<ol>
<li>Neal Francis Lane, AKA the Science Advisor for Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton was really into Black Holes and Dark matter</li>
</ol>
<p>[Neal</a> Francis Lane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Francis_Lane]Neal”>Neal Francis Lane - Wikipedia)</p>
<ol>
<li>Best-looking Spanish architecture of any college campus</li>
<li>Has one of the highest endowment per student ratio</li>
<li>#1 quality of life according to Princeton Review’s 2010 rankings</li>
<li>#11 class/racial interaction- also according to Princeton Review’s 2010 rankings</li>
<li>The full sticker price is cheaper than the peer institutions (i.e. Ivies, Duke, Stanford, WashU, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, etc. It is ranked #4 by Kiplinger’s magazine and #7 by USA Today/Princeton Review for Best Value Private College.</li>
<li>The second smallest AAU research university in the country</li>
<li>Shepherd School of Music- one of the best music schools in the country</li>
<li>Residential college system</li>
<li>Very close access to the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical center</li>
<li>Champion Baseball team- beat Stanford in the College World Series in 2003</li>
<li>Amazing professors that are, for the most part, dedicated to undergraduates</li>
<li>Home to one of the nation’s first nanoscience university institutes – buckministerfullerene (aka “bucky balls,” the 3rd form of carbon) was discovered at Rice University by eventual Nobel Prize winning professors Richard Smalley and Robert Curl</li>
<li>The talented, quirky, and down-to-earth student body</li>
<li>Its location in the nation’s 4th largest city (soon to be the 3rd largest city), Houston</li>
<li>The opportunity to apply for the very selective Rice-Baylor College of Medicine 8 year medical program</li>
<li>“Southern Ivy”</li>
<li>3 light rail stops close to campus</li>
<li>300 acre downtown campus</li>
<li>Rice Village, a Houston shopping attraction, is within walking distance. The Galleria, the nation’s 7th largest shopping mall, is only a 15-20 minute drive from campus.</li>
<li>The intellectual nature of the students – students here are not afraid to be nerdy or quirky.</li>
<li>Small number of people: approximately 3300 undergraduates and 2300 graduate/PhD students.</li>
<li>Accessible administration that cares for the students</li>
<li>The George R. Brown School of Engineering and its facilities- Oshman Design Kitchen, Duncan Hall, and the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC).</li>
<li>The Marching Owl Band (MOB)</li>
<li>Produced the only PhD to quarterback an NFL champion.</li>
<li>Loads of fun</li>
<li>Yummy ethnic food restaurants in Rice Village- Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese- you name it!</li>
<li>John Hutchinson’s Introduction to General Chemistry course, John Ambler’s Introduction to Comparative Politics course, and Raquel Gaytan’s Intermediate/Advanced Spanish courses.</li>
<li>Warm weather… At how many other top universities can you wear shorts in the middle of January?</li>
<li>Only university to host both the Superbowl and the G7 summit</li>
<li>Baker Institute speakers- Rice has hosted Vladimir Putin, Yassar Arafat, Saudi Princes, the President of India, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Tom Brokaw, John McCain, Alberto Gonzalez, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Alberto Gonzalez (a Rice alum!), and many other prominent leaders and thinkers.</li>
<li>The friendly Dining staff at all the serveries, including Chef Rogers and Chris the hamburger guy.</li>
<li>Rice has the most certified chefs in its Housing and Dining department than any other university, which means delicious and wholesome cafeteria food.</li>
<li>Passport to Houston perks (free light rail and bus passes, free admission to the Houston Zoo, and discounted museum/theater/symphony tickets)</li>
<li>$5 tickets to the Astros</li>
<li>Rice Honor Code</li>
<li>The annual Screw Yer Roommate activity-- roommate sets you up with a blind date.</li>
<li>The Outer Loop- an excellent walking/running path used by Rice students and Houstonians alike</li>
<li>Jarett Dillard</li>
<li>Azalaes that bloom around campus in the spring time</li>
<li>Being in Texas for Blue Bell Ice Cream</li>
<li>Having school colors be the same as the Ravenclaw house colors in Harry Potter</li>
<li>The hip-shaking music videos on YouTube when you type in “Rice University”- Chemistry Professor and Dean of Undergraduates Dr. Hutchinson is dancing in a scene with his wife</li>
<li>40,000 single males more than single females in Houston.</li>
<li>So many study breaks with free food!</li>
<li>O-week.</li>
<li>Competitive Powderpuff</li>
<li>Beer-Bike accompanied by one of the world’s largest water balloon fights (unverified by Guinness World Records)</li>
<li>House of Pies is a 5 minute drive from campus</li>
<li>RUPD- these are cool, chill full-licensed cops that love to strike conversations with students</li>
<li>Rice Coffeehouse</li>
<li>Mike Gustin’s Bio class.</li>
<li>Club Sports are so easy to join.</li>
