Hi, I’m a HS who applied RD to Richmond (probably my favorite school on my list).
I love pretty much everything about Richmond. The only thing I’m struggling with is the city itself, as one of my main criteria in my college search is being located in a rural/suburban area where everyone stays on campus/people are not going on and off for off-campus events/parties.
To current students/alums/parents of UR students: how frequently do you go off campus for parties, dinner, going to clubs, etc? Is there a designated night that people typically go out into the city? I’d love for someone to give me the lowdown on the social scene- I know there are always entertainment options on campus, but I’d love to know the general scene. Thank you!!
I’m interested to see what people have to say about this as well…From what I’ve gathered, people don’t venture out into Richmond too often, but I’m not 100% sure, so hopefully someone can enlighten us.
UR itself is not in the city and self contained (we’re kind of a bubble), with the vast majority of events being on campus. Depends on the group you hang out with, but a lot of students don’t go off campus at all. I’m a junior and have left campus on rare occasions. I’ve been to a few dinners/parties at the houses of faculty members (annual theater holiday party and a music dinner), had to do research projects in Carytown and other locations throughout the city, have gone to the movies with friends a few times, and have gone to downtown shows at several theaters, most of which were required for my performing arts classes (such as at the Carpenter and Altria theaters, and the Richmond Ballet Studio theater).
I have friends that go downtown more, but its definitely not essential to the social scene. There are what they call “first fridays” where there are events downtown on the first friday of every month that a decent amount of people go to. People rarely go downtown during the week, at least in my experience (and if they go on the weekend, then they’d miss the greek parties that are exclusively on campus). There’s also plenty to do on campus.
You can’t really walk off campus (since the roads don’t have sidewalks leaving campus), but there is a shopping center (restaurants, grocery store, etc) that is just off campus and is a stop on the campus shuttle routes (probably like a 5 min ride to get there). The shuttles are free and go to a lot of places (to name a few: village shopping center, willow lawn shopping center, carytown).
I do not attend Richmond but I visited with two friends that do. They did seem to leave campus somewhat often, but really just to go to Carytown to get ice cream or something of the sort. They are also sisters who have a car on campus to share so that may lend to them leaving whenever they wish. They are both apart of the greek scene and I know do spend a lot of time on campus with their friends and for greek life. It didn’t seem to me like the campus was lacking activities. Also, from what I gathered the night to go out is Thursday since there are no classes on Friday. Hope that helps.
@CathJR There are a lot of classes on Fridays (I’ve had class on Fridays pretty much every semester so far). People who might go out more on Thursday’s either personally don’t have class on Friday (some people avoid classes that meet on Fridays) or they want to also go to the Greek parties and events on Friday nights.
@guineagirl96 When I visited in October of 2015 the two girls I know told me there are no classes on Friday’s for the entire school. Maybe I misheard, but I remember them commenting on how they felt bad for people who toured on Friday’s since the campus was always dead after kids going out the previous night.
@CathJR Either you misheard or they were mistaken. I’m currently a junior here. You can actually see the class schedules going back to Fall 1999 on the registrar website (just google u richmond class schedule) and see how classes are distributed, if you’re interested. There’s a decent amount of tours that happen on Saturday’s, however, that I don’t think accurately portray campus (a lot of people sleep in on Saturdays, including me).