The Rochester Institute of Technology

Allow me to be frank, this is a horrendous school. The tuition does in no way justify the awful experience you will have here. This is why:

Faculty: All they want is money. It boils down to cash in every situation. At rit you truly are just a number, no one emails you back, no one is helpful, I've taken a leave of absence and it took 9 weeks for them to figure it out. I'm still waiting on the money, thats because my adviser had no idea how to do one, and the people at the registrars office told me the wrong process. Had I not lived in Rochester and drove over to the campus about 4 or 5 times to harangue them to get me my money, who knows what would have happend.

Education: They're ranked high. Who gives a shit. lots of schools are ranked high and don't cost 40k a year. co ops? who gives a shit. you can do coops any where. Now they're switching to semesters to make more money, have fun staying 5 or six years instead of 4, the administration is truly a bunch of soul sucking vampire assholes.

Students: The only good people here are the art, photo, liberal arts, and occasionally a few cool science and engineering people. Since the vast majority of the school is some sort of science major, everyone here is completely socially inept. You WILL encounter some of the rudest, most self absorbed, arrogant fuckfaces you can't even dream of. Seeing depressing, morbidly obese, wackjobs walking to class in bathrobes and talking about world of warcraft all day WILL make you depressed. you can try and laugh it off but eventually the lack of women and the crazies will get you. Bricks and dicks. Oh and ladies, if you want to come because of the insane amount of men, don't they're freeks you will regret it. There are some parties but there's no women here so they are aweful. and if you do go to one of the art kid parties where there are women, everyone just sits around playing apples to apples wearing ugly sweaters stoned while some depressing gay ass radio head song is playing off their apple i home.

Campus: Big and ugly. Windy, it sucks.
Rochester: A great city, but you have to know it. I was born here so I showed all my friends around the good parts. If you don't have a car you're fucked. RIT is in the most hideously ugly part of rochester.

Unless you're a computer nerd of the highest echelon, don't come here. Thank god i'm transferring. thank god

1st Year Male -- Class 2014

Campus Maintenance: A, Campus Aesthetics: F

I am hard-of-hearing and know the basics of American Sign Language. However, I'd just come out of a dry spell of having little to no interaction with people of the Deaf community for three years. So I was unable to feel completely comfortable conversing with Deaf people. The main reason I came to RIT was to have more interaction with Deaf people, but the experience was difficult for me because I could not just 'jump in' to any conversations. I did take ASL 1 my second semester, but by then it was too late to really get to know anyone better because they'd all made their social groups and weren't really looking for new members.

That's not to say Deaf people weren't generally polite to me. The vast majority were friendly to me and allowed me to sign and didn't interrupt me. However, my interactions with them were limited to 'hi, how are you' and I quickly became frustrated.

My hearing classmates were actually worse with interaction. At least with Deaf people I could hold a short conversation - with hearing people the moment they realized I had hearing loss, they tended to suddenly find other people to talk to. The exception was the interpreting majors. Other hearing people tended to not know what to do with me. Not that I was surprised by that, it was just rather sad that a school with so many Deaf people tends to be segregated into hearing and Deaf with not much of a middle ground.

I should add that it took me a while to realize that just because I wasn't having much success with making friends, didn't mean I had to ignore all opportunities on campus. I volunteered for a couple of events in the spring semester which were a lot of fun and made me feel like an actual person. You don't have to have friends to volunteer, you just need to show up and be polite and friendly. Another thing that kept me sane was Ballroom Dance Club. I was the only one with hearing loss in the club, but I enjoyed the dancing, which was something I'd always wanted to learn but hadn't had a chance to until then. However, the club tended to give me weird looks when I spoke up in club and it was very hard for me to have a conversation with them. But I was there for the dancing so I tried not to let it bother me too much.

Unfortunately, I never did find a 'group' where I fit in. That left a lot of emotional scarring. I was only majoring in Communications because it sort of had something to do with what I want to get into (publishing). But because I neither had friends nor a stimulating academic program, I will be transferring in the fall to a state school.If you are of a liberal arts mindset, I strongly encourage you to look elsewhere for a degree. I learned that tech school is really not the place to be if you have any interest in liberal arts, unless you are in the NTID program. The Communications major should only be considered if you know what it is exactly and know what you would do with it. Otherwise, look elsewhere for a degree. This is coming from a person with an associate's in English Literature. I plan to transfer to a state school to get my Bachelor's in English Literature, because I failed at RIT to get either a stimulating major or a social circle. The courses I took in the spring semester can be transferred to an English Literature major because they do have to offer some English Literature classes for general education. But the classes were not at the level that an English Literature major would find very stimulating.

1st Year Female -- Class 2017

Scholastic Success: A+, Education Quality: F

This one is for all those soon to be graduating high school seniors. It was only a short while ago when I was in your position, reading anything and everything I could about RIT and colleges in general. I used this website a lot and found most of the negative comments to be really amusing. "Could RIT really be that bad?" I often wondered to myself. Well after surviving two years there I can safely say yes.