<li>Competing in the residential college intermural teams makes you feel like you are competing for the House Cup in Harry Potter.</li>
<li>Clubs for everyone’s interests.</li>
<li>The 180, 45 and 90 in the engineering quad… lots of fun to climb</li>
<li>Thresher newspaper - consistently wins awards for student journalism</li>
<li>NOD- a large underwear party that was described as one of the best college parties by Playboy in the 1980s</li>
<li>Baker 13</li>
<li>Willy’s Pub and its Waffle Nights</li>
<li>Piece of the Berlin Wall on campus</li>
<li>Prof. Dennis Huston’s (won a National Professor of the Year award in 1988) humanities and public speaking classes</li>
<li>Pres. Kennedy gave his “going to the moon” speech at Rice (“Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon, and do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”)</li>
<li>Itzhak Perlman, whom many consider to be the world’s premier violinist, has conducted and played at the Shephard School where his daughter graduated from last year. He dubbed it the second best school for orchestral studies behind the famed Juilliard</li>
<li>Collaboration over competition amongst students</li>
<li>Larry Izzo, 3-Time Super Bowl Champ with the New England Patriots, was an All American at Rice</li>
<li>Lance Berkman, 4-time All-Star with the Houston Astros and all-around good guy, was an All-American at Rice.</li>
<li>The zoo is very close (I don’t know. I just like zoos)</li>
<li>Opportunity to have classes outside (but don’t expect this to happen more than twice each year… the admissions literature is a bit misleading)</li>
<li>Easy/flexible distribution requirements</li>
<li>Easy to double, triple, or even quadruple major as result of #70</li>
<li>Humanitarian Medical Outreach (HuMed) and their service trips abroad</li>
<li>It is after all “RICE UNIVERSITY”- how many other schools have the same name as a common food staple?</li>
<li>When I go back home and wear Rice t-shirts, some people think I’m wearing a food t-shirt.</li>
<li>Sammy the Owl</li>
<li>Wonderful Live Oak trees- one for every student</li>
<li>The entire Rice campus (minus the parking lot and stadium) is designated as an arboretum-- so cool to go to school in a park!</li>
<li>Generous Merit Aid (thank you, Rice!)- given to 30% of incoming freshmen students. Very few schools (with the exception of maybe WashU, Emory, or Vandy) of Rice’s caliber are as generous with merit aid.</li>
<li>Students are friendly, and great to prefrosh</li>
<li>The ENORMOUS squirrels (some are as big as cats!). Everything is in fact big in Texas!</li>
<li>reminds me of the food (rice)</li>
<li>The “box” on the admissions application</li>
<li>Very aesthetically pleasing website!</li>
<li>They have a really close-knit alumni network.</li>
<li>The amazing events available on the campus calendar. Today alone there was…Check out the campus calendar for an amazing banquet of intellectual and fun offerings!</li>
<li>Project Runway winner Chloe Dao’s boutique is just a stone throw away. Lot 8</li>
<li>At one point in time, Rice owned Yankee Stadium</li>
<li>Emphasis on undergraduates (only a business school for professional schools; relatively few graduate students).</li>
<li>Free cable (apparently Cornell doesn’t have it!)</li>
<li>Nothing like walking through the random Houston downpours (when it rains, it REALLY DOES POUR LIKE NONE OTHER).</li>
<li>Gives Merit Aid to Internationals!!</li>
<li>One of only a few colleges that are part of the Jetro (Japanese Trade Organization) internship project. Spend a summer in Japan with an Internship!</li>
<li>President Leebron is constantly invited to the prestigious conference hosted to build relations between the top American and top Chinese universities.</li>
<li>Loans are capped at no more than $10,000 total for entire 4 years (less if your income is below a certain level).</li>
<li>“A survey of more than two dozen of the most prestigious universities (including the Ivies) in the nation showed that more Rice seniors win admission to their first-choice graduate school than do students from any other university” - this from a published history of Rice by a professor of history, in reference to a survey in the mid 1990s</li>
<li>Rice is 1st in the percentage of students that go on to win National Science Fellowships {taken from Facebook}</li>
<li>Free laundry</li>
<li>5:1 student:teacher ratio</li>
<li>Free Campanile yearbooks</li>
<li>It’s one of the few CC forums to actually finish 100 reasons!</li>
<li>Air conditioning in every single campus building</li>
<li>Fairy Fountain- nothing like getting thrown in it on your birthday if you are in one of the North Colleges (i.e. Brown or Jones).</li>
<li>Nearby Theatre and Museum District in Houston</li>
<li>Hermann Park- one of the nation’s largest metropolitan parks</li>
<li>More trees on campus than undergraduates</li>
<li>Bacchanalia</li>
<li>80s Party with music from Houston’s best live 80s cover band</li>
<li>Angelika movie theatre (which sometimes gives discounts to Rice students)
109 Very generous with taking AP credits</li>
<li>The fact that there are more than 101 reasons to attend Rice!
