

Bioinformatic Resources for Geneticists (“Bioinformatics”)

Led by Dr. Kang-Hsien (Frank) Fan, this course reviewed online bioinformatics databases, tools, and resources that are useful for genetics researchers and clinicians. This class was full of self-led problem solving in exploring these databases to answer both research and clinical questions, ending with an in-class group assignment combining all the topics together. This class was invaluable in building my skills for researching genetic variants and conditions, which I have already applied to researching and disclosing results to patients in my first clinical rotation this summer. Some resources that have been incredibly useful for my clinical rotations include UCSC Genome Browser, OMIM, GeneReviews, ClinVar, and ClinGen, among many others. A UCSC Genome Browser search for the Sonic Hedgehog gene (SHH) is shown below:

Genetic Techniques

Our one wet lab course in the curriculum was taught by Drs. Zsolt Urban and Guillermo Rodiguez Bey, with some additional guest lecturers including experts at the UPMC cytogenetics lab. The highlight of this class was definitely being able to do G-banding and FISH (fluorescence in-situ hybridization) on our own blood samples over the course of a few weeks. As you can see below, the first image is a picture of my G-banded chromosomes (a karyotype), and the second image is FISH using fluorescent probes for my X chromosome (orange/pink) and my Y chromosome (green). Some other genetic techniques we used included PCR, gel electrophoresis, RT-qPCR, and sequencing. We also selected a genetics case study paper of our choice and presented it to each other at the end of the semester.

If you don’t have any lab experience before grad school this class might, understandably, feel a little intimidating at first. However, our professors were so supportive, and the class is more about the things you learn along the way than feeling like you have to get the expected result for every experiment. Our lab groups were made to have at least one person that had lab experience, so you’ll have your fellow students to support you as well. And if you do have some prior lab experience like I did, I’m sure you’ll get the chance to learn something new or try a new lab technique!

 

Special Studies (Simulations)

Lastly, we had our four patient simulations for the Spring semester throughout April. We have a patient simulation center associated with the Pitt Medical School that has fantastic simulated patient actors. Before our first simulation, we had a whole-session roleplay with our second year buddies, and program leadership helped us review our outlines for each simulation. For the first three simulations (one for each major GC speciality: pediatrics, prenatal, and cancer), we were split into two groups of six, and we traded off parts of the session in 15 minute sections while being moderated by a member of program leadership. The last simulation was a 20 minute genetic testing result disclosure session with each of us alone in the room. Simulations were admittedly scary at first. Looking back right after having done my simulated patient assessment at the end of my first clinical rotation, the set of simulations in the Spring were such a beneficial source of growth and confidence. These first simulations were when I started feeling some of the pieces of the puzzle coming together as I began doing parts of a session for real.

Conclusion

Hopefully this outline of the first Spring curriculum was informative! There are certainly more moving parts than the Fall (not to mention starting to narrow down your thesis topic in the Spring). But this is also the time where I started really feeling settled in the program and my confidence was growing as topics from all of the first-year courses began to connect together, which has translated well into setting me up for my first clinical rotation. I look forward to seeing how this foundation supports me throughout the rest of my rotations and second-year coursework.