<p>Status: Accepted student at both colleges. </p>
<p>Major: Eco or Biz most possibly, although I’m pretty undecided.</p>
<p>Preferences:
-Student body: Are students nice?
-Location: How are the locations of both schools? I personally dont really like big cities, but also not a big fan of urban area. I just hate driving half an hour to a supermarket or something like that. And since I am not expecting to get a car in freshmen year, I do hope around the school it has really good public transportation system.
Socially: I love doing volunteers. Do both schools have strong community service involved? What about the party scenes?
Academically: which school has a better undergraduate biz program? I know the one at Brandeis is just newly set-up, or wasnt? I wonder if Rochester does have a better biz program than Brandeis does.
The costs: would the living cost around Boston much higher than that in Rochester？
Many thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I am not a current student at either but I have lived in both cities recently. Location: Brandeis has the obvious advantage of being near a big city, but being far enough away that you don’t really live in a city and you have a small campus. Rochester you are not really in a city. It is a city, but there are no sky scrapers like Boston and the city of Rochester is not considered to be a nice place. Within the Rochester campus though, it is a pretty nice place and you don’t really experience the city.
Not sure about Rochester business undergrad but Rochester’s business school, the Simon School, is one of the best business schools in the country, but for grad school.
Living in Rochester will cost significantly less than Boston. New York State does have very high taxes (sales tax, etc.) but still you will spend much less on everyday things in Rochester than you will in Boston.
Rochester has no public transportation. At all. Boston does. The University of Rochester may have busses, but in 15+ years of living in Rochester I have never seen one, and there are no subways or public busses. Obviously Boston has a very good public transport system, though I’m not sure about the University’s transport.</p>
<p>I did a summer program at Rochester, and will apply there next year. (I am also looking at Brandeis, so any comments on it would be great.) It’s true that there are some buses at Rochester to get to different parts of the campus and around the city, but I agree that there are very few. But I live around Rochester, and we are ALWAYS seeing things in the paper about the ways U of R students get involved. Recently there was a MLK day article. And also I know that for orientation the freshmen all do ton of stuff to get to know each other, including some big volunteering projects.</p>
<p>If you can , spend a day at each school and try to get the feel of them. I’ve known kids with this choice and it’s about 50/50 as to which they pick.</p>
<p>I have a child who has applied to both of these, as well as some others. I am curious about the comments regarding the city of Rochester. I was actually quite impressed. Certainly not Boston by any stretch, but did seem to have some culture with theater and a music scene and it’s an attractive city. I’ve noticed that the city has fared well in liveability rankings and is considered to have an educated population and good standard of living. In other words, are the old stereotypes about Rochester really fair? U of R seems like an exceptional, under-the-radar school.</p>
<p>Rochester suburbs are great. Very educated people in the suburbs. Some nice places in the city, but the city has a very high crime rate and has many really crummy areas. Campus and suburbs are wonderful places. Rochester gets its reputation from the suburbs.</p>
<p>That guy posted in may 12, 2012. That’s a long time ago, so I’m sure he’s decided his college by now. I doubt he’s checking this thread anymore.</p>