111 Lazar Greenfield M.D. Inventor of the Greenfield Inferior Vena Cava Filter and Author of Greenfield’s Surgery is an alum.</li>
<li>Reading a list like this almost 20 yrs after graduation still makes you feel proud.</li>
<li>Giant diplomas.</li>
<li>Excellent graduation rate, even among Division one athletes (assuming it still is)</li>
<li>Up to 3 vanity emails - I’ve never heard of any other school being that generous</li>
<li>Has the BEST virtual tour!</li>
<li>Rice held the 16th G7 Summit (Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations) in 1990</li>
<li>Rice Stadium hosted the 1972 Super Bowl between Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins… only one other university stadium has every hosted a Super Bowl.</li>
<li>President George H.W. Bush was an adjunct professor at Rice’s Jones School of Management and a community associate at Rice’s Lovett College before becoming Vice-President of the United States.</li>
<li>Rice owns a tree farm in Louisiana.</li>
<li>Rice is on the Main Street, on which 4 Universities situated, UHD-Rice-UT Houston-Baylor Med.</li>
<li>Rice students are truly kind, friendly, and exceptionally smart people to know – and their parents are nice, too.</li>
<li>Ranked #4 by the Daily Beast and #8 for happiest students by the 2010 Princeton Review college guidebook.</li>
<li>One of the few top universities that has an English motto (“Letters. Science. Art”). </li>
<li>The Hoot</li>
<li>Having a sushi and Indian restaurant right next to each other at Rice Village (yum…)</li>
<li>NASA’s 40 minutes away</li>
<li>Baker 13 run: bunch of boys running around campus naked during Halloween. I’ll be watching from my dorm room with binoculars that night…he he</li>
<li>Tex-Mex on the beach (now that ZipCar is on campus)</li>
<li>Neal Francis Lane, AKA the Science Advisor for Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton was really into Black Holes and Dark matter</li>
<li>Vision 2011!</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Best-looking Spanish architecture of any college campus</li>
<li>Has one of the highest endowment per student ratio</li>
<li>#1 quality of life according to Princeton Review’s 2010 rankings</li>
<li>#11 class/racial interaction- also according to Princeton Review’s 2010 rankings</li>
<li>The full sticker price is cheaper than the peer institutions (i.e. Ivies, Duke, Stanford, WashU, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, etc. It is ranked #4 by Kiplinger’s magazine and #7 by USA Today/Princeton Review for Best Value Private College.</li>
<li>The second smallest AAU research university in the country</li>
<li>Shepherd School of Music- one of the best music schools in the country</li>
<li>Residential college system</li>
<li>Very close access to the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical center</li>
<li>Champion Baseball team- beat Stanford in the College World Series in 2003</li>
<li>Amazing professors that are, for the most part, dedicated to undergraduates</li>
<li>Home to one of the nation’s first nanoscience university institutes – buckministerfullerene (aka “bucky balls,” the 3rd form of carbon) was discovered at Rice University by eventual Nobel Prize winning professors Richard Smalley and Robert Curl</li>
<li>The talented, quirky, and down-to-earth student body</li>
<li>Its location in the nation’s 4th largest city (soon to be the 3rd largest city), Houston</li>
<li>The opportunity to apply for the very selective Rice-Baylor College of Medicine 8 year medical program</li>
<li>“Southern Ivy”</li>
<li>3 light rail stops close to campus</li>
<li>300 acre downtown campus</li>
<li>Rice Village, a Houston shopping attraction, is within walking distance. The Galleria, the nation’s 7th largest shopping mall, is only a 15-20 minute drive from campus.</li>
<li>The intellectual nature of the students – students here are not afraid to be nerdy or quirky.</li>
<li>Small number of people: approximately 3300 undergraduates and 2300 graduate/PhD students.</li>
<li>Accessible administration that cares for the students</li>
<li>The George R. Brown School of Engineering and its facilities- Oshman Design Kitchen, Duncan Hall, and the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC).</li>
<li>The Marching Owl Band (MOB)</li>
<li>Produced the only PhD to quarterback an NFL champion.</li>
<li>Loads of fun</li>
<li>Yummy ethnic food restaurants in Rice Village- Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese- you name it!</li>
<li>John Hutchinson’s Introduction to General Chemistry course, John Ambler’s Introduction to Comparative Politics course, and Raquel Gaytan’s Intermediate/Advanced Spanish courses.</li>
<li>Warm weather… At how many other top universities can you wear shorts in the middle of January?</li>
