University of Rochester Top Questions

I really like the professors at U of R because I feel like they enjoy what they are teaching. They are always enthusiastic, no matter how boring I think the subject is. Most of my classes have been large, too large for a professor to know who I am; but this doesn't really bother me. Studying and reading pretty much takes over your life... It was rare that there was a time when there wasn't something i should be reading. It was manageable though, once you organize your time.

I took a class called "Storytelling in the Indian Tradition" and we read folk tales and fairy tales from all different religions and cultures in India and wrote two papers about them. It was amazing, the professor was amazing (Brooks) and it inspired my cluster in Hinduism. On the topic of class sizes it depends on your major, if you're a bio major you'll have 200+ student classes until about your second semester sophomore year, if you're a Physics and Astronomy major like myself, you'll rarely have a class thats above 40 students unless its a math class. My intro astro class was 11 students(4 were girls) and the second level was 5 students (4 were girls). I love the U of R because I don't feel like they are training me to become just another cog in the machine of the working world, they truly want you to use this time as time for yourself to learn what you want to learn for the sake of learning and joy of knowledge. Though at the same time I do feel as if I will be able to get a job when I graduate or find a grad school. Theres a great career center that helped me apply to REU programs and made over my resume.

The curriculum at Rochester is what makes this university so unique. Having no required, general education classes is great! At Rochester it truly is about opportunity and exploring things for yourself.

Toward the middle of Spring semester I went to my British Literature professor and confessed that I was completely lost in the class and basically had no idea what was going on. She sat down with me once a week and we went over the material, and after a while I started getting higher marks and actually participating in class. Going above and beyond for their students is typical for Rochester professors.

Academics are the driving force behind the University, and they are top notch. Students are very very involved in various academic activities and intellectual conversations all year long. The University recently won the Collegiate Quiz Bowl National Championship among other national achievements in academics over past years. But on a more, day to day level, UR students are very supportive and helpful of one another. We constantly are pushing each other to do better, while rarely ever putting anyone down. Its a very positive atmosphere, to have a bunch of young adults living some of their greatest years together striving for the same goals, with constant help and support wherever you turn, its very rewarding and mind boggling. However at times, you may want to kill yourself with the amount of work you will have, regardless of your major. It si all about time management. If you don't study enough, and enough is not HS enough its serious study time, one will either fail out due to apathy or in serious distress all semester, and will not take in the complete experience and opportunity at hand of being around such great people in college. However is one studies too much, one might want to throw themselves over the Genesse Bridge or completely unhappy with life, due to lack of social interactions. TIME MANAGEMENT..PROCRASTINATION WILL DESTROY YOU. I've been on both extremes of the spectrum and neither is fun at all. Once one develops that collegiate time management, the sky is the limit.

The Rochester name continues to gain more prestige each academic year. It is an excellent school. However, many of the professors do not seem involved with the students. Some are there to do research, and teaching takes the back burner for these professors. Students study quite often, especially those with hard majors (BME, Biology, Math, Poli Sci, Economics). As an Economics major, I did not study as much as I could of or should of. However, it is the easiest of the harder majors. All this studying results in a lot of library time. Usually, students go to the library in groups of two or more and camp out for a while with their books, food, etc. It's almost a social event, which almost makes library time fun. But not quite. The career center is a joke. After they helped me revise my resume and cover letter, I sent both to several companies, hoping I would score an internship for the summer. I only had one interview, during which my potential boss told me that the format of my resume was sloppy and needed work. As a college grad, I could not get an internship.

Academics at Rochester are so versatile. This past semester I took a music class entirely on the Beatles while taking a class on the Crusades to fulfill my writing requirement... your choices are endless!

The classes at UR vary greatly. Most of my classes are lecture halls, and for them I sit way in the back and rarely participate. But for the few classes that are small for me, the teachers do know my name and I usually participate more than anyone else in those classes. I love my American Sign Language class because I have a lot of fun doing that and you really always need to be paying attention and participating. I hated Chemistry because there were about 400 people in the class and the professor read straight from his power point. I actually stopped going to that class and just going to the recitations because that is where we learned all of the math, and the math was the only thing on the tests. I wound up doing pretty well in the class so I'm glad I stopped wasting my time. A lot of UR students talk about classes outside of class, I am definitely not one of them; once I'm out of the class, I don't want to think about it until the next class. I also never talk to the teachers except my sign language teacher.. well I sign to him so. He was my favorite teacher and we signed a lot outside of class, I always enjoyed it. I actually only can think of a few jobs that I would like to do, and Rochester does not have the majors required for them, but Rochester will give me such a good education and is respected so much by people that I definitely want to stay. Also the fact that I may be able to create one of these majors really helps.

