Campus Life

The University of Rochester’s incoming Class of 2022 is shaping up to be the institution’s most selective ever, with a 29.6 percent acceptance rate, drawn from a record 20,243 applicants.

Each year, seniors in the College are invited to nominate a high school teacher who has made a lasting impact on the personal and academic growth of their students. Meet the Singer Family Prize winners for 2018.

Upperclass volunteer mentors begin reaching out to new international students the summer their arrival in Rochester, and serve as a resource regarding U.S. culture and academics during their first year.

Nine of the seniors graduating with the Class of 2018 came to Rochester from Washington, D.C., in 2014 via the Posse Foundation, which identifies high school students with extraordinary academic potential.

Each year, the Office of Parent and Family Relations invites seniors to pen a note to honor their parents and families. We share a small sampling of messages from the Class of 2018 here.

Joshua Hill ’18, a political science and English dual major from Penfield, New York, shares some of the knowledge he’s gathered as a student at Rochester.

Four years ago, as we sat together as a class on the quad during Convocation, none of us could have imagined how many experiences, challenges, and opportunities we would find over the course of our time here.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Matthew Lyskawa ’18 saw no purpose in school. But a teacher saw a spark and lit the fire that set Lyskawa on his journey, first to community college, then Rochester, and now to begin a doctoral program in philosophy at Harvard.

For the Michigan native graduating with dual degrees from the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Eastman School of Music, Ivan Suminski found himself in an enviable dilemma.

Rochester native Cherish Blackman has always had a knack for languages. “I wanted to study languages that weren’t very close to English,” she recalls. The double major in Russian and East Asian studies is heading to China next year, but is bringing her Spanish books with her.

Anya Khalid came to the University without having ever coded in her life—but she was eager to get in on the ground floor of the new undergraduate major in data science. Now the Washington, D.C., resident is graduating with degree in economics as well, bound for Seattle and a job as a data analytics consultant.

From saxophonist to student government treasurer, to internships at BASF, SpaceX, and Ernst & Young, C.J. Van Huben has packed a lot into four years. “I had a feeling I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to be put in a box,” the financial economics major says. “The open curriculum was perfect for me.”