<li>Only university to host both the Superbowl and the G7 summit</li>
<li>Baker Institute speakers- Rice has hosted Vladimir Putin, Yassar Arafat, Saudi Princes, the President of India, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Tom Brokaw, John McCain, Alberto Gonzalez, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Alberto Gonzalez (a Rice alum!), and many other prominent leaders and thinkers.</li>
<li>The friendly Dining staff at all the serveries, including Chef Rogers and Chris the hamburger guy.</li>
<li>Rice has the most certified chefs in its Housing and Dining department than any other university, which means delicious and wholesome cafeteria food.</li>
<li>Passport to Houston perks (free light rail and bus passes, free admission to the Houston Zoo, and discounted museum/theater/symphony tickets)</li>
<li>$5 tickets to the Astros</li>
<li>Rice Honor Code</li>
<li>The annual Screw Yer Roommate activity-- roommate sets you up with a blind date.</li>
<li>The Outer Loop- an excellent walking/running path used by Rice students and Houstonians alike</li>
<li>Jarett Dillard</li>
<li>Azalaes that bloom around campus in the spring time</li>
<li>Being in Texas for Blue Bell Ice Cream</li>
<li>Having school colors be the same as the Ravenclaw house colors in Harry Potter</li>
<li>The hip-shaking music videos on YouTube when you type in “Rice University”- Chemistry Professor and Dean of Undergraduates Dr. Hutchinson is dancing in a scene with his wife</li>
<li>40,000 single males more than single females in Houston.</li>
<li>So many study breaks with free food!</li>
<li>O-week.</li>
<li>Competitive Powderpuff</li>
<li>Beer-Bike accompanied by one of the world’s largest water balloon fights (unverified by Guinness World Records)</li>
<li>House of Pies is a 5 minute drive from campus</li>
<li>RUPD- these are cool, chill full-licensed cops that love to strike conversations with students</li>
<li>Rice Coffeehouse</li>
<li>Mike Gustin’s Bio class.</li>
<li>Club Sports are so easy to join.</li>
<li>Competing in the residential college intermural teams makes you feel like you are competing for the House Cup in Harry Potter.</li>
<li>Clubs for everyone’s interests.</li>
<li>The 180, 45 and 90 in the engineering quad… lots of fun to climb</li>
<li>Thresher newspaper - consistently wins awards for student journalism</li>
<li>NOD- a large underwear party that was described as one of the best college parties by Playboy in the 1980s</li>
<li>Baker 13</li>
<li>Willy’s Pub and its Waffle Nights</li>
<li>Piece of the Berlin Wall on campus</li>
<li>Prof. Dennis Huston’s (won a National Professor of the Year award in 1988) humanities and public speaking classes</li>
<li>Pres. Kennedy gave his “going to the moon” speech at Rice (“Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon, and do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”)</li>
<li>Itzhak Perlman, whom many consider to be the world’s premier violinist, has conducted and played at the Shephard School where his daughter graduated from last year. He dubbed it the second best school for orchestral studies behind the famed Juilliard</li>
<li>Collaboration over competition amongst students</li>
<li>Larry Izzo, 3-Time Super Bowl Champ with the New England Patriots, was an All American at Rice</li>
<li>Lance Berkman, 4-time All-Star with the Houston Astros and all-around good guy, was an All-American at Rice.</li>
<li>The zoo is very close (I don’t know. I just like zoos)</li>
<li>Opportunity to have classes outside (but don’t expect this to happen more than twice each year… the admissions literature is a bit misleading)</li>
<li>Easy/flexible distribution requirements</li>
<li>Easy to double, triple, or even quadruple major as result of #70</li>
<li>Humanitarian Medical Outreach (HuMed) and their service trips abroad</li>
<li>It is after all “RICE UNIVERSITY”- how many other schools have the same name as a common food staple?</li>
<li>When I go back home and wear Rice t-shirts, some people think I’m wearing a food t-shirt.</li>
<li>Sammy the Owl</li>
<li>Wonderful Live Oak trees- one for every student</li>
<li>The entire Rice campus (minus the parking lot and stadium) is designated as an arboretum-- so cool to go to school in a park!</li>
<li>Generous Merit Aid (thank you, Rice!)- given to 30% of incoming freshmen students. Very few schools (with the exception of maybe WashU, Emory, or Vandy) of Rice’s caliber are as generous with merit aid.</li>
<li>Students are friendly, and great to prefrosh</li>
<li>The ENORMOUS squirrels (some are as big as cats!). Everything is in fact big in Texas!</li>
<li>reminds me of the food (rice)</li>
<li>The “box” on the admissions application</li>
<li>Very aesthetically pleasing website!</li>
<li>They have a really close-knit alumni network.</li>
