<p>Hi, </p>
<p>I'm a sophomore at the University of Rochester and from personal experaince I can say that UR was probobly the best choice I made. </p>
<p>As a background, I turned down Carnegie Mellon and Cornell to come to UR. </p>
<p>The academic atmosphere at UR is sort of a friendly competition. At UR classes are designed to get students to teach students and learn from each other's mistakes and strengths. Professors are very accessible and a lot of them you can e-mail questions at all hours of the day and get a response pretty quickly. </p>
<p>A quick little anecdote, I was studying with a friend for a big test in Biology and we could not get this concept down. It was 1AM and we e-mailed one of the professors thinking "Might as well write him now and check tommorwo morning for the answer." Well, 20 minutes later we get a response from him. Though the answer we got didn't really help, it was good to know that he didn't seem to really mind. I'm not the only one who had that experiance with professors at UR.</p>
<p>As for general resources, there are plenty of academic support and college life can be as fun as you want to make it at UR. Frat/Sor have parties pretty frequetnly if you're into that sort of thing.</p>
<p>But judging by the fact that you're looking at the REMS program I would imagine you wouldn't want to do that constnatly. hehe. </p>
<p>Now as for REMS. The students who get in are usually extremely motivated toward medicine and really are set for it. They're usually very confident with themselves, hard working, good students in high school, and have a extremely well rounded application to present. As a statistical note the average number of students who get into REMS is about 9 people. </p>
<p>You must also remember that if you do get into REMS you are going to go to the UR medical school which is a very highly accredited medical school with wonderful resources at your disposal. Strong memorial hospitol is one the nations leading research hospitol, it's the Upstate new york regional hospitol for children, trauma, psych, cardiology...etc. Reserach opportunities at UR are very common as well. </p>
<p>In short I guess, is it's definatly worth rejecting an Ivy over. Unless you get into an IVy with a similar program. But not many Ivy's have it. Also you have remember you don't have to take the MCAT's if you get into REMS and you can study a subject that may interest you more than biology. Though you still have to take the core pre-med courses, you can major in other things like English, economics, or even music! So it gives you more freedom to persue other fields and expand your own understanding without worrying about the stresses of applying to medical school (it's like applying to college but worse).</p>
<p>Good luck with the applications and what not. if you need any other specific information you can call UR's admission. But I would really recommend coming to UR for a visit.</p>