I decided to come to Rochester actually during my junior year of high school I
was planning to stay at home and I do medicine there but I decided to go into
biomedical engineering and or neuroscience my junior year I decided to
come to Rochester first of all because I I was very interested in studying music
and Eastman School for music was a huge plus for me there was a lot of things I did
take away after my college visit here but I definitely loved the campus I also
like the open curriculum I really enjoyed the local culture in the
community that was built within this campus Rochester is one of the top
research universities in the US and it ranks very high all over the world which
means that the students are very smart the professors are world-class research
scientists and that of course puts a lot of positive pressure on the student to
excel at his abilities I was gonna completely ignore the University of
Rochester having not heard of it before but at the time I was actually reading
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and I'm the kind of girl who falls in love with
fictional characters I fell in love with Mr. Rochester and so I decided to click
on the link instead of finding a back up school or just like a medium schools
that I wanted to apply to I pretty much inspired to apply here as my first
choice school I feel like at the beginning of orientation everyone was a
I feel like at the beginning of orientation everyone was a
little nervous everyone was a little insecure before orientation of my
impression of Rochester is definitely very tailored before orientation I just
thought oh this is a pretty campus maybe I'll like it but after orientation I was
absolutely 100% sure that this was the perfect school for me I think
orientation was the first time that you know a lot of my expectations were sort
of filled in with specific experiences I I was able to realize that it's a very
warm and welcoming community with all the help that the orientation volunteers
and the various staff and faculty have been able to do
I guess the thing that surprised me the most was the cold weather well I
expected it to be really cool but nothing like this
I hadn't really experienced this extreme cold before being from Jamaica Freshman
year was the first time I actually saw snow other than on TV it's not something
that really deterred me away from the college at all
I actually embraced it I love skiing I love snowboarding and got out to go and
do a lot of winter sports it surprised me when I first came to Rochester that I
realized it takes almost 7 hours to get to New York City what surprised me the
most was I guess the campus itself the architecture of the university it's a
very old University and I was really impressed by the the old style / Greek
architecture it was really majestic and you know I was kind of in a I was under
the impression for quite a while for the first two week or so
what surprised me the most when I came to Rochester was probably all the red
brick all around campus I had heard of the George Eastman myth I guess that he
had three prerequisites before donating a huge amount of money to our school and
I did know that the red brick building was one of them but I didn't think it
would be true and the fact that it was true was pretty amazing for me I was
initially expecting a small relatively suburban environment but when I stepped
out into the city of Rochester and on the campus of the University of
Rochester it gave a lot of diversity and I had a lot to offer that I wasn't
expecting
so my favorite place off campus is actually the Genesee Valley Park in the
Erie Canal I love running along the Erie Canal trail I've got into running lately
and it's something that I was able to do and get out and experience the city of
Rochester while still being surrounded by nature my favorite place in Rochester
is a Little Theatre in downtown Rochester it's absolutely beautiful it's
a nice little independent theater that shows indie films and flicks that aren't
usually in blockbuster theaters I love going there with my friends it's also
got a really quaint little cafe and it sells really great Chai Teas i would
definitely recommend it off campus I would say my favorite place is probably
dinosaur barbecue it's a restaurant it's a classic Rochester something that you
have to visit if you come to Rochester's my favourite spot would probably have to
be Java's it's a cafe there in Eastman I remember I was walking by there to go to
the tax office to fill out some paperwork, well because I'm an international
student so yeah I just came back went and grabbed a scone a cup of coffee and
it was just a nice morning