<li>The amazing events available on the campus calendar. Today alone there was…Check out the campus calendar for an amazing banquet of intellectual and fun offerings!</li>
<li>Project Runway winner Chloe Dao’s boutique is just a stone throw away. Lot 8</li>
<li>At one point in time, Rice owned Yankee Stadium</li>
<li>Emphasis on undergraduates (only a business school for professional schools; relatively few graduate students).</li>
<li>Free cable (apparently Cornell doesn’t have it!)</li>
<li>Nothing like walking through the random Houston downpours (when it rains, it REALLY DOES POUR LIKE NONE OTHER).</li>
<li>Gives Merit Aid to Internationals!!</li>
<li>One of only a few colleges that are part of the Jetro (Japanese Trade Organization) internship project. Spend a summer in Japan with an Internship!</li>
<li>President Leebron is constantly invited to the prestigious conference hosted to build relations between the top American and top Chinese universities.</li>
<li>Loans are capped at no more than $10,000 total for entire 4 years (less if your income is below a certain level).</li>
<li>“A survey of more than two dozen of the most prestigious universities (including the Ivies) in the nation showed that more Rice seniors win admission to their first-choice graduate school than do students from any other university” - this from a published history of Rice by a professor of history, in reference to a survey in the mid 1990s</li>
<li>Rice is 1st in the percentage of students that go on to win National Science Fellowships {taken from Facebook}</li>
<li>Free laundry</li>
<li>5:1 student:teacher ratio</li>
<li>Free Campanile yearbooks</li>
<li>It’s one of the few CC forums to actually finish 100 reasons!</li>
<li>Air conditioning in every single campus building</li>
<li>Fairy Fountain- nothing like getting thrown in it on your birthday if you are in one of the North Colleges (i.e. Brown or Jones).</li>
<li>Nearby Theatre and Museum District in Houston</li>
<li>Hermann Park- one of the nation’s largest metropolitan parks</li>
<li>More trees on campus than undergraduates</li>
<li>Bacchanalia</li>
<li>80s Party with music from Houston’s best live 80s cover band</li>
<li>Angelika movie theatre (which sometimes gives discounts to Rice students)
109 Very generous with taking AP credits</li>
<li>The fact that there are more than 101 reasons to attend Rice!
111 Lazar Greenfield M.D. Inventor of the Greenfield Inferior Vena Cava Filter and Author of Greenfield’s Surgery is an alum.</li>
<li>Reading a list like this almost 20 yrs after graduation still makes you feel proud.</li>
<li>Giant diplomas.</li>
<li>Excellent graduation rate, even among Division one athletes (assuming it still is)</li>
<li>Up to 3 vanity emails - I’ve never heard of any other school being that generous</li>
<li>Has the BEST virtual tour!</li>
<li>Rice held the 16th G7 Summit (Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations) in 1990</li>
<li>Rice Stadium hosted the 1972 Super Bowl between Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins… only one other university stadium has every hosted a Super Bowl.</li>
<li>President George H.W. Bush was an adjunct professor at Rice’s Jones School of Management and a community associate at Rice’s Lovett College before becoming Vice-President of the United States.</li>
<li>Rice owns a tree farm in Louisiana.</li>
<li>Rice is on the Main Street, on which 4 Universities situated, UHD-Rice-UT Houston-Baylor Med.</li>
<li>Rice students are truly kind, friendly, and exceptionally smart people to know – and their parents are nice, too.</li>
<li>Ranked #4 by the Daily Beast and #8 for happiest students by the 2010 Princeton Review college guidebook.</li>
<li>One of the few top universities that has an English motto (“Letters. Science. Art”).</li>
<li>The Hoot</li>
<li>Having a sushi and Indian restaurant right next to each other at Rice Village (yum…)</li>
<li>NASA’s 40 minutes away</li>
<li>Baker 13 run: bunch of boys running around campus naked during Halloween. I’ll be watching from my dorm room with binoculars that night…he he</li>
<li>Tex-Mex on the beach (now that ZipCar is on campus)</li>
<li>Neal Francis Lane, AKA the Science Advisor for Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton was really into Black Holes and Dark matter</li>
<li>Vision 2011! </li>
<li>Me (gotRice)</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Best-looking Spanish architecture of any college campus</li>
<li>Has one of the highest endowment per student ratio</li>
<li>#1 quality of life according to Princeton Review’s 2010 rankings</li>
<li>#11 class/racial interaction- also according to Princeton Review’s 2010 rankings</li>
