2016 ED Applicant Here
What do you love about your school?
What do you not like?
How’s the food???
Bumping for you. Would love to hear some Roch feedback please. My D has been accepted.
Middle son is a current senior, but due to his getting accepted for Take 5 will be spending one more year there after this year. He’s with us on vacation during his spring break this week, BUT he’s also studying for either Anatomy or the MCAT right now. I’ll remember to tell him about this post and have him answer your questions sometime in the next day or two.
He loves URoc - always has since his first visit and it’s only gotten better by being there.
His direct answer is bound to be better than mine acting as a middleman.
Hello, Creekland’s middle son here! I’ll do my best to answer this love/dislike/food inquiry, but feel free to ask me for more details if you want me to touch upon anything specific! Best of luck in your decision process!
Love:
- This is a rigorous school where you are challenged to think critically and ask questions. Expect to engage in your studies and to experience an atmosphere that lauds academics.
- Your peers come from a diversity of backgrounds and are interested in (and knowledgeable of) a wide range of topics. For example, it is not at all an uncommon conversation to be talking at one point about Marr’s Levels of Analysis, switching to discussing colonialism’s impact in western Africa, then ending with a review of your current research paradigm design plans (all from an actual conversation I had).
- The professors are extremely intelligent. They are passionate about their field and will share this passion if you truly are interested in conversing with them. Most even teach material that they are currently researching (aka, you’re one of the first to know about it).
- Research research research. If you’re interested in taking part in such activities, there are many opportunities on campus. You will have to ask to join a lab, but everyone I know who has been interested has found such an experience.
- Residential Life (Housing) puts on a number of programs throughout the year to provide social and educational opportunities to students. This is especially true for Freshmen Housing (as a Freshmen RA, I can attest to this).
- We’re not cut-throat. Education is a collaborative experience… if you feel this way you’ll fit right in.
- We have tunnels. That’s always a cool thing to tell your friends. Plus, it’s handy in the snow.
- There are no core-curriculum courses. This allows you more freedom to take classes you’re interested in taking, and even tacking on a few minors or a double major.
- We aren’t a sports crazy school. For me, that is a plus. But for those who want that spirit, we do have a “Blue Crew” school spirit group on campus.
- CLUBS. There is a club for everything. Want to start something new? Try it! The possibilities for personal growth are endless. It’s super easy at UR to take advantage of these clubs.
- There are buses to many places off-campus - Wegman’s, Walmart, Costco, the movies, Eastman, College Town, the mall, etc.
Dislike:
- Lots of people like to complain about how hard classes are. Please, look at #1 in the “Love” section… no one goes into this college expecting an easy ride. Mostly this is due to people finding that they need to change their high school study habits to better match the college learning environment.
- There are never enough tables for studying in upper ITS… (a Tech Center Study Area)
- The school is decentralized. This means that one department doesn’t necessarily know what the other department is doing. They try, but sometimes you can’t assume your Take 5 acceptance was communicated to both of your major departments. (No, I have not received numerous emails asking if I plan to graduate on time…)
- A lot of money goes into superfluous tech items (touchscreen directories in the libraries). These are cool and make the school “hip”, but there are definitely a few wobbly tables and broken outlets that could have been replaced first.
- Snow. It’s a fact of life, so you will adapt and learn to love it a little.
- The course registration always goes haywire somehow. Another fact of life (despite all the new “fixes”)
- We don’t get snow days. Refer back to #5 of the “dislike” section. Every other school may close for bad weather, but we pride ourselves in being “tough.” But professors may cancel classes… I have yet to have a class canceled for weather.
- Sometimes people assume most students are here because they couldn’t get into Ivy Leagues… no, most of us chose to be here (and wouldn’t want to go anywhere else).
- We often get confused with RIT whenever I say I go to school in Rochester.
- The lighting in a number of the dorm rooms (such as mine) is very poor. So you need to have strategic lamps (fire safe lamps, of course).
Food:
If you’re expecting your mother’s home-style cooking, then you will always be disappointed. But with that out of the way, the food is pretty good! Does Dining make some dishes wrong (I’m not happy with their Indian food)? Yes. But does it give you a wide variety and some pretty tasty morsels? Absolutely. Because not only do you have the two unlimited all-you-can-eat dining halls (Douglass is about to be finished with its renovations) with rotating selections, but you also have numerous on-campus coffee places, the Hive (with fast food), and the Eastman and Medical Campus dining areas. If you’re bored of the selections, it just means you’ve been eating at the same place too long. Plus, don’t just take my word for it - friends of mine from other colleges who have visited always say UR’s food is the best. And if nothing else there is always Wegman’s.
@Creekland Thank you, Creekland’s middle son. What a great summary of your likes/dislikes at Rochester. My S is still waiting for his decision but I will be sharing your post with him when/if he gets good news from Rochester.
Another plus: They have zip cars on campus. DS used them a few times to get to a place that the buses don’t go. They are reasonably prices when you have other riders contributing to the hourly fee.
I should probably add that middle son has Brain & Cognitive + Bio as his majors, and Psych + American Sign Language as minors. His Take 5 involves studying Western Influences on Global Success in Africa.
He’s heavily involved in Radiance Dance and a Christian club, plus enjoys juggling with Strong Jugglers, has been moderately involved with an American Sign Language club, and in the past, some with the Chess club. I’m sure I’m missing something here… oh, he worked with Hillel for a bit too, so knows a fair bit there.
