Hi!
Just finished my junior year at RIT, so I wanted to update the thread I made last year here—
A lot of that information has stayed the same, but I wanted to add a few things and field any questions for people considering the school.
Co-op:
I will be on co-op with a firm that makes healthcare software for six months as a designer and front end developer.
In November, I signed onto a contract with a start up in Boston. During spring break, they called and rescinded my offer for no reason. I mention this because I wanted to highlight how awesome RIT’s co-op office is. With five weeks left in the school year, they got me into interviews and into another position that I was happier with. Not only that, but the school backed me when dealing with the company, and they are being barred from recruiting from our campus.
Mental health:
Rochester is a gloomy place during the winter, which results in a lot of seasonal affective disorder. Admittedly, our counseling center was horribly understaffed and overworked. A plague of colleges nationwide. This all came to a head when a student tragically took his life on campus last fall. It really touched the community here, and immense pressure was placed on the administration to fix access to mental health services. The school responded to students with a detailed plan of how they were going to improve, and /actually has been following through on it./ Increased staffing, comprehensive review of the needs of individual colleges, etc.
Campus:
The campus has gotten much better looking. Sure, there are still a lot of the original brick brutalist buildings, but the new buildings are really nice. We are building a cyber security building and received $50 million from an alumni to do so. They are also constructing a collaborative space between the library and SAU.
Food:
Nathan’s has mac and cheese every day now and the student record for free cones on Ben & Jerry’s free cone day is 17.
Academics:
School is still engaging (sometimes hard to juggle), and I’ve been enjoying the liberal arts courses I’ve been taking. (Shout out to Prof. Nathan Dinneen. Highly recommend him, if you are a future student.)
For my major, I have begun to shift more towards enjoying design over coding. I went to the curriculum coordinator of my major and requested to do a custom design concentration in the school of art. He approved it and helped me connect with the design department head to work things out. Super helpful and flexible.
Overall, the administration has supported me each step of the way. I’m still really happy to be here. Not sure if this was a helpful update, but I wanted people to know I am still active on here (for the next 2 semesters) when I get email notifications. Ask any questions you may have!