Academic atmosphere… that’s a hard one. Honestly, this whole application and selection process has been telling me I still don’t know all of what I need/want from a college, and I guess I’ll never have a 100% certainty. I don’t think having or lacking a very “academic” atmosphere is a deal maker/breaker for me, because I can see both will need an adjustment period.
Less academic: I might have to search harder to find students who care strongly about their studies, and I might feel more isolated for a while. But I think I could find others, and I’m looking into UB’s Advanced Honors Program as well.
More academic: I know I’ll be intimidated, and I’ll likely have trouble believing myself good enough. I can see myself having a pretty quiet, perhaps hesitant, start until I adjust and find some friends.
I guess my view is that I’ll need an adjustment period either way, and that I think it’s possible to find a group for myself either way. I don’t know if this makes any sense.
Lots of opinions here so why not add one more. You write well, seem to have great maturity and have done a great job achieving all you can at your community college and giving yourself some great choices. My humble opinion is go to the best school with the most opportunities and where you see yourself a fit. Don’t attach any imposter syndrome to that decision - you’re smart and focused enough to go to the school that accepted you…the rest is up to you. My cousin was a jc student after high school (where he was a very average student) and crushed it, was top of his class and joined me at a top UC in a science major. He continued to get straight As at the UC (while I was more lackadaisical and an average student) and got a full ride to the top dentistry and then top ortho programs. Objectively UR will have more prestige and cache (and likely less variability between caliber of student) but there are extremely successful students coming from buffalo as well.
As an opinion, if you might be pre-PhD, then I think a more academic atmosphere would suit you. If your direction seems more toward premed or health sciences, then either environment might work well.
I doubt it, though that is the sort of thing that people who overly value elite academics would say. It’s not like the other schools are full of insincere and uncommitted idiots who are just there to screw around. You’re not a world class athlete contemplating joining the company softball team and wondering if you’ll be bored playing with overweight 45 year old office workers. There are smart, very smart, people everywhere at all kinds of colleges and universities.
Assuming this will be a problem is very much like the advice you were given upthread suggesting Rochester might be over your head because you’re a CC student. Wherever you go to school, you will be as challenged as you want to be.
It’s not like the other schools are full of insincere and uncommitted idiots who are just there to screw around.
Yep, you’re right. UB definitely will have smart people, but I guess my point was that depending on the class size, it still may be harder initially to find and connect to them. But that’s not a problem exclusive to one school–it’s always going to take some work to find people you like and want to be friends with. So that’s why I said I don’t think one college has a significant advantage over the other here.
I’d originally brought up indications of academic preparedness partly based on your affinity for Columbia, which enrolls very strong students based on measurable attributes. UR’s students will be more like those at Columbia than UB’s will. If you like Columbia mostly for other reasons, then this may not be relevant to you. As I said way up-topic, I could see you at either UR or UB based on the majority of your stated criteria.
When you made this thread, you left out a crucial bit of information, which is that you had been homeschooled, and as such did not have a traditional high school experience in competition with others in the most rigorous, challenging AP classes. Many homeschooled students choose to start at their nearby community college for reasons of both economy and gradual transition to a classroom environment, whereas very few high-achieving traditionally schooled high school students choose community college.
With that information, I’d say that you have probably never been challenged academically in a competitive academic environment. If you feel up to the challenge, you would meet a different sort of peer group at U of Rochester. For you, this might be the most valuable feature of your last two (or three) years of college.
Under those circumstances, if you are not absolutely one thousand percent certain that you want medical school, I’d choose Rochester, for the student peers that you will meet there. If you are absolutely gung ho on med school, I still think that Buffalo is a safer bet, since you’d have an easier time of getting a 4.0 there. But even in that case, I would still say that Rochester would be a more broadening experience, with peers who were selected for higher past academic performance.
Note that the OP chose, and apparently performed well in, calculus based physics. This is a course that grade conscious premed students sometimes avoid at four year colleges.
I am turned off about the air of pretentiousness about the academic superiority of UR over UB. Many top students in NY state chose UB for both educational and financial reasons. As a junior taking high level science classes, he will be quite challenged, there will be no easy 4.0. I personally come from the SUNY system because that is where my parents could afford - and I have quite the successful career along with many other SUNY graduates. Yes, there is a different feel of small class sizes and close relationship with professors at UR ( and that is a subject worthy of consideration) but to claim academic superiority is just nonsense to meeting one’s longer term goals.
I attended UB and have had a highly successful career, presenting at national conferences etc. UB is VERY big, but I still had friends involved in research. I had 30 students in my classes within my major.
One should not assume that biomedical sciences with premed intentions at UB will be a walk in the park. It won’t. There are plenty of very smart students who turn down “better” schools due to finances.
UR is an outstanding school. We looked at it and I was very, very impressed.
