<p>97% med school acceptance rate. One of the highest, if not the highest, in the country.</p>
<p>Is Texas that bad? lol my parents want to move there when they retire cuz everything is so much cheaper there than Northern California.</p>
<p>No, it's not that bad at all.</p>
<p>Houston is a great city -- very culturally diverse, friendly, accepting of outsiders, tons of great shopping/restaurants, strong in the arts, parks, low cost of living, beautiful winter/spring weather, top notch medical care, diverse businesses, etc. I grew up on the east coast and just spent the last month in southern California, and I am happy to be back in Houston.</p>
<p>Texas is amazing and diverse. If you hate one part, you'll love another...I think the only thing consistent throughout the entire state is summer heat. Houston isn't exactly my cup of tea, but that's what roadtrips are for (tubing between SA and Austin is fun, southern beaches (aka not galveston) are decent, and Big Bend NP is my personal heaven).</p>
<p>It does sound like a nice place. I guess my question was more of why does other people NOT want to go to Rice because it's in Texas?</p>
<p>Misconceptions about Texas.</p>
<p>Exactly -- people who have never been to Texas have the wrong impression of what it's like.</p>
<p>I'm from the northeast and people thought I was crazy to go to college in Texas. It is nothing like the stereotypes that people up north imagine. I love it here!</p>
<p>yea efs 001, i'm pretty sure I'm gonna ED to Rice and I'm from Philly and I have had a similar experience. People have said, "Texas? You want to go to college in Texas?"</p>
<p>Rice sounds awesome. However, my parents are worried about safety since Hurricane Ike. My friend there said it's pretty safe, but they had to go for 2 days without water...yikes.</p>
<p>Do you guys know if hurricanes are a big safety issue there?</p>
<p>Rice was, hands down, the safest place in Houston during the hurricane. Most of Houston lacks power NOW; many still lack water. Believe me, when you weigh not showering for two days against all of Rice's ups, it's not even worth mentioning...</p>
<p>We live in another coastal city and had NO worries about junior D riding out Ike @ Rice.</p>
<p>Artemis_D: As a parent, I was amazed at the communication between Rice and the parents during Ike. Have your parents check out Rice's website and read the letters and updates from president Leebron as well as from the emergency management team. I felt very little worry at all during the hurricane. My S is off campus. On Friday, they had all the off campus student come to campus to ride out the storm. They also took care of the graduate students. The school is well versed in how to handle a hurricane.</p>
<p>I wouldn't really worry too much about the safety, we were all fine. Basically at my college we all just slept in the hallway and it was all right. The masters did a great job of making sure everyone knew what to do and at least where I was, everything went pretty smoothly. The no water thing was a little bit of a pain, but we worked it out. We still had plenty of drinking water, it was just showers and flushing toilets that we were missing. But as someone else said, that was nothing compared to most of Houston. We never lost power and at least we got the water back as soon as we did.</p>
<p>Dude Hurricane Ike was a rare thing. Houston hasn't been hit this hard by a hurricane since Alicia in 1983, and that wasn't as bad as what Ike was. My parents were living in Houston then, and my friend lives in Houston and he said that this destruction was really bad. So the odds of us taking a direct hit from a Cat 2/Cat 3 hurricane in the next 5-10 years are somewhat slim, though you can't ever rule anything out. And like the other posters have said, I am INCREDIBLY grateful for the fact that we have power and running water. Not having running water for 2 days is a minute detail compared to the fact that many Houstonians were without it for much longer, or still don't have it. The colleges made everyone feel safe and everything was organized with food and everything.</p>
<p>"116. Very generous with taking AP credits"</p>
<p>don't they take only 4s and 5s?</p>
<p>^ That's true.</p>
<p>And even then, the AP credit you come in with might not even be used - like my 5's in AP English Lang and English Lit can't be used toward D1 distribution hours. Or, you'll have some kind of restriction (varies by department); for example, if you want to major in History only 6 hours can be completed through AP credit - I had 9 hours of History credit coming in (6 through AP US History, and 3 through AP World).</p>
<p>But yes, Rice is great in taking 4's and 5's. At some other top schools, they only accept 5's.</p>
<p>Wouldn't U. Texas Austin be cheaper, for about the same experience in their Honors College?</p>
<p>"About the same experience?"</p>
<p>Not really.</p>