Our son is a senior at U Rochester and our younger child is a senior in high school. So, we are ramping up the college search process again and that’s finding me back on College Confidential for the second time. I thought I would report back with our impressions of U Rochester.
In summary, it’s been a disappointment. Classes have been good, and I think (we’ll see!) prepared our son well for his chosen field. So, at a high level – mission accomplished! However, our son has said, if to do over, he likely would NOT pick Rochester over the other finalists he was considering, and that makes me sad. There are 3 categories that cause him (and us!) concern
Safety – Rochester is a tough place. Campus is reasonably safe, but the off-campus area across the river has turned out to be not. We wrote off this concern before acceptance. I have lived in NYC as well as Cambridge and Boston, MA, and assumed it would be typical urban setting, with some degree of heightened risk but navigable by those with “street smarts” and some experience in these settings. However, our experience is that it is worse than other places we have been. Perhaps my son has gotten unusually unlucky, but I don’t think so. We’ve had the unfortunate cause to talk to Rochester police after one particularly harrowing experience and they confirmed that crime rates are through the roof. They explained that U Rochester only reports crime on their campus in their statistics (which look ok, like any other urban campus Penn / Yale / Harvard etc) and does not take ownership, or even track, crime that occurs outside official borders. We are holding our breath and won’t relax and breathe a sigh of relief until he graduates.
Social life – my son has struggled to find. He claims there is zero school spirit – no attendance at team sports – and not a lot of widespread comraderie. He has found a few close friends and has made lifelong friends, but I think this has been really disappointing to him. His high school experience was very different, with multiple friend groups across sports, music, and academics. I realize this is very person-specific and personality driven, but my son is a pretty social kid so I have trouble explaining this. He has a close high school friend at Syracuse and my son visits there regularly to fulfil his social needs.
School administration – we have found the school to be very lacking in their basic communication, information, and empathy skills. I don’t know if they are overworked, or just choose to be non-responsive, but at every situation where my son has needed their assistance, they have been unhelpful. This is definitely not unique to us as I’ve had other parents share the same experience in person, here on the board, and on the U Rochester parents facebook group. We’ve tried to stay out of most of these issues, under the theory that our son is gaining valuable life skills advocating for himself, but we’ve seen long, 40 email chains where my son was ignored, given bad information, and otherwise just gotten unhelpful advice and a lack of caring. It would take too long to explain in detail what I am talking about, but one example in summary: my son was told by his academic advisor that a course he signed up for would satisfy one of his requirements (I have seen the email). It was later (end of year!) told to him by a different advisor that it wouldn’t. A long discussion followed which basically concluded with a “sorry!” and no good solutions, which has fouled up his courseload this year.
Why am I writing this? I fully expect others to chime in and say “hey! This isn’t our experience at all”… and that’s fine. This board is here to share our opinions and I think a wide range of experiences should be represented. But if ONLY the good experiences get posted, I don’t think potential candidates get the full picture. If a parent had posted something like this when we were looking with our oldest, I would have found it helpful and prompted further discussion.
I chose not to elaborate on the crimes, to not be sensationalist. But upon re-reading, I also don’t want people to think I’m being unnecessarily paranoid. So, let me list a few things that has happened to my son:
2 bikes stoken
car window smashed
car window smashed and failed steal attempt
2 of his 3 roommates robbed at knifepoint junior year
he and his visiting hometown friend were shot at in a random drive by walking from a campus party to my son’s apartment. His friend was hit in the leg.
Admin was amazingly unsympathetic. We told them and they said “we can’t control what happens off campus”. True, but this was 0.2 miles (5 min) walk from campus. How about a follow up call to see how the kid is doing? He needed leg surgery. This is the situation that we had to talk to police about. The police said it was happening all the time. We certainly had never heard about it! Why doesn’t the school warn the kids? We think they don’t want the publicity.
thank you for saying that! I debated posting at all (“my son is gone soon enough!”) and thought I might be accused of trying to badmouth the school or hold a grudge or something. No. Really! Just trying to help parents and students.
Here’s the one incident that’s happened so far this year. Son is in his offcampus house with one of his roommates when two people start banging on the door. Clearly angry and yelling “open up”. Luckily the door was locked! My son calls my wife while it’s happening saying “what do I do?” His roommate calls the police. The strangers start throwing their shoulders on the door. My wife tells my son to go hide upstairs in the bedroom in case they break in and stay on the line. After about 30 seconds they stop and leave. What was that? we don’t know. Mistaken identity/address? It was traumatic for my son and stressful for my wife. And they’ve been leaving the house with a little concern each day.
So far so good. But, we just don’t need this ____.
It was my wife’s quote “I will breathe a sigh of relief when he is gone” that I put in my writeup above.
There are several other websites that are notable for providing that kind of information. I can’t link them here, but Nich-e and Uni-go are among the most well known.
Your post and your child’s experiences are valid, but for anyone reading this, everyone should do their own research and feel comfortable with what is happening off campus, as well as on. My two cents is that if everyone knew everything about all the crimes associated with any given college, no one would ever enroll. Virtually all campuses have crime, in and around campus.
Students are more likely to experience a crime on campus, typically associated with alcohol usage. All college students need to keep their wits about them. The college experience might exist in a bubble for some, but the bubble is not impervious.
Wow, I had no idea the area around campus was that dangerous. DS (who graduated college in 2023) seriously considered going to Rochester. I visited the school with him during his college search and don’t remember getting the sense that it was in a dangerous area. Guess I was wrong, or maybe things have gotten worse compared to 6 years ago. OP, given all that’s happened, was living on campus an option for your son? If so, why live in an off-campus apartment given all that has happened?
