Case Western, Hamilton, University of Rochester, RIT or UF for pre-med/music? ["about the same cost"]

[NiceUnparticularMan]

Case Western and Rochester are popular pre-med choices in my circles because they both combine good related departments with lots of relevant experience opportunities.

In terms of music, you might want to check out this prior thread by a person looking at those two universities with a combination of biology/neuroscience and music interests:

U. Rochester vs Case Western for Biology / Neuroscience major

We are planning to attend both admitted student events, but want to solicit anonymous opinions as what to expect/observe at each of the schools. I have searched the forum, but most comparisons are a bit dated or related to different majors. DS is leaning toward U. Rochester, citing its “better” biology program hearsay from his friends. We understand that one of the main difference between the two schools are that Case is more urban and UoR is more rural, but his desire of being near a city has fell off his priority list since the initial school search. Things that he still cares the most, other than Bio / Neuroscience program, are: Continue engaging in music (a skilled piano player), preferably toward a minor or major degree in music Food. He enjoys food and can cook very well, hence is picky on campus food selections. Stress. His current high school is very competitive that he had wished for a college with less pressure. [From parent perspective] For an introvert, which of the scho…

As discussed there, Rochester is interesting because it has a separate School of Music, Eastman, where you can take classes, but also a Department of Music in the main college where you can do a cluster, minor, or major. See this post:

U. Rochester vs Case Western for Biology / Neuroscience major

Already been covered, but I was just going to note that Rochester has a “normal” Department of Music in addition to Eastman, and one of the cool things about the Rochester curriculum structure is you can do what they call a cluster in Music, or upgrade it to a Minor or second Major depending on how far you end up wanting to go with it: Case Western also offers majors (some explicitly designed to be combinable) and a minor in Music, and I believe the Music minor is non-auditioning. But they do not have the same cluster program, and they generally have a more standard distributional-type gen ed requirement: I would also echo that I think of the City of Rochester as being a real city, and the River (Main) Campus is quite close to the city center, but also sort of enclosed–it is in a bend in the river and then the land side is mostly across from a large cemetery. Case Western is actually farther from the center of Cleveland, but it is obviously a bigger city overall, and their cam…

Just to elaborate a bit about Eastman, if you are a regular Rochester student, aka River Campus student, you can, subject to an audition, take what they call secondary lesson classes at Eastman. Here is a short official blog post:

Taking Classes at Eastman! | Admissions Blog

Much more information:

https://www.esm.rochester.edu/academic-affairs/rcstudents/lessons-rc-students/

Obviously you have other good options, but to me it feels like Rochester might stand out as a great place to combine pre-med and a love of music. And it is also a great university for other things in case he changes his mind about pre-med, which many do.