Were we fooled?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Rochester
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<p>After the first year, here’s my parent’s view (real opinion) of U of R:</p>

<p>Pros:
Beautiful campus - they do a good job selling the school on looks. Rush-Rhees is their money shot.
Well respected in the community and high ranking on the “top colleges” lists.
Smart, kind, friendly student population (our student’s favorite part of the school).
Freshman convocation and 1st week activities are well done, students are given a superb welcome.
Financial aid packages are generous - financial aid staff very, very helpful.
The school does an excellent job selecting and screening for well-rounded, diverse, high caliber students. Very bright, talented, and interesting people attend the school. </p>

<p>Cons:
Classes are HARD - Don’t take this lightly. If your child is a genius type, they’ll have no problem getting Bs and maybe even As. However, if they have to study and work hard for grades, phone calls announcing poor test scores throughout the semester become the norm. The final grade for a few classes stay a mystery, but large curving gets most to passing in the end. This fact is not discussed in the campus tours, and it has been a great source of us doubting if U of R was a good fit for our student.</p>

<p>The high Pre-Med enrollment has us wondering if the school has such rigorous academics to “weed out” students or to get students to change majors. Math and Science classes are not simply a step-up from high school, from what we have heard. The material is very accelerated, with not much in the way of study help, and tests that are extremely difficult. Pre-reqs for attending U of R is an unspoken high school AP classes in Calculus, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics - anything less than these will mean struggling to keep up.</p>

<p>Advising is limited, especially for selecting the first semester classes. Recommend taking the easiest, lightest load to start.</p>

<p>Cost is high, but aid packages are generous. We were swayed by the aid, so be careful about not looking at the right fit as a whole.</p>

<p>Dorm bathrooms are dirty - on the campus tour, ask to see the bathrooms. Ask to see what they have left off the tour.</p>

<p>Food - I think this is a complaint at many schools, so it’s not high on my list of real concerns. Danforth is a fancy looking dining hall, and the food was good when we ate there, but my student complains that the food is bad some days and great other days. </p>

<p>Weather - It’s been especially horrible this year. We are from outside of Rochester, so we are used to it. Snow (lots and lots of it) - deep cold - wind - gray skies. It’s not the easiest environment for someone to fall in love with. </p>

<p>This is a parent’s view, so I can’t comment on social life (parties), or other student’s views than what I’ve included here. Rochester is a small city with not a great deal of activities. The weather is terrible. The Eastman school and music events are top notch, though.</p>

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<p>Weather does vary, though. D graduated in 11, and her 4 years, she had less snow than we did in eastern MA. They do have the gray skies all winter, which makes spring (don’t miss Highland park in the spring!!!) so much sweeter.</p>

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<p>I think weather is in the eye of the beholder. People don’t say “the weather at Bates/Middlebury/Williams/Bowdoin, etc., etc., etc. is terrible” - at least I don’t hear that - perhaps because people know the weather there is wintry, often gray and cold. </p>

<p>I also think UR has a lot of academic diversity, meaning there are a number of extremely talented students for whom classes in “difficult” areas are less, well, difficult and a range of others. </p>

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<p>@Lergnom - You don’t hear that of those other colleges because they aren’t in Rochester, NY! lol. Take a look at this list of the top 25 snowiest cities for this year. No cities from Maine and Vermont are on it: <a href=“Current Top 25 Snowiest US Cities | Golden Snow Globe National Snow Contest Snowiest US City Pop 100,000+”>http://goldensnowglobe.com/current-top-10-snowiest-cities/&lt;/a&gt; . As I look out my window, it’s currently snowing with accumulation and beautiful gray skies. </p>

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<p>Regarding Greek life - my D (now graduated) went Greek. A number of her friends didn’t. One of her friends joined her organization and then dropped it. They all remained friends, socialized and studied together. Whether you were Greek, never Greek, formerly Greek didn’t matter a whit. The only difference was that the Greek life does require time and effort, which can interfere with other activities if you let it.</p>

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<p>I’m guessing this is going to vary by student and their foundation from their high school years. My guy is pre-med, so taking all those weeder classes, and only has one grade (so far) that is not an A. It’s an A- in his writing class. He does study (and did throughout his high school years too), but he’s also very active in other things (dance troupe, ASL, being a D’Lion with the freshmen this year, work study job, lab job, Christian club, etc). Sometimes I wonder if he sleeps.</p>

<p>He will say he needs to study (classes aren’t so easy that studying isn’t necessary), but I don’t get the feeling it’s painted as hard as it might be for other students - so just to offer a different perspective…</p>

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<p>I live in Boston, went to school in NE, am from Michigan and went to grad school there … and have never noticed much of a difference between winter here or there. It’s grayer in the East. Want gray? Spend the winter in Maine. There’s a reason Winslow Homer pictures are so dark. Want sleet/freezing rain that wipes out your power lines? Go to Michigan because the lack of ocean means cold and warm tend to collide to make a huge freaking mess. </p>