<li>The full sticker price is cheaper than the peer institutions (i.e. Ivies, Duke, Stanford, WashU, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, etc. It is ranked #4 by Kiplinger’s magazine and #7 by USA Today/Princeton Review for Best Value Private College.</li>
<li>The second smallest AAU research university in the country</li>
<li>Shepherd School of Music- one of the best music schools in the country</li>
<li>Residential college system</li>
<li>Very close access to the Texas Medical Center, the world’s largest medical center</li>
<li>Champion Baseball team- beat Stanford in the College World Series in 2003</li>
<li>Amazing professors that are, for the most part, dedicated to undergraduates</li>
<li>Home to one of the nation’s first nanoscience university institutes – buckministerfullerene (aka “bucky balls,” the 3rd form of carbon) was discovered at Rice University by eventual Nobel Prize winning professors Richard Smalley and Robert Curl</li>
<li>The talented, quirky, and down-to-earth student body</li>
<li>Its location in the nation’s 4th largest city (soon to be the 3rd largest city), Houston</li>
<li>The opportunity to apply for the very selective Rice-Baylor College of Medicine 8 year medical program</li>
<li>“Southern Ivy”</li>
<li>3 light rail stops close to campus</li>
<li>300 acre downtown campus</li>
<li>Rice Village, a Houston shopping attraction, is within walking distance. The Galleria, the nation’s 7th largest shopping mall, is only a 15-20 minute drive from campus.</li>
<li>The intellectual nature of the students – students here are not afraid to be nerdy or quirky.</li>
<li>Small number of people: approximately 3300 undergraduates and 2300 graduate/PhD students.</li>
<li>Accessible administration that cares for the students</li>
<li>The George R. Brown School of Engineering and its facilities- Oshman Design Kitchen, Duncan Hall, and the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC).</li>
<li>The Marching Owl Band (MOB)</li>
<li>Produced the only PhD to quarterback an NFL champion.</li>
<li>Loads of fun</li>
<li>Yummy ethnic food restaurants in Rice Village- Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese- you name it!</li>
<li>John Hutchinson’s Introduction to General Chemistry course, John Ambler’s Introduction to Comparative Politics course, and Raquel Gaytan’s Intermediate/Advanced Spanish courses.</li>
<li>Warm weather… At how many other top universities can you wear shorts in the middle of January?</li>
<li>Only university to host both the Superbowl and the G7 summit</li>
<li>Baker Institute speakers- Rice has hosted Vladimir Putin, Yassar Arafat, Saudi Princes, the President of India, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Tom Brokaw, John McCain, Alberto Gonzalez, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, Alberto Gonzalez (a Rice alum!), and many other prominent leaders and thinkers.</li>
<li>The friendly Dining staff at all the serveries, including Chef Rogers and Chris the hamburger guy.</li>
<li>Rice has the most certified chefs in its Housing and Dining department than any other university, which means delicious and wholesome cafeteria food.</li>
<li>Passport to Houston perks (free light rail and bus passes, free admission to the Houston Zoo, and discounted museum/theater/symphony tickets)</li>
<li>$5 tickets to the Astros</li>
<li>Rice Honor Code</li>
<li>The annual Screw Yer Roommate activity-- roommate sets you up with a blind date.</li>
<li>The Outer Loop- an excellent walking/running path used by Rice students and Houstonians alike</li>
<li>Jarett Dillard</li>
<li>Azalaes that bloom around campus in the spring time</li>
<li>Being in Texas for Blue Bell Ice Cream</li>
<li>Having school colors be the same as the Ravenclaw house colors in Harry Potter</li>
<li>The hip-shaking music videos on YouTube when you type in “Rice University”- Chemistry Professor and Dean of Undergraduates Dr. Hutchinson is dancing in a scene with his wife</li>
<li>40,000 single males more than single females in Houston.</li>
<li>So many study breaks with free food!</li>
<li>O-week.</li>
<li>Competitive Powderpuff</li>
<li>Beer-Bike accompanied by one of the world’s largest water balloon fights (unverified by Guinness World Records)</li>
<li>House of Pies is a 5 minute drive from campus</li>
<li>RUPD- these are cool, chill full-licensed cops that love to strike conversations with students</li>
<li>Rice Coffeehouse</li>
<li>Mike Gustin’s Bio class.</li>
<li>Club Sports are so easy to join.</li>
<li>Competing in the residential college intermural teams makes you feel like you are competing for the House Cup in Harry Potter.</li>
<li>Clubs for everyone’s interests.</li>
<li>The 180, 45 and 90 in the engineering quad… lots of fun to climb</li>
<li>Thresher newspaper - consistently wins awards for student journalism</li>