I am a double major in English and Political Science. Our political science department is one of the best in the country and I have enjoyed every class I have taken so far. English is smaller, but still a great department as a whole. I did take one class in the English department that I hated. The professor was visiting and ultimately was not asked back though, so I am hoping that it was a fluke. In Rochester, we have an open curriculum, so you do not have to take any classes that you don't want to. We have a cluster program instead. You must take 3 classes that work together in 3 categories: Natural Sciences, Arts/Humanities, and Social Sciences. However, you major in one of these categories, so you end up taking classes in two of the categories. I am double majoring, so both my arts/humanities and social sciences clusters are covered by my majors and I only have to do a cluster in natural sciences. I think this is a better program than just having to take a class in science, a class in math, an art class, etc. because you truly learn about a subject instead of just taking "rocks for jocks." I would rather not have to take anything that I don't want to, though.

The smaller the classes, the better. I wish I had had more seminar classes, which was a sacrifice I made when I chose to come to a medium-sized school rather than a teensy-tinsy liberal arts school. However, the resources at Rochester are definitely good for its size, and I feel that the professors do their best even in lecture classes to give a personalized experience.

Well, in my major (psych) it starts out that all your classes are huge but then as time goes on the get smaller and smaller. most of the psych department has at least a vague idea of who i am and maybe 4 professors know me personally due to me going to talk to them or having a smaller class with them. our psych department is really stellar as far as the professors that are on staff but less and less of them are actually teaching the undergrad courses now and theyre having their phd students do it which really isnt as good. what inspired me most was my 181 class. it was taught by Rich Ryan who is pretty much the awesomest man around and i learned a lot, had a good time and was inspired to continue doing psych. however... now a ta teaches it and its far less awesome.. in fact all accounts ive heard are that its boring. all that aside... rochester has a really good support system for serious psych students who want to get a phd after undergrad/ do research. you can work with a grad student as an ra your freshman year and the "honors degree" in psych has a course regiment that leads you into doing your own research one step at a time. you end up knowing the whats hows and whos of research and completing an experiment of your own. its great for networking and such. oh and the cluster system is awesome. no gen ed except for a singular writing class. and as long as you do at least 3 courses of your choosing in each of the three subject areas you have completed the req. like me.. i am a psych major (that takes care of the social sciences area) and music minor (that takes care of the humanities req) and i'm doing 3 classes of brain and cognitive science (that takes care of the hard sciences req) and thats all the gen ed i have to do. really the academic system and quality of education is rochester's biggest selling point. i love the way its set up and i love about 80{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of my classes which is more than anyone could ask for.

very very hard workers, classes not that hard

The academics of Rochester is definitely among the strongest one could imagine. All the professors are great, and the classes are all mostly enjoyable. The classes are very challenging of course, and the work loads can sometimes be overwhelming. But the school is good at training students to prepare for their future careers in the real world, and the competitions definitely give enough people motivation. Rochester is a school composed mostly of intelligent, serious students who take studying very seriously, and our training often goes beyond what's required of our fields.

I am pre-med, majoring in either French or Biology. Very time consuming but definitely worth it given Rochester's outstanding science/math reputation. There are also a lot of research/intern opportunities in the labs and at Strong Hospital which is located next to campus. There is only one requirement- a writing class which you get to choose from a wide array of intersting subjects.

Rochester is top notch academically and depending on the department there is some grade deflation actually. Poli Sci is known to be the major for probably a third of greeks because it's easy, but there are also greeks who are biomedical engineering majors too so it varies. 70{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of students are very serious about school and work really hard during the week and maybe relax one day on the weekend. I've had countless intellectual discussions out of class but for the most part you're too busy studying. Most students are genuinely interested in learning things although some classes people just try to get by in. Education at Rochester is geared toward learning not getting a job and the career center isn't very helpful there so be prepared to do a lot of work to land a good job or internship.

