D-Day. Drinking Day. Or Dandelion Day, as the administration tries to call it. It's a giant party on the main quad, with live music, a great vibe, and people outside of the libraries. It's a good time, even if you don't drink.

To me, if you come to our school in the early fall or late spring you will think that you have just stepped on an ivy campus. The buildings are old brick surrounded by beautiful landscapes along a river.

Most of U of R students are nerds, and we're proud of it. For example, when bathroom stalls are defaced it's more likely than not some sort of chemistry pun. Also, we have a ton of a capella groups on campus that are nationally recognized. While our football games don't draw much of a crowd, the Midnight Ramblers sell out all of their shows.

Quite frankly, one of the biggest draws of the University of Rochester is our open curriculum. Don't want to take math ever again? Well, then you probably won't need to. Think required gym was stupid? Good, you don't need that either, but if you do decide to take one, that's fine too. What happens is that all the classes are split into 3 different categories: Humanities, Natural Science and Social Science. Your major, once declared, will fall into one of the three categories. The remaining two categories require the completion of two clusters, one in each remaining category. The clusters are 3 related classes and there are a ton of choices. So many that I see multiple classes I would love to take, but simply don't have room for. A large majority of the teachers really want to see you do well, and there are a ton of options if you are struggling. I have teachers who know every person's name in a 100 person lecture hall. We're a small school, and I wouldn't change it as it's a small town feel with the option of the big city right there. Seriously, take the Red Line of our busing options and there's the city! You will get people who go "Oh, Rochester, RIT right?" when you tell them where you are going. I know I did in my hometown. However, the University has a name and a reputation so while the average person on the street in my hometown thought RIT, my primary care doctor, and the nursing staff knew exactly where I was going and were thrilled for me. Dealing with the financial aid offices can be frustrating at times, but I see that at almost every school that my friends go to and my brother went to. Sometimes people are not as responsive via email as I would like, or the email goes into the spam box, but these are both fixable problems. There is a price tag, and that was, and still is, the biggest drawback. College is expensive, but I cannot see myself anywhere but here at the University of Rochester.

Dining services. It sometimes seems like they can't fix one thing without making something else worse. Danforth and the Pit are good, but Douglass just went down the tubes this year. Given that Douglass was the only place on campus with a Kosher station, you're not going to find a lot of options here if you have any dietary restrictions, and food is often incredibly bleh. They're doing better in recent years, but it's not going to be gourmet any time soon.

A cappella is huge! midnightramblers.org, jackets.org, urvocalpoint.com, and urafterhours.net. All of performance arts are big, including the two indian dance teams, Louvre contemporary dance, Ballet Performance Group, Rice Crew, IBTL Improv, TOOP theater, D'Motions Hip Hop, and Mariachi Meliora... just to name a few. http://sa.rochester.edu/ccc But there are hundreds of other types of groups too.

I'd say 80% of the students that go here applied to some Ivy-League schools. People think that going to an Ivy-League school is everything but I personally know many students that live in Rochester that chose an Ivy instead and they are absolutely miserable. College is the time of life when a young man/woman shapes into the person they will become for the rest of their life and if you are going to spend those four years absolutely miserable, it will have an enormous impact on your life. Even the people that transfer have wasted a year or two of college that they will never get back. If you tell yourself you will deal with it for 4 years and it is worth the Ivy-League name, you are wrong. No one can last 4 years of being very unhappy and I'm not saying that is why you should come to Rochester but this is a perfect example of a school that has many Ivy-League rejects and some are so thankful that they didn't get in because they see their friends at some schools and realize what a mistake it would have been. Choose a school you will be happy at.

College is about finding yourself. UR definitely helps that process, although not the biggest or craziest of places. UR is a very great place, but its not for everyone and that is ok. If you find out its not for you, move on. But one thing or suggestion to anyone considering UR or any college,, is if possible, stick out at least a year, you wont believe what a different a year makes. HAVE FUN, I'M HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE., YOU SHOULD TOO

Senior Week rocks. Three cheers for busing seniors to and from events so there is no risk of drunk driving. Great planning on the part of the college, especially because 21+ students don't always want to be stuck on campus!

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.

Academics are done well at U of R. There are many sections of the common pre-requisite classes (such as Calc 161), which are expressed in a large classroom format, but most classes are small enough for students to actually be able to interact with the professors. U of R also has only one required class (a freshman writing seminar), and although taking a certain number of classes in various fields is necessary, U of R makes it easy to do, so even freshman can take classes in their major or classes that simply interest them.