<li>NOD- a large underwear party that was described as one of the best college parties by Playboy in the 1980s</li>
<li>Baker 13</li>
<li>Willy’s Pub and its Waffle Nights</li>
<li>Piece of the Berlin Wall on campus</li>
<li>Prof. Dennis Huston’s (won a National Professor of the Year award in 1988) humanities and public speaking classes</li>
<li>Pres. Kennedy gave his “going to the moon” speech at Rice (“Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon, and do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”)</li>
<li>Itzhak Perlman, whom many consider to be the world’s premier violinist, has conducted and played at the Shephard School where his daughter graduated from last year. He dubbed it the second best school for orchestral studies behind the famed Juilliard</li>
<li>Collaboration over competition amongst students</li>
<li>Larry Izzo, 3-Time Super Bowl Champ with the New England Patriots, was an All American at Rice</li>
<li>Lance Berkman, 4-time All-Star with the Houston Astros and all-around good guy, was an All-American at Rice.</li>
<li>The zoo is very close (I don’t know. I just like zoos)</li>
<li>Opportunity to have classes outside (but don’t expect this to happen more than twice each year… the admissions literature is a bit misleading)</li>
<li>Easy/flexible distribution requirements</li>
<li>Easy to double, triple, or even quadruple major as result of #70</li>
<li>Humanitarian Medical Outreach (HuMed) and their service trips abroad</li>
<li>It is after all “RICE UNIVERSITY”- how many other schools have the same name as a common food staple?</li>
<li>When I go back home and wear Rice t-shirts, some people think I’m wearing a food t-shirt.</li>
<li>Sammy the Owl</li>
<li>Wonderful Live Oak trees- one for every student</li>
<li>The entire Rice campus (minus the parking lot and stadium) is designated as an arboretum-- so cool to go to school in a park!</li>
<li>Generous Merit Aid (thank you, Rice!)- given to 30% of incoming freshmen students. Very few schools (with the exception of maybe WashU, Emory, or Vandy) of Rice’s caliber are as generous with merit aid.</li>
<li>Students are friendly, and great to prefrosh</li>
<li>The ENORMOUS squirrels (some are as big as cats!). Everything is in fact big in Texas!</li>
<li>reminds me of the food (rice)</li>
<li>The “box” on the admissions application</li>
<li>Very aesthetically pleasing website!</li>
<li>They have a really close-knit alumni network.</li>
<li>The amazing events available on the campus calendar. Today alone there was…Check out the campus calendar for an amazing banquet of intellectual and fun offerings!</li>
<li>Project Runway winner Chloe Dao’s boutique is just a stone throw away. Lot 8</li>
<li>At one point in time, Rice owned Yankee Stadium</li>
<li>Emphasis on undergraduates (only a business school for professional schools; relatively few graduate students).</li>
<li>Free cable (apparently Cornell doesn’t have it!)</li>
<li>Nothing like walking through the random Houston downpours (when it rains, it REALLY DOES POUR LIKE NONE OTHER).</li>
<li>Gives Merit Aid to Internationals!!</li>
<li>One of only a few colleges that are part of the Jetro (Japanese Trade Organization) internship project. Spend a summer in Japan with an Internship!</li>
<li>President Leebron is constantly invited to the prestigious conference hosted to build relations between the top American and top Chinese universities.</li>
<li>Loans are capped at no more than $10,000 total for entire 4 years (less if your income is below a certain level).</li>
<li>“A survey of more than two dozen of the most prestigious universities (including the Ivies) in the nation showed that more Rice seniors win admission to their first-choice graduate school than do students from any other university” - this from a published history of Rice by a professor of history, in reference to a survey in the mid 1990s</li>
<li>Rice is 1st in the percentage of students that go on to win National Science Fellowships {taken from Facebook}</li>
<li>Free laundry</li>
<li>5:1 student:teacher ratio</li>
<li>Free Campanile yearbooks</li>
<li>It’s one of the few CC forums to actually finish 100 reasons!</li>
<li>Air conditioning in every single campus building</li>
<li>Fairy Fountain- nothing like getting thrown in it on your birthday if you are in one of the North Colleges (i.e. Brown or Jones).</li>
<li>Nearby Theatre and Museum District in Houston</li>
<li>Hermann Park- one of the nation’s largest metropolitan parks</li>
<li>More trees on campus than undergraduates</li>
<li>Bacchanalia</li>
<li>80s Party with music from Houston’s best live 80s cover band</li>
<li>Angelika movie theatre (which sometimes gives discounts to Rice students)
109 Very generous with taking AP credits</li>
<li>The fact that there are more than 101 reasons to attend Rice!
