<p>I'm just curious about the intensity of the work at UR. Does it allow for balance with social life? I hear UR being compared to Hopkins a lot, and i know Hopkins has a "herculean" workload, that kinda intimidates me. Is UR like that? I can take my work seriously, and i am ok spending a couple hours in the library a day working and studying, but i want to be able to have fun too. </p>
<p>Also, Greek Life. I hear it has a presence, but how dominating is that presence? If i dont go Greek, am i going to be missing out?</p>
<p>Depending on your majors your work load will vary. As a science major, I like to study for a couple of hours a day and I tend to do things during the day leaving the night pretty free. Plenty of time to be social.</p>
<p>As for balance and dominance, it is of choice. There are plenty of parties and greek life avaliable if you choose to do so. The regulation is your own. </p>
<p>If you don't go greek you won't be missing too much, I mean you can always attend the parties as a non member, there aren't that many closed parties and you can always get chummy with a brother or sister. Beside that, there are plenty of other things to do, you can search the forums or just look around UR's page. You can also ask me if you'd like.</p>
<p>my friends a BME major, has fun good social life, but at the same time he says BME is extremely demanding and flat out hard, and he has like a 2.8-3.0 gpa , so yes it largely depends on major</p>
<p>Poli sci is a different type of load demand.</p>
<p>Sciences, you have to study to get concepts and do homework and what not. </p>
<p>With poli sci you have to read up on history and understand legal precedeance. The majority of your grade in that major is based on papers you write. So if you enjoy writing and are talented at that while presenting an argument, I wouldn't imagine poli sci being too bad. My roommate was a poli sci major and got away with a 2.8 - 3.0 with a lecture attendance rate of...oh say...15%. And that's partying every other night and sleeping in until 3 PM. </p>
<p>As for Psych...I"m not terribly sure, everyone seems to have migrated over to BCS (Brain and cognitive science). I know BCS is really tough for sure, the major requirements and the information needed to get through is difficult. Oh BCS more or less includes psych, but puts a...idk...research functional spin on it. </p>
<p>For example, Psychology majors would study the responses people give with various stimuli, the theories of previous psycologists. It's almost more of a history course with relatievly simple scientific data. BCS is more of the biological understanding of how the mind works and how it applies to psychology and psychaitry. That sort of thing...</p>
<p>As an Econ major, I can tell you that there's a lot of history and fundamentals to get through, however relative to science the workload is substantially less. But at the same time could be equally if not more difficult depending on your personal abilities</p>
<p>hm....thats cool...thanks for the input. im kinda disappointed cuz im not very good at writing (i assume that my profs could help me), psych sounds really boring, and BCS sounds really hard. </p>
<p>crap...that doesn't make sense though a B? damn, i thought the academics here weren't THAT hard and that it was fairly balanced. Also even though its a research university, how math sciency is it? if im not a hardcore engineer or something like that are the academics on the less quantitative side of things still good?</p>
<p>I'm not saying im like a poet or anything, i figure i'd study like psych, or poli sci, or sociology or something like that, but so far i've been hearing some discouraging info about those majors, can anyone else speak to those?</p>
<p>I had Prof Landsburg for ECO207 and ECO 209 (I exempted out of the 100 level course with AP credit) and it was hard, but at the same time he was a great professor. I learned a ton about economics through him. Though his testing is rather harhs. </p>
<p>the other professor is a relatively new guy, he's good, and i think his tests are fairer, but you don't get as much insight or entertainment. </p>
<p>As for nvman1, it is a balanced school. It just depends on what you do. It evens out in the end. Like sciences will get easier after the intro courses. POli sci depends on prof a lot. Phil depends on prof a lot. </p>
<p><em>scratches head</em> it really depends on prof, but the general trends are, it's fair grading, but you can't expect to skip every class and do ok in it. Also essay writing in poli sci is more for content than for structure like the actual writing courses. So I think you can get away with only having a half decent writing ability. Although CAS105 is the worst possible course at the university. I have a friend who's an exceptional writer and got a C in the class. </p>
<p>Hi, I saw this thread and was going to post a response, but instead I have another question. I live in Rochester...Irondequoit to be more exact. I was looking at statistics from previous years from my high school, and it seems like the acceptance rates from my school are a lot better than I've heard from most people. I don't know if this is normal, but for such a prestigious and selective school that a lot of people are rejected from, it seemed weird that people with 91-92% GPAs and 1200's on the SATs have been getting in. Are those stats sufficient? Or is it something about my high school (proximity to the U of R/its academic record)...?</p>
<p>as a student from Webster I kind of know what you mean. I think with local schools UR is trying to encourage locals to stay in rochester, get their education and hopefully persue a job here as well. So for those who apply to UR there's a more favorable view.</p>
<p>However, there also happens to be a socioeconomical benifit for UR to take students from Irondequit. It boosts their statistics on favoring minorities and those with lower economic status. </p>
<p>I always make fun of harvard for accepting the very rich and the very poor to balance their statistics and claim that they have a diverse population when they really just pull from both ends of the spectrum and pretend that they have middle class people at harvard. </p>
<p>Although for both Harvard and UR, that's just what I hear and is not policy anywhere. </p>
<p>Don't worry about individual high school stats. First off it's just as important if you have alumni from your HS that went to UR as it is your own grade and what not. Like...only one person in the recent history of Webster has gone to harvard, and no one has since then. BUT we had 4 kids get into Caltech, 5 into MIT. So we have the same (if not better) caliber students, but we just don't have teh alumni connections like Brighton or Pittsford. </p>
<p>First, U of R isn't very prestigious compared with other elite schools.
