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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]a few observations:

- "location" is basically a backdrop to (just) four years of college.   No one is expecting any college student to buy property there, live there forever, or write glowing articles about their college town for travel media.   Location is an obsession of this website only because so many of the commenters don't actually know much about the colleges involved or even about higher education generally, so in their ignorance they instead obsess over USNWR rankings and climate.

- for many, a mid-sized city of about one million -- like Rochester -- is the perfect location for college.  More choices for entertainment and shopping than a small town setting provides, plus the diversity of an urban community and the opportunity for jobs/internships -- but not the crazy congestion, distraction or prices of being in a major metropolis.    DCUM families may reasonably prefer to spend their vacation weekends in New York City than in Rochester -- but that's kind of irrelevant to where you want to go to college.

-- Rochester is a uniquely attractive mid-size city.   Indeed, many non-natives who have transferred there for work or education -- ie, people who have no particular allegiance to the area -- really like it.  It has a prosperous history, and a legacy of good cultural institutions and impressive architecture and charming neighborhoods, and while it's not the corporate headquarters site it once was, it's still one of the best educated metro areas in the northeast (and country).  It also hosts, depending on how you count, between 50 and 80 thousand students, so the notion that "there's nothing for students to do there" is not just erroneous but suggests that the market is uniquely dysfunctional in Rochester and that demand from tens of thousands of students goes unmet.

- DCUM commenters don't merely fixate on silly, incorrect or irrelevant issues related to colleges -- but they're also biased and inconsistent in their application.    Virtually no place has a perfect climate -- there are drawbacks to the climate everywhere.   But for some college locations, opinionated DCUM commenters argue at length that the climate should be disqualifying, whereas for other colleges with only slightly 'better' climates, or with other entirely different climate drawbacks, it's never mentioned as a factor.  Why the inconsistency?   Similarly, some locations whether urban or rural "develop" a bad rep among some noisy DCUM commenters (often but not exclusively linked to race, so that's not the only possible explantion), while other equally charmless or depressed cities, or equally remote and tiny rural settings, get a pass.  Again, why the inconsistency?  Bottom line: what's one sees on DCUM isn't authoritative analysis but just noise, mostly by the ignorant.

I have no connection to the U of R (apart from knowing people who went there quite happily), but have been a repeated (non-native) visitor to Rochester.   It's a very nice city.    It would be a nice place to go to school.   If your kid can't tolerate a few cold or cloudy winters while getting a great education, that's your issue -- but then don't pretend you're interested in the best possible education.

[/quote]

I was pleasantly surprised when we visited.  Yes, it's not the Rochester of the 80s/90s with Kodak was King.

At first I was worried my kid liked it simply because the college visit prior was RPI, and they really really really did not like Troy NY---it was a visceral reaction of "no we really don't need to tour because there is no way in hell I'm spending 4 years in this tiny town".  And I tended to agree.  So I was not sure whether my kid really liked rochester or just thought it was 1000x better than Troy.  But our next visit demonstrated that yes, it really is a town my kid likes.  There is a lot to do for college kids, and in reality, how much do college kids actually go "off campus" each semester.  Most of the activities are on campus/near campus (frat parties/off campus parties)---in reality most kids leave campus maybe once on the weekends---otherwise they are busy studying/attending class and socializing with the hundreds of clubs/activities available on campus.  But Rochester has some really nice areas.  The Park Ave area is a really cute area with tons of restaurants and little local shops.  A trip to the Big Wegmans is always an experience and one that college kids love to make a trip out of, and I think the UR busses go there all day on Sunday---on Sat the busses go to Henrietta shopping areas. I'd say my kid goes off campus 2-3x per month and for a college kid there is plenty of fun stuff to do.

So once someone can get over the fact that Rochester is not Boston or anything like it and really look at what it is, you realize it's a great place to spend 4 or 5 years.  There is minor league baseball and the games are cheap to attend.  You have Eastman and all of it's concerts for anyone into the arts/music scene.  Sure, my kid has no desire to remain in Rochester post graduation, but they wouldn't want to remain where they went to college if they attended WashU, Vanderbilt, Emory, RPI, Cornell, or a lot of other Top schools either.  Fact is my kid is 10 min Uber ride from the airport, and really a 10-20 min uber ride from any activities they would want in the rochester area.  [/quote]

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