<p>I am trying to help several families with 2011 hs students with their college search. University of Rochester has come up, but I don't know much about it. I am originally from NY but have been in Colorado for many years. </p>
<p>Any chance there are parents or students willing to offer some comparsions or contrasts with any of these colleges I know? </p>
<ul>
<li>Clarkson (me, BMSE 1984)</li>
<li>Syracuse (my #2 choice in 1980)</li>
<li>Case (my #3 choice in 1980) </li>
<li><p>SUNY Bingamton (I lived nearby, took grad Eng courses)</p></li>
<li><p>WPI (a friend's college)</p></li>
<li><p>University of RI (a friend's college) </p></li>
<li><p>UMass (a friend's college)</p></li>
<li><p>Ithaca (a friend's college)</p></li>
<li><p>RIT (past co-ops at work) </p></li>
<li><p>Northeastern (son is a Freshman Eng student) </p></li>
<li><p>CU Boulder, CO School of Mines, Mudd/Claremont colleges, RPI, Carnegie Mellon</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I’m not going to address a list of colleges & universities but I can talk about why my daughter chose UR and why she’s happy there as a freshman. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>It’s a serious school filled with relatively normal people who balance work and play. She contrasts UR with a large college she recently visited to see a friend. Her note was that only her friend did any work during her stay, while kids at UR will work and then play. UR is an academic school.</p></li>
<li><p>UR seems to select, both through admissions and then self-selection by kids, a type of kid who wants to pursue learning. My daughter is sending me lists of classes she’s interested in and tells me she’s not alone in thinking about where her interests lie and what to take. Part of this is the curriculum, because it almost eliminates required classes by having only a major and then cluster requirements, meaning you take related bunches of 3 classes. </p></li>
<li><p>She likes being in a city rather than nowhere but with a self-contained campus that has a very traditional look and feel. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>That said, I live in Boston and, with respect, UR is a better school than Northeastern. I know lots of kids there and a bunch of professors and say that with a high degree of assurance. In very rough terms, UR is similar in quality to Carnegie Mellon. Some of my family has gone to the Claremont Colleges. I would say UR is more like Pomona in quality - but of course larger and not as difficult to get into. (I sometimes wonder about the weather effect because Pasadena is boring but warm.)</p>
<p>Some of the schools on the list are speciality schools, notably WPI. Nice school, very narrow range. If it fits, then great. I would not compare UR to URI, UMass or any of the public universities in NE. </p>
<p>Engineering schools vary in focus. Penn State, for example, gets lots of money for civil engineering and mining, while BU gets lots for biomed. It’s important to connect the kid with the focus. I’ve posted before that numbers about engineering schools, from faculty and degrees by area to funding, are collected by asee.org and are available for free on their website, buried in the publications tab.</p>
<p>As a fellow Bostonian, do you agree that UR is kinda like Tufts? Both smallish univerisities with big medical schools and specialty schools (vet for Tufts, Eastman for UR), both are battling for high quality students but often lose them to the ivies?</p>
<p>Yes. Tufts is more “prestigious” among students, if only because of location and it gets a lot of applications because of that and its clearly direct role as a 2nd choice to the NE Ivies. The schools are not only the same size but have similar sized endowments and roughly similar research funding totals (with UR getting more). Another academic comparison is Washington University, which is much larger but whose numbers are directly in scale with both UR and Tufts. </p>
<p>UR lacks a law school and that hurts its name recognition among pre-professional kids.</p>
<p>S2 was accepted there last year. Liked it (IR/polisci) and felt he had a decent shot at acceptance and merit $$. True on both accounts. They do like IB kids, and give merit $$ for full diploma students, so S viewed it as a fairly likely admit at a smaller school than the flagship. He was a little concerned about its rep largely as a science/music school vs. what he wanted to study.</p>
