Took an impromptu tour in May on way to oldest D’s graduation. Was impressed with the physical plant, but the place was a ghost town. I know that the business school is the school’s marquee attraction, but what about the sciences? My youngest D is interested in biological sciences. What is the strength of UR in this area? Does it warrant a second visit to campus?
The sciences are incredibly good. Richmond has a very good track record sending students to top schools for PhD in sciences. Cal tech, Princeton, UVA, Emory, U. Chicago, Oxford (in England), Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Maryland, Duke are some places people that I know personally are going for their PhD in some science field. Pre med is also very good with something around 70% of students getting accepted to medical school. I was a pre med student and accepted to medical school, and am happy about the support I had going through the process. The environment is very laid back and professors are very helpful and friendly. Research is very easy to be involved and students get practical experience. Really loved my experience at Richmond.
UR is very strong in the sciences for many of the reasons listed above: strong pre-med program, excellent grad school placement, strong and accessible undergraduate research, etc. We had 3 Goldwater Scholars last year, if you’re familiar with that, which is practically unheard of for a school of our size (IU-Bloomington, which has around 40k undergrads, also had 3 Goldwater Scholars to put that in perspective). I’ll also add the fact that our class sizes are small, even at the intro level, which usually don’t go above 32 students (at many schools, the intro classes have over 100 students per lecture). Labs also typically don’t go above 16-20 students so there’s lots of hands on learning and individuals attention in the classroom.
I don’t believe students work at the physical plant, as that’s run by facilities. If you want to know what the sciences are like at UR, the building you want to look at is Gottwald Center for the Sciences, which is where the biology, chemistry, and physics departments are housed, and is where all the research and class laboratories are. During graduation does not really give you an idea of the school because basically no one is there besides those graduating.