111 Lazar Greenfield M.D. Inventor of the Greenfield Inferior Vena Cava Filter and Author of Greenfield’s Surgery is an alum.</li>
<li>Reading a list like this almost 20 yrs after graduation still makes you feel proud.</li>
<li>Giant diplomas.</li>
<li>Excellent graduation rate, even among Division one athletes (assuming it still is)</li>
<li>Up to 3 vanity emails - I’ve never heard of any other school being that generous</li>
<li>Has the BEST virtual tour!</li>
<li>Rice held the 16th G7 Summit (Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations) in 1990</li>
<li>Rice Stadium hosted the 1972 Super Bowl between Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins… only one other university stadium has every hosted a Super Bowl.</li>
<li>President George H.W. Bush was an adjunct professor at Rice’s Jones School of Management and a community associate at Rice’s Lovett College before becoming Vice-President of the United States.</li>
<li>Rice owns a tree farm in Louisiana.</li>
<li>Rice is on the Main Street, on which 4 Universities situated, UHD-Rice-UT Houston-Baylor Med.</li>
<li>Rice students are truly kind, friendly, and exceptionally smart people to know – and their parents are nice, too.</li>
<li>Ranked #4 by the Daily Beast and #8 for happiest students by the 2010 Princeton Review college guidebook.</li>
<li>One of the few top universities that has an English motto (“Letters. Science. Art”).</li>
<li>The Hoot</li>
<li>Having a sushi and Indian restaurant right next to each other at Rice Village (yum…)</li>
<li>NASA’s 40 minutes away</li>
<li>Baker 13 run: bunch of boys running around campus naked during Halloween. I’ll be watching from my dorm room with binoculars that night…he he</li>
<li>Tex-Mex on the beach (now that ZipCar is on campus)</li>
<li>Neal Francis Lane, AKA the Science Advisor for Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton was really into Black Holes and Dark matter</li>
<li>Vision 2011! </li>
<li>Me (gotRice)</li>
</ol>
<p>Can anyone verify 78? it seems suspiciously high.</p>
<p>Runallday, this thread might add a little light on the subject of merit aid. Thttp://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/1174194-financial-aid-calculator.html#post12897545</p>
<p>“Since it’s been a foggy subject, I decided to ask Admissions for more info not long ago.
I was told that “just under 20 percent of the students gets merit aid,” and that this figure does not include National Merit scholarships.” My post on the thread above – I copied the link incorrectly.</p>
<ol>
<li>Rice Pranks!! :D:D
[Pranks</a> : Rice University](<a href=“Faculty & Staff Resources | Rice University”>Faculty & Staff Resources | Rice University)</li>
</ol>
<p>Screw yer roommate?! Will anyone be willing to explain this…</p>
<p>Screw Yer Roommate is exactly what it says up in the big list: you set your roommate up on a blind date with another student.</p>
<p>My list.
1.) Cool Byzantine architecture
2.) Lovett had VISION, 100 years ago who would have thought it would lead to what we have today?
3.) The Journal of Southern History
4.) John Boles!!
5.) Harvard brags about being the Rice of the North
6.) President Leebron is continuing the Vision for future generations & he’s just way too cool for a university president
7.) By far Rice had the hippest centennial celebration EVER for a university, bar none.
8.) Everything is big in Texas so it’s the biggest small research university. 
9.) Texas Medical Center (my wife is majoring in nursing)
10.) The Baker Institute
11.) The Owls as a mascot…wisdom
12.) The trees on campus
13.) Valhalla
14.) It’s located in the Republic of Texas, not some broke liberal state.
15.) It’s hurricane proof
16.) This cool video <a href=“Rice University: A Campus Tour - YouTube”>Rice University: A Campus Tour - YouTube;
<p>Just posting to get this back on the main page.</p>