<p>A student I helped with apps last year was invited to attend the GEAR interview (five-year BS/MS Engineering) and called to ask about finding a place to stay on campus. Was told people usually got hotels and they didn’t think they could accommodate the student on campus (had to be there for an 8:30 Monday am interview.) Wanted to get the FA award before committing to traveling there in March and got all kinds of flak, though the student ultimately did get it. It was SIGNIFICANTLY lower than that of comparable schools (so was our FA award). When the student called FA to discuss it, the rep acted like the student was insulting the school.</p>
<p>The student withdrew the acceptance without making the trip for the GEAR interview.</p>
<p>If the point is that UR offered less money, that happens to families at any school; some families find they get less and some more. You can drop into any conversation at any school with active posting and find people happy about their award and people unhappy. No school can do everything for everyone.</p>
<p>The Rochester rep came to our high school every year and I liked what I heard. Seems to me somewhat Tufts-like, but perhaps slightly stronger in science. No gen ed or language requirements. The one thing we really remember is that they “really, really, really, really, really” (yup 5 of them!) like you to interview. It came up as a “New Ivy” in a Newsweek article a few years back. And this of course is rather cool: [Take</a> Five Scholars Program : Center for Academic Support](<a href=“http://www.rochester.edu/college/ccas/TakeFive/]Take”>http://www.rochester.edu/college/ccas/TakeFive/)</p>
<p>WPI is tiny. (Though there is a five college cross registration possiblity in Worcester.) Very cute. Happy students. Very techie. The town doesn’t have much to offer at all. I got the impression that there fewer out of state students than other colleges we looked at (RPI, CMU for ex).</p>
<p>WPI is also on the quarters sytem. Every six weeks, new courses. During a tour, the guide made the point that it takes some adjustment to realize that after three weeks of a course, it’s time for a mid-term exam!</p>
<p>I would definitely put UR towards the top of your list of schools – along with Harvey Mudd, RPI, and CMU – in terms of both selectivity and academic rigor. I think UR is much stronger – across all academic fields – than NEU, Clarkson, WPI, URI, UMass, or Ithaca (the other schools you mentioned that I am most familiar with).</p>
<p>My son was accepted at UR (with merit $$) and seriously considered it, although he ultimately chose another school. He really liked the size of the school, the pretty campus, the very flexible curriculum, the facilities, and the abundant research opportunities for undergrads. (He’s a math/science type.) He did not like Rochester – although he liked it far more than Worcester!</p>
<p>I know a lot about those 1st three schools. My son was accepted to them, so we’ve done intense research and visits. (He ended up at NEU based on co-op program and full-tuition scholarship.) </p>
<p>I finally remembered why we didn’t look much at UofR… we were concerned that colleges with music schools would likely have music majors that would ace him out of amatuer music opportunities. We had same concern at CMU but kept it on this based on BIL’s good experiences… in the end CMU did have amatuer music opportunities, so UofR might too. Just passing that on in case it helps parents of other math/music geeks.</p>
<p>Lergnom –
With the person I was mentoring, the expected parental contribution at Rochester was almost three times the amount than at any of the six other schools (including NEU and Mudd) where this student was accepted. Student had a relatively modest EFC and was selected for a highly competitive five-year program.</p>
<p>Our family’s financial situation was different than my mentee’s, but our package was also much, much lower than the other schools where S was accepted.</p>
<p>Two data points, for what it’s worth. I know some kids hit the FA jackpot, but that was not the case in our experience.</p>
<p>That’s exactly my point. I had a child graduate from BU. That is a very active board. Every spring you hear complaints, some in the form of rants or whines, about how ungenerous BU, how their package didn’t compare or how they really wanted to go there but now they can’t. And then you read happy posts from kids who got terrific packages. </p>
<p>It isn’t a question of a jackpot. Each school has its own proprietary method for figuring financial aid and merit awards. Each school ranks the kids it admits in some way, with some schools now turning down kids with stats they think indicate an unlikely enroll. </p>
<p>(One of my kids was turned down by schools which only admitted less academically qualified students from her high school. In some cases, no one with high scores got in. I guess that makes their numbers look better and it may even generate better enrollees.)</p>
