My daughter (sophomore) is just starting her college search, and Rice looks like it would be a perfect fit. I checked out the acceptance rates, and it seems like their overall rate is 8.7%, with ED applicants at around 15% and RD closer to 5-6%.
However, a further complication that you don’t find at other schools is geography. 40% of students come from Texas. Is that something that Rice aims for, or is it just that Rice is really popular among Texans? If 40% is the rough target for Texas and 11% international, that means that only 49% of the seats are available for the other 49 states. That suggests to me that the acceptance rate for non-Texans must be extremely low–something in the 4% range.
Is that the right way of thinking about it? Or is it just a fluke that there are a lot of good candidates from Texas?
Rice is the only “elite” private university in Texas which has a population of about 29 million. They do not have to “favor” TX applicants to get the enrolment they have.
Some argue that it is harder to get in from Texas and especially from Houston than it is from other states. Rice strives for geographical diversity. There are more applicants from Texas than from other states. Rice is very well known in Texas and is less well known in other parts of the country. In last year’s entering class of 1004 students, there were 890 U.S. students. Of this 890, 402 were from Texas, 89 from California, 41 from Florida, and 26 from New York. The rest of the U.S. students came from other states.
I had the same question when my son expressed interest in Rice. But, then I saw that Texas gives Tuition Equalization Grant (TEG) to in-state students. Hard to go out-of-state if Texas is helping pay the bill to Rice. As a result, I think this gives out-of-state applicants an advantage. Rice is need-blind admission, but not geographic-blind. They created the Rice Initiative because they are concerned about Diversity on campus. I bet the percent falls over the next few years…only if your daughter applies.
This is all actually very encouraging then! I was concerned that Rice wanted to set aside 40% of the class for Texans, only allowing for a handful from out of state. If there’s an advantage for out-of-state applicants that would be great.
There is no set aside. I think you will find that many elite institutions receive a large number of applicants from their immediate area. For example, Stanford gets many applicants from California, Yale from Connecticut, Penn from Pennsylvania, etc. Texas has a very large population and many of the top Texas students apply to Rice as well as the University of Texas at Austin. It is very hard to gain admission to UT as an out of state student.
My daughter is a senior at Rice this year and she is from a neighboring state. I would agree that Rice is not super well known outside of its region. Texas is a large state and it makes sense that it will receive the majority of applicants from in state. But if it’s a good fit for your daughter she should apply.
I agree with the others. I think there are more students from Texas because it’s more well known in Texas and they get a lot more in-state applicants. My daughter is a freshman now and I think the fact that we are from a state without a lot of representation at Rice was to her benefit in admissions. There just aren’t a ton of kids from here who apply. My D only knew of one other applicant from her school.