<p>University of Rochester - Dont go there.
1)Transcripts show your overall class rank percentile. If you are a top student, it is great. If you are average or below (50% have to be below the 50-percentile) you will never find a job.
2)If you repeat a course to improve your grade, they will show both grades - but will happily collect your tuition fees
twice.
3)Transcripts show courses in Chronological order and contain abbreviations. It is a jigsaw puzzle at least some employers will not like to navigate.
4)weather is bad and the neighborhood dangerous.
5)Professors generally dont reply if you want recommendations for Grad School later</p>
<p>Not D2’s experience at UR at all</p>
<p>1) her transcript did not show her class rank (She and I both scrutinized both official and unofficial versions carefully when she was applying for medical school)</p>
<p>2) that’s typical of most colleges–to show both the original and repeated class, and to charge for each class taken</p>
<p>3) no one who looked at D2’s transcript has issues reading it. AFAIK all transcripts list courses in chronological order and using departmental abbreviations. (All mine, all of DH’s, all of D1’s–10 different colleges all together-- list coursework that way)</p>
<p>4) Rochester’s weather is dismal in the winter, I’ll give you that; however, the immediate area around the school is not dangerous. There are bad areas in Rochester–just like every other larger city in the US</p>
<p>5) Not D2’s experience at all. Multiple professors–gladly and on time–provided LORs for summer internships, job applications and medical school applications. Her BF–a UR grad – also had no issues getting LORs, nor did any of her friends from UR who are now attending a variety of graduate and professional schools.</p>
<p>1) nope…class rank is NOT on the transcript…but your GPA is. Key ingredient. Do well, and this will not be a problem.</p>
<p>2) plan to study and do well enough in your courses the FIRST time…and you won’t need to retake. The vast majority of colleges show both your first and second taking of a course. So…again…do well the first time, and this won’t be a problem.</p>
<p>3) all colleges list courses in the order in which you take them. Anyone who needs to know abbreviations will know them. I’ve read more than hundreds of transcripts when doing job interviews with absolutely no difficulty.</p>
<p>4) if you aren’t a winter fan, Rochester isn’t for you. So just don’t apply and go there. The winter weather isn’t exactly a secret. As with any other urban campus, you just have to have good common sense. If you don’t have that, go elsewhere.</p>
<p>5) Poppycock. Of course professors reply…unless perhaps they don’t feel they can write you a worthwhile reference. </p>
<p>A very fine institution. I know a very recent graduate of UR who landed a dream job on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Of course, this kid was an exceptional student.</p>
<h1>1 & 5 are 100% unadulterated BS</h1>
<p>While having a sub 3.0 GPA can make it harder for one to get a job offer before graduation as happened to an older cousin who graduated URochester sometime in the late '80s, he managed to land his first “real job” in his field 6 months after graduation and has progressed to being a department head managing dozens of programmers at a tech firm out in California. </p>
<p>Also have a few college friends who were barely 3.0 GPA graduates from same school who managed to get job offers not too long after graduation like my cousin or even as far as a year before graduation. Granted, the latter only comes if one has an unusual skill in high demand and/or is unusually good at networking. </p>
<p>As for #5, the vast majority of Profs had no problems replying and agreeing to write LORs for my cousin or said friends when it came time for applying to grad school. Even for the ones with sub-3.0 GPAs/course grades. Granted, this does require the requester to explain how their subsequent positive work experience has made them much better people than they were during their undergrad years. Not a difficult feat if one has had good work experience and can communicate reasonably via letter/email. </p>
<p>
I thought Rochester is a relatively small city so it should be “better” - at least it seems nobody has ever rated it as, say, one of the top-10 dangerous cities.</p>
<p>Does Kodak, which used to be there, still exist? Many great companies (e.g., Digital Equipment Corporation which designed and manufactured PDP-11 and VAXes minicomputers some time ago) disappeared. So this is not unusual.</p>
<p>On several occasions, I talked to some of my colleagues who are a generation younger than me about such computers. They have never heard of them. They think I was talking about some obscure things in the anscient history. It made me feel old. (No wonder my child did not want to learn a thing or two in this area from me when he was growing up as he belongs to that generation.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The OP has been whining about this since 2012…two years ago. And further states that this kiddo got a masters in engineering someplace other than UR.</p>
<p>Time to move on.</p>
<p>I’m curious about a couple of OP’s points.</p>
<p>–why wouldn’t a transcript show all classes taken, in chronological order, with each grade earned? What else would be the logical way is presenting the student’s academic performance?</p>
<p>-- why shouldn’t a college charge twice for a class taken twice ? The student took space in the class twice -and the professor graded quizzes, papers, projects and exams twice.</p>
<p>-- certain professors should have responded to a request for a LOR; I wonder if there was a reason some prifessor’s chose not to. And it’s always uncomfortable to tell a student you cannot write a positive one.</p>
<p>-- the location of any school should not be a surprise! OP could not claim to be surprised that U of R has nasty winters, or, like many declining industrial cities, some struggling areas.</p>
<p>
Yes, it still there, but it is a very different company now.</p>
<p>My daughter had no problem getting LOR from professors in her departments, nor did her boyfriend who is in grad school, one of the top in his field.</p>
<p>Yes the winter in Rochester is long and cold. but not much worse than many other places in the Northeast. The other side is that it is glorious from Sept through the end of October and you get more spring-like weather than you do in/around schools in Boston which generally has spring days few/far between before mid-May. </p>
<p>When my daughter and I went to Rochester for an accepted students day in April it was absolutely glorious day with kids out in the quad. With older d went to accepted students day in/around Boston at the beginning of April. we had mixed snow/sleet… With older d applying to schools I checked weather a lot and Rochester on average that year was warmer than Ithaca and Hanover, NH. The coldest place consistently was Saratoga Springs, home of Skidmore.</p>
<p>
I would think “class rank percentile” is very difficult to calculate in colleges & universities</p>
<p>SO–according to OP, main reason to avoid UR is due to the layout of their transcript???</p>
<p>■■■■■ alert------OP has a HUGE axe to grind–not his/her first foray into anti-UR trolling.</p>
<p>D had a wonderful experience there</p>
<p>Fwiw, I just hired a woman from Rochester undergrad/U of Chicago grad, and she’s fabulous. </p>
<p>Like everyone else, my S has had a wonderful experience at URoc and feels it is the best decision he almost never made (almost didn’t apply due to worries about winter). He is a current junior, so hasn’t applied for jobs yet, but the friends he knew who graduated didn’t have problems. He, himself, has had no problems getting recommendation letters for his summer endeavors and he’s never felt unsafe on campus or when walking in town. He does know areas of town that shouldn’t be visited - like any other city.</p>
<p>We’re in Niagara Falls, ON now. Yesterday he was wearing a UR t-shirt. On the elevator to our room another guy asked him if he was a UR student… and gushed over what a great school it was.</p>
<p>I suspect the problem the OP’s offspring had just might have had something personal issue-wise rather than a “dump on the school” issue overall.</p>
I apologize for bringing up this old thread but feel it needs some comment and correction. The OP is correct. University of Rochester does provide percentile ranks in their transcripts. The rest of the OP’s points though appear either inaccurate (from everything that has been posted) or irrelevant to selecting/attending the school.