<p>There are a few “jackpots” in admissions, notably admission to certain Ivies and tech schools if you aren’t rich or a minority. With those low admit rates, it is essentially a lottery for the available places. But with almost all schools, it’s just a measure of how they process the information and kids should understand that each school does it differently.</p>
<p>BTW, I wanted to mention that a difference between UR and Tufts is that UR is need-blind. Tufts is in fund raising mode in the hopes of becoming need-blind. For the last few years, Tufts has given applications a need-blind reading and then one that takes need into account. That means a non-slam dunk admission is partially a need function. I have no idea how much that skews the demographics of their admissions, if it does.</p>
<p>We are seriously looking at Rochester-my S loves it and it is a close second to Cornell on his list of dream schools.</p>
<p>He also loves the city-small enough he can handle it and lots of snow!</p>
<p>I am concerned since he is not certain of his major it may be too science oriented. I don’t worry so much about the FA-he’ll only be able to go if he gets a good merit package and my understanding is they give guaranteed NMF scholarships of approximately 20K which would make it feasible.</p>
<p>My daughter is a sophomore at Rochester. Rochester has 2 campuses. The River campus for students at the college (art, science, engineering) and Eastman. We have been pleased with the music opportunities at the River campus. Eastman School of Music is on a separate campus a couple miles from the River campus. At the River Campus, there is a music department with clusters and a minor available. There are also ensembles for the students at the River campus. Musical skills vary in and between the River campus ensembles. More serious/accomplished River campus musicians can, I believe, audition to be part of ensembles at Eastman and/or have lessons at Eastman. I have been very impressed that Rochester not only has the best music school in the country but also encourages students who are much more casual/less accomplished to continue as musicians</p>
<p>UR is not merely science. It’s highly ranked in areas like PoliSci and religious studies and it is a genuine university. My attitude toward these things is that Princeton is a science school but you wouldn’t think it bad for English and Yale is a humanities school but you wouldn’t think it bad for science. Tech schools tend to be tilted a lot toward science and engineering but the way to think about science at UR is that it happens to be very strong, not that the school is a science school.</p>
<p>One problem: there hasn’t been much snow in Rochester for at least 5 years. Less than in Boston. I was born at Griffiss AFB in Rome and my dad would tell me stories about the vast amounts of snow, about being unable to find the car - and that’s a place which would look much better under snow. But one never knows.</p>
<p>The Eastman School of Music is downtown, a completely separate campus, with its own ensembles. The ensembles at the River Campus are made up of engineering majors, pre-med majors, etc. Music majors do NOT eat up all the spots in ensembles! There are music majors at the River Campus, but I don’t think it’s a huge dept.</p>
<p>Also, free private lessons at the Eastman school for ensemble players is a nice perk.</p>
<p>Thanks MADad! I didn’t know about CC when I first started doing research and was ruling out colleges. We’ve learned lots that I can pass on to other music families. </p>
<p>Another school that had a surprising number of engineer-musicians was Case.</p>
<p>S plays the trumpet and is an average player but enjoys it so it’s good to hear he could continue that at college.</p>
<p>I was not able to attend the tour with my husband and son this summer but it was H who came away concerned the school was too science oriented-which isn’t a bad thing at all but not the area S is most interested in. As I said it’s hard to pin him down on a major-he is truly undecided but more and more leaning towards engineering-although economics also interests him and they seem to be well regarded in that area.</p>
<p>It appears by all accounts to be an excellent school. It’s kind of funny but I had never heard of it until his search and my father was a guidance counselor so believe me I have heard of a lot of schools that aren’t well known! What’s funny though is since the search began we found out that the father of one of his best friends went there-as did his current math teacher. They both said it was a good school but it has changed a lot since they went there.</p>
<p>The snow information is troubling though-perhaps a deal breaker? :)</p>