He’s been an RA in freshman dorms for two years now and will be again next year (his Take 5 Year).
He’s been a TA for Chem, Organic Chem, and a BCS class always getting great reviews at the end of year assessments.
He’s been involved in research since his sophomore year. That includes spending last summer at Stanford working with someone he learned about from one of the researchers/profs at URoc.
And he’s also pre-med.
Seriously, if anyone has questions they would like answers to from someone who is there (in general), he’s with us for the rest of spring break. 
@Creekland Thanks for the reply! Could you ask your son if grade deflation is prevalent in UR? I’ve heard rumors about how some classes are “impossible” to get an A in.
And just for the sake of interest, what was he researching??? Sounds very interesting 
@Creekland please thank your son, I appreciate his views. And yes, and answer to Egglands ? would be great
if he knows.
Creekland’s middle son, once again. I wouldn’t say that grade deflation is highly prevalent at UR. Are some classes difficult due to the material, teaching style, reading load, or all of the above? Yes (I’m looking at you, organic chemistry). However, grades are given out generally in a manner that matches the difficulty of the course. For most science courses there is a curve so that the proportion of As doesn’t drop below acceptable levels. A lot of this involves recognizing that your professor is the one who is giving you your grade… so you need to perform in a way that they deem to be “A-worthy.” One can’t expect an easy ride, but good study habits go a long way. Also, while traveling I’ve had many knowledgeable people tell me they recognize the strength of the courses at UR.
As for my research, I currently work in a psycholinguistics lab that explores how young children process different linguistic characteristics such as prosody, ambiguity, and other language aspects. I currently am studying how children respond to implied meaning in language. There are fun language items called “Implicatures” - ambiguous portions of language where a meaning is implied without being verbalized. Adults use various forms of implicatures all the time… but previous studies show that children seem to have trouble properly utilizing these. My work tries to tease out the specific, and possibly hidden, understanding children have towards a particular implicature called scalar implicatures.
@creekland Have you gotten a sense from your son on how dominant the pre-med culture is in the student body.
@creekland - That was a great post and I will be sharing with my already admitted DC. Thanks!
@smokinact I just asked him about Pre-med. He said there are quite a few, but he doubts it’s the majority. He also said many come in thinking “maybe pre-med,” but change their minds once they see all the opportunities out there. Several of his peers have their eyes on grad school after graduation. Since he’s Take 5 and most others aren’t, they’re getting their acceptances to grad school now.
Hello Creekland , You have mentioned about Indian food…No offense …curious are you Indian ??? I am from Portland OR ( Indian) and my son got admitted in ED to Rochester( he decided ED either in Cornell or Rochester, but finally he did applied to Rochester because of the research curriculum). His plan is to do Biomedical engineering and Premed. We are also planning to come in there for Admit day on April 18th , appreciate any information about engineering GPA and other Premed related groups or activities. How far the stduent are successful in gettign admittted to Medical school. Thank You - Portland Mom
I am not Indian, but have numerous Indian friends who have introduced me to the finer things in life concerning Indian dining. Also, unfortunately I cannot provide much information about engineering. However, I do know that UR has a rigorous and well structured BME program. All incoming engineering students are assigned an engineering faculty as an adviser for their major.
As for pre-med related groups, there is a professional health department on campus which provides a supportive role during all four years of the “preparation” process. There is also a student-run pre-health society on campus that provides many networking opportunities for students. Finally, I do not know the exact statistics, but I do know that UR has a high medical school acceptance success rate. The Professional Health offices would have more specific numbers concerning this question.
Currently, many of my peers are still receiving medical school acceptances. But I can attest that many of my post-graduate peers are already well within their first year of becoming doctors.
Creekland’s middle son, thank you for posting, the information you have provided has been incredibly helpful in my college decision process.
@Creekland , if your son is willing and able, would you be able to ask him about class sizes at Rochester? I understand that often intro classes will be large, but can underclassmen expect most classes to be large?
Same question here re typical class sizes for freshmen/sophomores…
I agree with all aperfecttaco answered on your other thread.
My guy is studying for his MCAT (coming this Friday), so I hate to add another task for him to do between now and then, but his answers to that in the past has been that some classes are larger (150-300) - many of the basic ones like Bio, Chem, Calc, but attending recitations (always small at less than 15 or 20 students) have made them feel smaller. He’s also always gotten to know his professors personally through office hours and general chat/banter. This doesn’t matter if the class were large or small. He makes the time to get to know his profs and all have seemed to welcome that.
Once out of the “everyone takes them” classes, most have been small. He’s had classes with as few as 10 students in them. Many times there are 12 - 25 or so.
Discussion is incredibly common in his classes. He sat in on one of his brother’s classes this past spring break (brother attends a southern LAC) and was very surprised to find most of that class being lecture. In contrast, at URoc, classes in essentially the same course are discussion with students having read important info as background before class began. At his brother’s school the prof was explaining what would have been read by students at his school.
I googled the Common Data set for class sizes at URoc and this is what it came up with:
Regular Class Size 2-9 students: 35% of classes
10-19 students: 36% of classes
20-29 students: 9% of classes
30-39 students: 6% of classes
40-49 students: 3% of classes
50-99 students: 9% of classes
Over 100 students: 3% of classes
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg01_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=117
It seems pretty accurate from the anecdotal reports my guy has given me over the years.