It is so valuable to hear your perspective. That’s what this forum is for, right? Like you indicated, others might have different perspectives and experiences (one story is not the only story). At the same time, it is helpful to know what future students might encounter so they can be prepared, and what parents might hear from their students so we can also be prepared.
I can’t compare to 6 years ago, and don’t really know vs 4 years ago. We had to make decisions on the tail of COVID, so didn’t visit as thoroughly as you might have expected. It hasn’t really changed over the past 3 years. Downtown Rochester is definitely tough looking, but he didn’t anticipate (nor has he) spending much time there.
He’s living in the same neighborhood as on-campus housing. For those unfamiliar with the area and trying to learn, many upper class students live in either Brooks Crossing or Riverview. They are circled in red on the map. My son has lived in the neighborhood between (circled in yellow) for the last 2 years. Technically off campus. He and his friends really like to cook (go figure for a bunch of 21 year olds) and chose to live together for meal-plan reasons. Don’t quote me on specifics and anyone caring about the issue should do more research, but I think if you are in campus housing you need to have a fairly robust meal plan, and if in non-school housing you don’t. Safety wise he figured it wasn’t much different one or the other, but there probably is safety in numbers in the apartment style buildings vs single family.
To anyone doing a college visit, definitely spend time walking around the other side of the river (the area I am talking about on the map). We didn’t visit there either and the campus itself felt much safer and peaceful. But, your student will likely spend time across the river for housing, parties, fraternities etc.
I think that this list is more a reflection of reporting than actual crime. We KNOW from anonymous studies --that sexual assault is prevalent on nearly EVERY college campus. Yet - a huge number of campuses report zero or maybe one or two each year. That doesn’t make them safer. It makes it more likely that people are afraid to report those crimes. In fact, it is probably better to go to a college where these crimes are reported -because it forces the universities to deal with these issues more seriously.
Of course. If the list reported the 45 most dangerous campuses based on actual crime, no one would attend. Maybe more crimes are reported on some of these campuses because the students feel supported enough to be taken seriously when they do actually report the crimes. The flip side is that serious crimes could be underreported at some campuses because students feel they won’t be taken seriously. As you saw, there are some very famous colleges on that list. I doubt anyone is saying no to Yale, despite being in a pretty terrible location. Other factors can outweigh the perceived crime risk.
And then there is crime off campus. Let’s face it: off campus housing + lots of young, sometimes careless people + off campus parties + lots of tempting possessions + opportunistic criminals = crime. And off campus housing is where a LOT of students live at many colleges.
There are some colleges campuses where there are serious crime issues, and that regularly make an appearance on CC in regards to being perceived of as hotbeds of crime. I personally don’t count Rochester among them and I am not going to name some colleges that more frequently come up. For every personal anecdote, there are many other students whose time at a given college was perfectly uneventful. I know a current junior at Rochester who is loving every minute of his time there.
I appreciate that the OP didn’t post a click-bait title and sensationalistic linked news articles.
Two thoughts- I don’t think Yale is in a “pretty terrible location”. Yale is in downtown New Haven, a diverse city which has beautiful parks, nice restaurants, fantastic museums, a world class hospital staffed by well trained medical professionals, historic sites, elegant homes-- some restored to their Golden Age glory and some run down, and yes- Black and Brown and homeless people, which some people (I don’t mean you personally, Linda) conflate with “pretty terrible location”.
And many people DO say no to Yale. I’ll be willing to bet that any kid who is choosing between Stanford and Yale and chooses Stanford does so because of the “terrible location” perception (or Princeton, for that matter).
I agree with you that attending a college where students are encouraged to report crimes is a much better environment than ones where a kindly Dean sits down with a woman who has been raped and says “If you report this to law enforcement you’re going to spend the year dealing with a he said/she said situation. Don’t you want to go home for the weekend and then just put it out of your head?” These are dangerous places.
Thank you for your factual accounting of your family’s experience. We do not talk about these things, and we should give voice to them, because the truth matters.
I am sorry to hear that you have experienced such ongoing stress, and hope that your son’s friend has recovered from such a traumatic experience. Your son and his friends sound like great guys just trying to live their lives. Wishing them the best.
I think it’s great that you took the time to write this post. I wish more posters would write comprehensive reviews of what their student’s experience was actually like, surprises, etc.
Your point about New Haven is taken. Many less-known college towns/cities have interesting offerings off campus. I have nothing personally to do with Rochester. I know it has some excellent museums, a gorgeous park right near campus, good medical facilities, night life, music, restaurants, etc… and yes, unsafe areas too.
This confirms my gut feeling when my son was applying to Rochester/Eastman. We were there for a long weekend for another music related event. We live in Southern CT and frequent NYC so I am not spooked easily. First day there I was verbally assaulted for 3 blocks by a homeless man. It was VERY scary. I literally thought he was going to assault me. My son didn’t like the area at all and withdrew his application before he auditioned.
There probably isn’t a college or university located within an urban center that hasn’t experienced a significant period of high street crime. I attended a Penn grad school in the seventies and West Philly was a moody brew of resentment, panhandlers and worse. One mitigating factor was that it was incredibly easy to get around the city without a car, so that was one less asset to worry about. And very few people lived off-campus; Super Block had enough swing space to accommodate any program that needed a dedicated dorm (don’t ask me how we all survived without kitchens - big thanks to the Christian Association and to the privately funded Father Divine organization for cheap, site prepared, hot meals.) Eventually, a lot of these places, Penn included, just bulldozed the surrounding neighborhoods and created an entire academic/health sciences/tech zone around itself. Rochester may not have the money/gov’t funding necessary to do the same thing.
Thank you so much for posting this. I had been reading similar accounts on safety and the administration from reviews at Niche and other forums. S25 was considering but is no longer pursuing it.
The list of 45 most dangerous college campuses is worthless as it considers only absolute number of crimes without any regard to the size of the student body at each school.