The academics here are tough, but manageable. Again depending on your goals / major will greatly affect your experiences here. In the biological sciences it is a challenging experience with many opportunities to expand yourself beyond the courses. I say this because there are ample opportunities to work in a lab that suits your interests. The undergraduate department is very mixed in with the graduate departments both at the River campus (the main undergraduate campus) and at the UR Medical center and Strong memorial hospital (medical / biomedical research). Also when you enter your junior year (or earlier if you're special ;] ) you start taking classes that first year graduate students also take. The nature of the course changes from buying textbooks and memorizing all the details to looking at original papers and studying them in depth. You learn about how experiments are performed and how they have shaped the course of modern biological sciences. So the experience is really two fold, you get the academic knowledge of the results of the experiments but also the practical knowledge of how the experiments were done. Professors are usually trying to keep the class interesting and try to offer classes that are interesting to them and the student body. I actually am a double major in Economics and Microbiology + Immunology (that's actually one major), so I have taken a few classes that have bridged my interests. For example, Health Policies, which is an economics course geared at looking at the financial structure and economic consequences of the modern health care system. By the end of the course we had a discussion as to the benefits and costs of the current US health care system in comparison to other nations. On the biology side of things there are several new courses that are interesting such as "Biology of Aging" and "Biochemical differences between Male and Females." Now getting to know your professors is really up to you. A majority of the professors that I have met are really approachable and are genuinely trying to help you learn. Plus there's a plethora of additional academic support if it's needed. You'll probably hear this from the UR people, but the curriculum at UR isn't as rigid as most schools. The only real mandatory class is the freshman writing seminar, but with good enough English credentials you can usually opt out of it. The cluster system at UR is a way to allow students to try other courses to see if they have any interest in that area. There are three clusters to satisfy: Natural Science (Math..bio...chem...etc), Social Sciences (Economics, Political Science, psychology...etc) and Humanities (Art, Music, Literature, etc) For example I am a Microbiology + Immunology major (satisfies my Natural science "cluster"), Economics major (satisfies my social science cluster). So I need a cluster in humanities. In my case I take music classes which continues my long standing musical interest. Good times.

I am a BME and my major is very competative and challenging, my major has approx 40 kids so the professors of my BME specific classes know my name but other than those classes im just another face in the crowd. My classes require a great deal of hw, more so than all other majors other than other engineers. So most of my time is spent doing homework, or labs, kids typically do the pretest cramming, not unusual, and unless I have something thats urgent, I typically dont really do anything productive. What 20 year old kid wants to talk about the shit that they spend all their time on during the week, when they have free time. Personally for the most part I dislike the other kids in my major, they are a bunch of brown nosers and are completly uncapable of socializing in a normal fashion, they seem to enjoy hanging out with the professors and faculty. Rochesters "cluster" system is essentially the only graduation requirement outside of your major, being an engineer I only have to take one cluster where as normal students have to do 2, but ,my cluster was spanish, and outside of my engineering classes and spanish, it has taken til my senior year to be able to even take a single class that was of my choosing. The schooling that I have done so far has really just taught me to learn how to deal with doing alot of meaningless shit at once, and dealing with stress involved, through what ever means needed.

there is a great variety of large, medium, and small class sizes. i've taken some typical college intro classes in large lecture halls with 200 or so people, and i've also taken smaller lecture/discussion based classes with 30 people. both of them suit their purposes. while rochester is definitely known for the sciences, i am not a science major and have taken some great classes. my favorite class was a european history course; the professor was incredible, gave great lectures, assigned interesting readings, and kept the class captivated for the entire semester. there are some lacking departments (apparently our economics department is ranked highly, but the professors that i've had are very below average). i do really like the academic freedom at rochester, which you will probably hear about over and over if you are interested in rochester. when i came on to campus, i really didn't know what i wanted to study, and the great variety of classes and minimal requirements gave me the ability to try out many different subjects to see what i liked. depending on what major people have, they may be very driven and focused on getting a job (pre-med, engineers), but not everyone is like that at all.

There is such a refreshing amount of freedom in the curriculum at U of R. It truly goes by the philosophy of "Learn what you love; love what you learn." Even as a double-major, the requirements are so flexible that I've been able to explore many areas of interest outside of my majors. Class sizes really depend on the course. Humanities classes tend to be on the smaller side, as are the more upper-level classes. They're usually under 20 people. There are a bunch of bigger lecture courses, too, especially introductory science courses, which have over 100 people in them. So it really depends on what you're taking.

As a humanities major (and frequent visitor to social science courses), the small class-sizes were one of the things I appreciated most about Rochester. Not only was it easy to develop relationships with fellow classmates, but (more importantly) with faculty as well. The professors are amazing resources, but only when they're available. And Rochester understand that part pretty well. I have to admit that coming from a high school that had fewer than average AP courses and college prep programs, it was initially difficult to adjust to the intensity with which many students approach their education at Rochester. But, fortunately, the competition is one that each individual engages in with her/himself. Even though people are very serious about their education, the administration and the school's curriculum encouraged the liberal arts education ideal – studying what one is most passionate about, and not necessarily what will bring future economic/social stability. Not to mention, the absence of "basics" or "core" courses was also a big incentive. The "cluster system" is not perfect, but I think it beats spending my first two years finishing core requirements before actually engaging in my field. I've been to professors' houses, drank with them, called (some of) them by their first names and used their letters of rec to get me into top grad school programs. Nothing was better than when I would meet a faculty member from a prospective graduate school and listen to their responses when I told them where I did my undergrad – "Oh, that's a really great school! You must know Professor _______."