The school is definitely a bubble, you won't get off campus much without a car. It's a study hard during the week, party hard on the weekends type school. After the "new ivy" ranking, the administration has tried to crack down on the social scene. There's zero school pride in athletics, most people have never gone to a game for anything. Lots of diversity, lots of things to do for fun partying and otherwise.

Rochester is very open minded and liberal with a disproportionately large group of LGBTs on campus and a group of left wing and communist radicals called students for social justice- a group that has been very controversial and frequently marches around protesting something that nobody cares about. Most smart, hard working students would feel at home at Rochester, and at the same time Rochester also has a moderately sized greek life so you can also find students who like to party. However, don't be deceived because most of the students who party also work really really hard studying in their down time. Students are from all over the US and a few internationals. Most students come from middle to middle-upper class backgrounds and there is some social pressure to act and dress accordingly. Dining sucks, you'll want the smallest meal plan possible. Residential life isn't that great and a lot of students have been moving off campus by junior and senior year because on campus is too expensive and the meal plans suck. Rochester's a great school as long as you're willing to work really hard and not have much time for anything else.

As an underrepresented minority coming from a predominantly (some say "overwhelmingly") Hispanic community, it certainly was a culture shock arriving in Rochester. But, there are many of services available for students to integrate themselves with the rest of the community. Unfortunately, the lack of racial/socioeconomic diversity on the campus creates a sense amongst many "minorities" that they're not understood. (I was one of those.) But I always felt that it had more to do with the fact that many students lacked contact with students from different backgrounds. There was rarely a lack of interaction between different groups. Being that Rochester is a (very expensive) private university, there are plenty of stereotypical spoiled "rich kids," but many more liberal-minded individuals with which one can connect. This, in the end, helped tremedously.

For the most part

I love UR, but it's probably not for everyone. Coming from a very small high school, I did not want to go to an enormous university. To me, Rochester felt big when I first got there and didn't know anyone, but now by junior year I rarely go somewhere without seeing someone I know. And yet it's not so small that everyone gossips about everyone and you never meet new people. For me, it's just right! People in the Rochester area seem to have an inflated view of UR, and often react with "wow so you're really smart" when you say you go here. People from the rest of the world often haven't heard of it. There is currently no "college town" and most people hang out on campus, but they're trying to create a college town across the Genesee, so that will be really cool if it actually happens. School pride is not the kind where everyone shows up at football games (no one does really) but that's not to say people don't have any. (Guys) basketball games tend to get a better turn out (maybe because they're inside, maybe because the team has been really good recently). And people were school logo ALL the time.

Rochester provides an excellent balance for everyone. The equilibrium between academics, social life and extracurriculars is probably the most attractive feature of the school because it allows each individual to find his or her own niche of belonging. The size of the school is nice because while you frequently see familiar faces, there are always new people looming around the corner (in a non-stalker way). When I tell people that I go to Rochester the most common response is, "Wow, cold," especially seeing as how I'm from Phoenix, however underneath the surprise at my gall to brave the weather, people are typically fairly impressed. I run around campus a lot, sometimes to the great off-campus fraternity house Chi Phi or my sorority floor, sometimes in the dining areas, when the weather is nice enough on the grass outside, and when I'm not doing those things I tend to be in class or in my room. I feel like the college is generally pretty isolated from the town. It isn't a very big city so there isn't an over abundance of things to do, but the Campus Activities Board keeps lots of fun events going on and brings a lot of famous people to campus and there are plenty of other things to keep us occupied.

The University of Rochester takes academics very seriously, and we have been called a "new Ivy League" school status; implying that the methods used in the classroom and demands of the students are very vigorous. As a result many of the classes are very cut-throat and competitive, which is not a surprising reaction at a school filled with students who were at or near the top of their high school graduating classes. The Rochester curriculum provides fantastic opportunities for students to explore the different divisions of academia, of which anyone who attends here should take advantage. With the Cluster system rather than multiple required courses such as gym that all the students must take, students have the ability to choose something that they like or at least can tolerate instead of putting up with tedious required courses.

I find the majority of the kids come from middle class backgrounds. All of us depend on financial aid some people more than others but there is a social setting appropriate for all different backgrounds. There are a lot of kids from different countries and there are some who are from NY. Actually a lot from NY and Jersey and Pennsylvania. The students come from all different walks of life in terms of political views there are clubs for democrats and republicans but they are not really active on campus maybe for elections but that's all I have ever heard from them. The kids here live for the now with awareness of the future which I think is the best way to live.