<p>Very new too this site and from what I can tell by reading, it's an excellent source of info.</p>
<p>I have a rising senior D who is trying to narrow down her wide array of wants and UR has hit her radar in quite the opposite way the other choices did - from her sport. I am wondering if I could get feedback on UR's strong points as it relates to Biological Sciences/research relative to her other choices. I have read UR seems very good for research opportunities especially for freshman so this is what I would like compared.</p>
<p>The other schools she desires: Rice, Stanford, Williams, Amherst, Penn, Duke, Swarthmore, Wellesley. She hasn't been accepted anywhere yet but is strong academically so I want to compare as if she was.</p>
<p>Any portion/school of comparison would be appreciated.</p>
<p>If your kid can get in these schools, then the choice will be fit and maybe money. UR is a small university - 4500 undergrad - that gets a lot of research money - well over $400M a year. Much of that money, like at every school, is in medicine, biology & related fields. So yes that means a lot of research and a lot of research opportunities for undergrads. If you sit at a table with a bunch of kids, you find they’re working in all kinds of labs.</p>
<p>D2 is biological sciences major. She said that basically every bio/biochem major she knows (and being as UR is a small school she knows a most of them) who wanted a research positions had on by midway thru their sophomore year. Most sooner.</p>
<p>It’s a bang for your buck question I guess (too). We have done as much research online as US News and google will allow, so that’s why I am posting - hoping for personal stories relevant to each “versus”.</p>
<p>Her choices are all expensive and equivalent in that regard and it seems even in the needs-based met way - of course no way to tell until you do get accepted and actually put it to paper so I am trying to get a filter of sorts.</p>
<p>adding a sport complicates so I am trying to base decisions on academic opportunity alone.</p>
<p>Sorry this is off topic, I am curious which sport your D is interested in that makes UofR on her radar? Since I thought UofR was all D3 except for racquetball.</p>
<p>Lacrosse - and obviously she won’t be getting $ for it, but loves to play and has since 5th grade. She is approaching colleges for academics and let the lacrosse fall where it may. Most of her choices are DIII because she wants a small private school and UR coach wants her so here we are verifying the academics. UR is very expensive so I want to make sure it is a great school for her field of interest. D is very interested and will have an official visit in the fall and mom wants a good fit. So far, UR seems a serious contender.</p>
<p>The UR sales pitch is that it’s a small university not a college and not a large college with the word university in the name. That’s true. There are social differences between a small college and a small university, mostly having to do with size and thus all the aspects of diversity, from racial to interests to economic backgrounds. At a university, people will share your interests. You will have communities around your interests and these communities will overlap. At a large university, size enables but it also erects barriers because your communities may not overlap at all. I like small universities. More goes on and the space, both the shared place and the facilities themselves, is at a personal scale.</p>
<p>There are many opportunities for research, particularly in the biological sciences with the medical school right across the street. One advantage for undergrads in going to a small university is that there aren’t enough grad students to fill all the research slots available. </p>
<p>True, it was 4 years ago, but when we went to freshman orientation, one of the speakers said, “We have more opportunities for student research than we have students.” If she wants it, she can find it.</p>
<p>ROCs D1 sport is squash. My D was a pretty good hs lacrosse player, but did an entirely different club team sport her four years at the ROC. The posters are right - research opportunties abound. D even did research during her study abroad at a hospital in London.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone!!! Very helpful and I have encouraged D to visit this site so she can post herself. </p>
<p>dudedad - are you saying D played lacrosse in HS but opted for squash at ROC? I do think I remember reading squash is D1 there. What state did D grow up playing lacrosse?</p>
<p>W.Va did secede from Va. Completely off topic, but i only recently learned that while 3/4 of white households in the Confederacy did not own slaves, 4 of 9 Confederate soldiers came from households that owned slaves and half the officers did. 36% either directly owned slaves or had immediate family members who owned slaves, while the rest lived in non-family, slave-owning households. 20% were poor, 20% were wealthy (upper middle class assets and above) - apparently because the people in the middle were kept at their jobs and did not feel the same motivation.</p>
<p>It is strange and even stranger when you hear today how people want to define the war as being about something other than slavery. They literally mirror the language of yesterday: slave owners saw human beings as property, as their wealth, and they saw secession as their right to self-government because that was necessary to protect their property. You rarely saw references to slavery in these statements because to slave owners slaves were property. Jefferson Davis said that accepting Federal control was slavery. </p>
<p>Here’s a favorite quote:</p>
<p>“It is a war of defence against wicked and cruel aggression; a war of civilization against a ruthless barbarism, which would dishonor the dark ages; a war of religion against a blind and bloody fanaticism. It is war for your homes and your firesides - for your wives and your children - for the land which the Lord has given us for a heritage. It is a war for the maintenance of the broadest principle for which a free people can contend - for the right of self-government.” </p>
