The Rochester Institute of Technology

Date: Mar 10 2014
Major: Art & Design Department (This Major's Salary over time)
As a cross-registered student at RIT, I wear a cochlear-implant and have grown up mainstreamed all my life- at RIT I truly have found a bridge between my two worlds, the "hearing" one I was in* but was constantly struggling to keep up with, and the "deaf community" I had always wondered about. Here, its truly the best of both worlds for me, some of the closest friends I have are also CI/hearing aid wearers with the same story as I, but we all interact so well with BOTH the "hearing" population and "deaf community" here. There's a common perception that the NTID school is made up of only "signers"- I admit i thought this at first, thus had to be really pushed by my parents to even look at RIT..now i'm SO grateful I did- but this is the furthest from the truth! The majority of us are actually cross-registered students, meaning attending regular classes at RIT as an RIT students, but with "NTID support" in the classrooms such as C-print, FM systems, note taking, etc. They offer forms of support I never even knew existed!

However, this being said, I highly advise those of you looking here with hearing impairments/deafness (I consider myself "deaf" with a "lowercase d", as we call it, but there's so many individual interpretations i'm just saying this to be safe) to BE CAREFUL. There is a HUGE difference between applying TO rit THROUGH NTID, and applying TO NTID- once you apply into NTID, and discover that all the professors (unfortunately even those who are oral) sign only and will literally force you to learn or understand sign, and you decide in panic that you need to get OUT and into RIT with the rest of us, it will be a long?.long?hassle.

I have several friends whose parents even threatened to sue with lawyers, and only then did NTID give them "permission"- apparently being sued won't look good for them. NTID will very likely try to convince your not to leave or even straight out tell you you "can't" (I was told this when trying to leave a NTID class that i mistakingly signed up for thinking it was a "NTID-supported class, the woman who talked to me got so upset every time I tried to sign because I was slow and couldn't understand her FAST signing, and wrote down, "see this is why you should not leave the class, you aren't capable of reading". EXCUSE ME?! I got a perfect score on my APs and ACT writing section!!)

just be careful!

Know that going into NTID you should only*** go if you are 100%*** a signer, or really REALLY ok with the sign-only environment. Its almost completely excluded from the RIT campus. And extremely difficult to "transfer" out of into RIT.