That’s pretty insulting and shows a lack of experience with or knowledge about homeschooled students. I homeschooled my kids through 8th and they both tested into all honors classes at a rigorous parochial high school. My D was accepted into and attended UR and did well during her time there. In my homeschooling world those students are challenged above and beyond typical public school students. For most parents, that is their sole reason to homeschool. Many homeschooled students take AP classes and/or are dual enrolled in community college during hs.
You and merc81 are both jumping to conclusions and putting words in my mouth. I wasn’t implying anything about the quality of the OP’s homeschooling, or of any individual’s experience. The quality of homeschooling varies greatly from home to home, but the simple fact is that student to student competition is not a component of home schooling! My experience with homeschooled students ranges from those who, for various reasons, are being homeschooled by a dedicated college-educated parent who provides them with access to all sorts of educational materials and experiences, at their own level, which may be far above grade level, to those who are simply being kept home from school with no education whatsoever being provided to them - and every level of quality and instruction in between. But the simple fact is that many home schooled students do initially continue their educations while living at home and attending community college, for financial, educational, and social reasons, while those who did well in the most rigorous AP classes in high school (the type of student who might be more likely found at Rochester than at Buffalo), wind up at 4 yr colleges, often highly selective ones.
In my experience, the most common reason that I saw for homeschooling was a desire to “shelter” the child from a secular world. I saw other reasons (mental health, physical health, removal of girls from school at age 12 or so with no further education out of “modesty”) , but the most common reason was religious, meaning Christian fundamentalism. If the sole reason to homeschool were academic, the homeschooling world would have a large percentage of secular families, which is simply not the case.
I have, quite honestly, lost what the point is here in speculating about my homeschool education. I don’t think it would help to explain my and my parent’s reasoning and approach here, because no matter what I say, it will be interpreted differently by different posters as I have no concrete numbers or statistics to provide about my education. As I said, I’m deciding to stop wondering whether I’ll perform better at one school or another.
I’m factoring out whether or not I’m likely to perform academically better at one school over another, because I’ve decided that’s a dead end.
I believe the topic got brought up again because we started discussing “academic atmosphere”, but I think it would be wise to drop it again now before we end up debating in circles any longer.
Seems like the biggest factor is the cost uncertainty at Rochester after the first year. If a significant increase in cost would force you to drop out just before your senior year of college, that is a significant risk there compared to the more known cost of Buffalo.
Advanced knowledge of transfer credit at Buffalo is another advantage there. If Rochester makes you repeat some of your courses, that could delay graduation (extra cost), reduce schedule space for electives, and require you to mark that course work as “repeat” on the medical school application.
As I wrote before, community college is college, so having earned a 4.0 GPA in transfer preparation course work is a good predictor of doing well in college in the future, whichever one you choose (the notion that “Rochester will be too hard” does not seem likely). Upper level course work will also be populated by students in the majors, meaning that they are self-selected for academic strength and interest in the subject (the notion that “Buffalo will not be academically stimulating or challenging enough” does not seem likely).
Everyone has been focus on cost and expected academic achievement.
What has been missing: A small/medium sized selective private university has an entirely different vibe than a huge NY state university.
From campus, to student support, class size, student culture — it’s 2 different universes.
40% of classes at Buffalo are under 20 students but it’s about 80% at Rochester. Prefer smaller classes? Prefer to be surrounded by mostly New York residents who were median achievers in HS, or national and international students who were HS achieves?
And nobody can tell you one vibe is better or worse than the other.
You’ll never get to do these last 2 years of undergraduate again. Med school is a ultra stressful environment everywhere, then you’ll be in the workforce.
So assuming the cost isn’t an overriding impediment… And I’m sure you would achieve similar academic achievement in either place… I’d ask yourself a much simpler question, “where would you be happy?” Where would you most enjoy the next 2 years?
That’s debatable, but it matters not. I am, frankly, stunned that you persist in what I see as a series of thinly-veiled insults on the CC student population and, now, the homeschooled.
I am happy to see that you have moved on from “you went to CC so you are at risk for crashing and burning at Rochester” to “You’ll have an easier time achieving a 4.0 at Buffalo.” The latter is a fair and reasonable comment; the former is not.
And the quality and rigor of high schools varies greatly from school to school, and the simple fact is that academic competitiveness among students is not a component of every high school experience. There are plenty of kids at UR whose academic achievements in HS may, in fact, be less impressive than that of the OP’s when factoring in quality of HS.
You seem to be someone who is stuck on what you perceive to be the traditional route and seem skeptical of the other road taken. The fact is, we don’t know the OP, we’re not going to get to know the OP, and all we have is what we’re told here: attended CC for the express and communicated purpose of saving money and apparently knocked it out of the park. I have no reason to be any less confident in the OP’s chances of doing well than I have of a successful high school student’s. In fact, I’d be more inclined to place my bets with the OP given that his/her achievements were at the college level, however skeptical you are about that college.