<p>Some things do put me off. The long walks uphill at McGill in the winter would be more than I could take. I could think of others.</p>

<p>College mostly takes place during the worst weather months. That is one reason I recommend spending a summer at UR - or wherever - because you see what the place is like when the weather is nice. The Rochester area in summer is really nice. Lots of outdoor activities. Lots of festivals - notably my kid’s favorite, the garlic festival. Great parks not far away. It’s a fairly short ride into the mountains or into Canada. You know, the stuff that’s less fun to do when the weather is cold. </p>

<p>As to difficulty, every school has a range of abilities. College is a big step up. </p>

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<p>goingon2: Worcester and Boston are on that list–I don’t hear many folks dismissing Harvard, BC, Holy Cross, etc. because it’s snowy</p>

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<p>goingon2…taking your post at face value I appreciate what you wrote. As a fellow UR parent myself, I think the natural instinct is to never leave advocacy/defense mode. And if I see something I think is unfair I will defend UR to the hilt myself. I love UR and my daughter is quite happy there, but it isn’t perfect. And I think it is reasonable for a school of UR’s reputation (deserved) to continually work on improving itself. And part of improving is being willing to identity areas that could be improved. My kid strongly considered going Greek but did not, and now has some concerns about how much of a social life she will have. The advising could be better. The food definitely could be better. And just because there are students with 4.0s or near 4.0s doesn’t necessarily mean that some classes may not be too hard or don’t offer enough help. I will disagree about the weather as a factor. That can’t be improved. It is what it is and one could argue that the weather gives UR a certain character.</p>

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<p>As a perspective, I know that some people (and some boards) are about selling, selling, selling but I don’t care where a kid goes. What matters to me is that you go where you can afford, where they have your program and where you feel comfortable. </p>

<p>I know the school tries to address learning. Two points. First, the very low level of requirements was designed in part to address a teaching issue: if you force kids to take a bunch of requirements outside their interests, you get a bunch of kids who aren’t interested and that affects the other kids and teaching satisfaction and thus quality. That’s not to say they have all great teachers or that they make sure their intro classes are well taught. That just doesn’t happen. (A story below.) Institutional responses are aggregates that apply widely and can’t address every case. So they choose to empower kids to take more of the classes they want AND require students to get into a field in more depth than dabbling. That is, it’s easy to double major and you take clusters, including ones you can design. I’ve talked to a number of professors and, outside of intro courses where kids need to take that class, they say they get kids who want to be there and that makes them better teachers. </p>

<p>Second, my kid has experienced two specific aspects of how the school addresses the learning process. First, in some of the larger classes, there were layers of help available. Lecture and section of course but then there were additional grad student led help sessions. And in some case, student led sessions. My kid has also TA’d in intro class, presenting material in section, running help sessions, etc. The idea there is not merely to reward good kids but to give students a student perspective on the material in words that might make more sense. </p>

<p>One of my kids went to a large school. It had the right program. It was difficult for that kid to put into the school and not feel that coming back. Maybe our experience has been weird - I don’t think so - but UR has given back. (And I know that’s true for other kids who have put their effort into the school.) It’s big enough but not that big. I mention this because of what I mentioned above, that institutions work in aggregates. We cannot have an ideal society in which, to twist around Marx, each gets what each has earned. No place can be perfect, if that’s a word with meaning in this context. UR seems to do a decent job of defining institutional level actions and working with or incorporating or rewarding individuals.</p>

<p>In another context, I’ve been to a rough handful of meetings about some of the undergraduate organizations the school is in the process of improving. The same approach is there: define the need according to how UR sees itself and what UR’s students need and then implement at the institutional level an approach that can then become individual. (I’m not an organizer or mover of these things at all, just an occasional attendee.)</p>

<p>I like telling silly stories. I had a chem professor at my Ivy school who may have been the most irritating human ever. The boards rose from the bottom so he could write something, slide the board up and keep going. A professor who cared would end up with 3 boards stacked top to bottom - the kind of thing you’d photograph with your phone today. He would raise the top board so half showed and he’d write on that … and then he’d erase it. He’d write some complicated material on the board and then he’d erase it. All in the same 3 or 4 feet of space. You couldn’t see what he wrote. You couldn’t follow what was going on. He gave an exam. We all flunked. So he gave another exam where he handed out something like 16 questions first. He gave us a sheet of paper with 4 of the questions on it and a, b, c or d. You circled the right ones and walked out. </p>

<p>My first math prof wore a big fuzzy sweater. He’d turn around in place in front of the board and his sweater would smear the words. I had him first period. By the end of that class, he looked like a bunny with a white tail. I looked around one morning and noticed that every other person there was doing something else, writing a letter, reading the newspaper, doing a puzzle. I scored highest on the final from my section … because I already knew the material I got right. I learned nothing, zip, nada that semester. </p>