<p>This was part of a speech given by the Reverend Dr. Benjamin Palmer in New Orleans. It was entirely possible for people to use words like “free people” while owning slaves because he meant only white Southerners. Like many, he believed the right to own people was granted by God. You see that idea in many Civil War era publications and letters. Liberty meant the right to own slaves. That right came from God and was enshrined in the Constitution. This meant they were defending themselves, their rights, their property against immoral invaders who meant to take these rights away.</p>
<p>I am getting excited for her because her official is coming up next weekend. I have been reading and watching videos about UR online and it looks very appealing. I will not accompany her on this official (and didn’t for the others) but this is the only school we hadn’t visited this past summer so I have to view online and via the pictures I hope she takes while there.</p>
<p>The kids all look truly happy - and how cool is the Yellowjackets singing group on TV!!!</p>
<p>She does want a DIII with football and only one other of her choices has that… The recruits get to go to a game while there next Saturday - fun times I am sure!</p>
<p>I am a sophomore doing an independent study research at a URMC lab. I never intended to start so early, but it just happened and I thought, why not.</p>
<p>It is very easy to find an entry job into a lab, especially for biological sciences, to just get used to the environment. Most of the posts on the job board will only be looking for someone to autoclave/clean and doing things that aren’t project related. For freshmen/sophomores its understandable since there’s not enough background knowledge yet to know what is really going on in the projects. Another issue is that it’s hard to work around a science major schedule to get decent hours during the 9-5 period when other techs will be there to supervise or for any questions. Most of the procedures take a few hours or need to be done on consecutive days, so it’s tough. </p>
<p>I must say that most of the lab jobs require work study (especially on the job board) in order to hire someone because of their grant limitations. There are some others in the med center that don’t require it, but it’s preferred. There’s no work study for the summer, so that’s when most labs hire undergrads, and those usually stay for the year.</p>
<p>I will note that it is relatively hard to learn the lab techniques you need in order to start your own project in the school year. I stayed through the entire summer (never moved off campus) and worked full time. If anyone wants to start serious work early, I highly suggest emailing faculty members and maybe working full-time for the summer. I was very lucky in that my lab is amazing at getting grants, so I was paid above minimum wage and still am during the school year for part-time. My friend in another med center lab is working on her own project on volunteer basis because it’s hard for their lab to get grants. (just something to consider)</p>
<p>I also got the Research and Innovation Grant (called the portable research grant when i applied) and that is 3k that can be used for any independent non-credit research. I still have yet to use it. I think about 60 people got it for my class. The research proposal is pretty informal. They just want to see if you have the interest in doing an independent project, even if you change your mind about what topic you’ll do it on.</p>
<p>Oh and @maidenMom’s last post
UR is pretty dorky in that a cappella groups > athletics. There’s generally more hype about their performances than a game. There’s “Fill Fauver” events to fill Fauver stadium, and I don’t think that’s ever been done in the school’s history. I do miss the football school spirit craziness that was in my high school and the state university in my town, but this is just as great.</p>
<p>I’d like to add that while most paid lab positions require the student to have work/study, volunteer positions do not. </p>
<p>Students can also gain useful lab experience by working as unpaid volunteers. Usually students who volunteer a minimum number of hours per week can get course credit (up to 4 credits/semester) in lieu of an hourly wage. </p>
<p>D2 isn’t eligible for work/study so volunteered in a research lab her first year. Her PI was so pleased with her work that the PI both allowed D2 to propose and run her own project starting the second semester sophomore year (which D2 is going to presented at a national conference in the spring), but also scraped up monies from her own funding to pay D2 for her time both over the summers and in all subsequent semesters.</p>
<p>D2 was awarded a Research and Innovation Grant (called a Portable Research Grant when she was awarded it-- 40 were awarded her year), but used it to study abroad this summer since her research projects (yes, she has more than one) were already funded by other means. </p>
<p>D2 received additional grant funding for her summer salary at UR thru the Office of Undergraduate Research and another summer research grant thru her department.</p>
<p>D2 is again working as lab volunteer this semester. D2 is still working in the lab she’s been with since her sophomore year (and still getting paid and getting course credits), but wanted to expand her skill set before grad school so is now volunteering 5+ hours/weeks in lab that does something completely different from what she’s done before. She’s learning a whole new set of lab techniques. (She’s also doing reagent inventorying and other menial tasks–gotta “pay” for the new skills by doing grunt work.)</p>
<p>If your student is interested in working in a research lab, it’s useful to have some basic lab and computer skills first. While some profs will welcome freshmen into their labs, many others prefer that the student has completed the freshman bio/chem lab courses first. (This gives the student basic lab skills and lab safety competency and is one less thing the grad student/lab manager/PI has to teach.) </p>
<p>Also remember to tell your student not to be discouraged–the newest student in the lab gets stuck doing all the routine boring stuff at first. It’s kinda a rite of passage to see if they stick with the lab. (Why waste valuable time training them if they aren’t going to show up?). Also to see if they have the basic lab competency skills not to mess up things that might take days/weeks/months to redo.</p>
<p>BTW, maidenmom–I didn’t get to see UR until I dropped off my freshman there!</p>