THE SOCIAL LIFE: Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. The Frats are a joke. Thankfully the U of R is nearby and their Frats are real good at throwing parties. Most people at RIT keep to themselves. This place doesn't even have a football team, although the hockey team is good. There is very little sense of comraderie. The guy to girl ratio is awful and it has a big effect on the psyche of people attending the school. The parties suck because they are all big sausage fests. The Frats (that's you Triangle!) charge admission to their parties but then don't serve alcohol because it is a dry campus. Basically, if you are not into computer games, apparently World of Warcraft is God at this campus, then you are pretty much the odd man or woman out.

Classes: I transferred majors a couple times. My advice, If you are not sure what you want to major in start in the Explorer's program. I tried computer science and was in one of those learning group things where they have like 16 of the same students take all their courses together for the first year. Unfortunatley, the comp science students were introverted and snooty. Despite good efforts, I befriended one and the rest bowed down to World of Warcraft and other weird computer adventures.

**LISTEN CLOSE**
DO NOT go to this school if you are looking at anything in the liberal arts college.
Those classes are an extreme waste of time and money.
After learning the exact same thing in three classes I learned what a scam the communications program is.

Professors: Some are good. Some are awful. I had 3 that could not communicate effectively with me in the English language. In one of those courses, it was so frustrating I dropped it. I'm not afraid to give names. Felea, Lee, Kwon, Johnson, and Niemi cannot teach, I know from experience. Others are harsh, as in they give F's a lot, Cos and Johnson.

CO-OPS: For most majors this school requires you to co-op for as long as 5 quarters. In Advertising and Public Relations you need to co-op for two quarters. It is a real pain to land a co-op in this field. No one wants to pay you and the jobs are tedious. Thats is why liberal arts majors are a joke, employers frown upon them. I know this when I went to RIT's career fair and recieved blank stares from employers who did not seem to be hiring anyone in my field at all. Enough said.

**Quarter System Advice**
RIT goes against logic by having a retarded quarter system. It speeds things up and your breaks will never coincide, which is a BIG DEAL, with your friends who were smart enough to go to SUNY schools or any other colleges. This means you wont be partying when they are and when your ready to let loose they can't. Because all your credits will be based on the quarter system, rather than the semester system, it is a real pain to transfer out of RIT once you have started there. So if you do commit to RIT, you better be in for the long haul.

WEATHER: It sucks so bad in the winter. You will freeze your nuts off during Winter quarter. I commutted and the walk from the parking lots to classes is like the Bataan death march. Its far, its uphill, with wind blowing hard downhill and sideways. Cloudy, with little sun. Lots of Snow. The tour guides will lie to you and say Rochester is pleasant. It is from May to Oct, pretty much when you are not going to be there, but after that prepare for anything.

**RIT is dead on the weekends**
**If you do not have a car when you come to campus, make friends quickly with someone who does**
***RIT is a weird place, and not in a good way. It is not the normal college experience that most people expect to have. Its straight academics and hardly any play. Sorry, computer games don't count. Straight academics for four straight years will break most poeple unless you one of the super weird kids who attend this school. Long hair and long facial hair. You'll spot them in an instant. The majority of girls are ugly.***

DEAF CULTURE: There are a lot of Deaf people on campus because of NTID. They share in all the classes of the regular students, and if they are in your class you will be seeing an interpreter. They will constantly be waving their fingers and hands and you will notice this out of the corner of your eye when you are really just trying to pay attention in class. It is annoying. If you see a cute girl on campus there is a catch, she is deaf. Haha.

Dorms: Clean, Newer. Where people confine themselves to their computers for hours on end.

THIS SCHOOL IS EXPENSIVE!!! I paid my own way but there are plenty of privelaged people who go here and don't seem to give a shit about going here and learning nothing because Mommy and Daddy are footing the bill. This school likes to leave large gaps, thousands of dollars in your financial aid package that you just magically have to come up with. Expect to reach into and deplete your college savings or else expect to take out loans if you want to come here. For the rest of us, there a greener pastures, ones that will not leave us tens of thousands of dollars in debt after we leave with a worthless degree from RIT (ignore this if you have your master's or a degree in engineering of computers). This college seems ok from the outside, even when you come by for a visit. But when you combine all the aforementioned truths about RIT you will soon realize what a crock of shit this so called great school is. Thankfully, I got out after two years, so I can save the other two years of my life from the desparing, broken hearted feel of RIT. **Please do not take lightly this review. It is the dead honest truth. I highly advise that you not attend this school. If you are the type who doesn't like to make new friends or you know you're just a weird ass, then go here. Otherwise, save your time, money, and go somewhere you can make friends, meet a few decent ladies, but also get a well rounded education.**

2nd Year Male -- Class 2007

Perceived Campus Safety: A+, Individual Value: F