Second, as I know, U of R doesn't weigh SAT as much as you assume. So long as you have decent grades, plus good essays and rec., you would be fine</p>
<p>thats nice to hear
my SATs aren't the greatest (1980), neither is my GPA (B+ish avg, im not sure what that translates to), but i figured since i go to a really really tough private school in dc they might take that into account. i played two varsity sports, one for four years, the other for three. And i do community service, i tutor kids every monday and im going to new orleans this summer. do you think im still ok?</p>
<p>UR is a semi pristigious school. We turned down becoming ivy back in the day. Or so a story goes told by someone. </p>
<p>CAS is the required writing program. The college's only required course is CAS 105 which is "Writing for college." however most majors have an upper level writing that is specific to majors, usually it ends up being a seminar course with a paper in it. </p>
<p>if your math and verbal sections are good on teh SAT's then your ok. the writing sections means nothing to the UR. they're not looking at it until good statistics come out. You have a competative resume. Albeit grades could be higher, but I was around there as well (A borderline A-). They reweight GPA based on your courses too so don't worry about if your GPA was low because you pushed yourself with hard classes (like AP's or IB's.)</p>
<p><em>nostalgic smile about college admissions</em> thank god im done that. at least till grad school rolls around.</p>
<p>as for low SAT's et al, there are always exceptions. there are 1200's getting into harvard as well (like 2, im sure, but that's not the point). as the multitude of people who have advised me on college admissions always say, it's the overall student that matters (which is a pity - just SAT scores and grades would have suited me a lot better)</p>
<p>I would like to know the grading system there too--is there alot of deflation? </p>
<p>dltprm, as for Econ, you mentioned it is pretty harsh grading . Is this true for most econ professors? Do they tend to grade down? What are the average grades? Do they curve? Are most grades based TESTS only or is there alot of homework too? Secondly, what about the Calculus requirements? What are the average grades? </p>
<p>Sorry about all the questions. I just got accepted as a transfer and I really want to know an econ major's perspective. Thanks so much!</p>
<p>Haha, no problem. you can IM any time too when i'm online (S/n: dltprm)</p>
<p>The grading isn't harsh. there isn't that much deflation either. I think the grading is quite fair. Professors recognize when they test too hard and they do curve based on what they think is unfair. </p>
<p>with econ, to be honost I've only had one prof so far and that's landsburg. I made sure to take his class again. I didn't relaly think it was unfair at any point. It's just the way of thinking that I had to get over.</p>
<p>as for grade wise, most of my courses are "test-based" grading. In Econ I had weekly homework and a recitation. but the homework wasn't graded. Though he had this policiy where your homework would move you up a letter grade if you were on the border line if you did it consistantly and thuroughly. </p>
<p>As for Calculus, practically all majors require the first two levels (regardless of difficulty). Whether that would be 141-142,161-162,171-172. That goes for econ as well. </p>
<p>UR's econ program can be simply broken down to "theory first then math" I actually am a big fan of this becuase if you don't get the concepts underlying the mathamatical analysis, then you can never really apply it. So with UR's econ the first 3 courses (108, 207, 209 [intro, Micro, macro]) are theoretical courses followed by Eco stats (230) and Econometrics (231W). </p>
<p>The average grade in Landsburg Econ class is pretty much picture perfect bell curve without the curve. Very few A's, very few people failing, and a big wallop of people who get 3 /5 questions right on a test (myself included).</p>
<p>Feel free to get in touch with me if you need more info / i forgot something</p>