<p>What's the best school in Texas from both an academic and social perspective?</p>
<p>Rice. Clearly.</p>
<p>Agreed. Rice.</p>
<p>Socially, I would go with UT-Austin. Great college town, lots of school spirit…lots of parties… Rice for the academics, though.</p>
<p>Rice. There is no question or debate.</p>
<p>Rice
UT-Austin</p>
<p>Texas A&M for some majors (Ex. civil engineering)</p>
<p>From a purely academic perspective, UT-Austin is the strongest. No other school has as many top ranked programs and faculty in as many areas. (Not to mention facilities, museums, libraries, computational resources, etc.) In the 1995 NRC ranking, UT (or a UT medical school) was #1 in Texas in every academic discipline. Subsequent rankings such as the USNWR grad rankings or the latest NRC rankings enforce this. However, from an undergraduate perspective, Rice is tops. As a smaller, more selective private, Rice is able to offer a more personal and enriching experience for undergrads.</p>
<p>Texas (the state) is an interesting case. With comparable resources to California, there isn’t a comprehensive top undergrad and graduate school such as Stanford or Berkeley. Rice is an excellent undergraduate school, but not especially strong for graduate study. UT-Austin has very good graduate programs/departments across multiple disciplines, but with no marquee consensus top 5 professional or PhD programs. And as a very large public required by law to admit at least 90% of undergrads from in-state (a rule pre-dating the more infamous “top 10%” admission law), it will never have the selectivity or national reputation of a smaller private. A&M is also a strong research university with a growing international reputation, but not with the academic breadth of UT. The premier medical universities and facilities (e.g., UT Southwestern/Baylor COM/UT MD Anderson) are also separate academic institutions, contributing no prestige to the main academic universities.</p>
<p>So the answer for “best school” in Texas is… it depends on what you’re measuring.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Rice. There is no comparison.</p>
<p>Rice except for engineering and business where UT is just as good (better for business). Also UT>>>Rice for social life.</p>
<p>Rice is still pretty good in engineering</p>
<p>USNWR Undergraduate Engineering Rankings</p>
<h1>11 - Texas</h1>
<h1>17 - Texas A&M</h1>
<h1>19 - Rice</h1>
<p>I’d go with UT-Austin.</p>
<p>8th street? - social life, academics, etc. Can’t regularly beat this whole package of UT.</p>
<p>If one were to compare a UT and Rice grad with similar stats, they would both be equally successful. </p>
<p>Add that UT grads dominate Texas, so if one were to stay in that state, there’d be a lot of UT com(a)raderie. 
… Xig</p>
<p>Get a hold of Rice’s founding, very interesting - including murder, forged documents, etc etc:</p>
<p>[Rice</a> University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_University]Rice”>Rice University - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>The history of Rice University began with the untimely demise of Massachusetts businessman William Marsh Rice. Rice made his fortune in real estate, railroad development and cotton trading in the state of Texas. In 1891, Rice decided to charter a free-tuition educational institute in Houston, bearing his name, to be created upon his death, earmarking most of his estate towards funding the project. On the morning of September 23, 1900, Rice was found dead by his valet, and presumed to have died in his sleep. Shortly thereafter, a suspiciously large check made out to Rice’s New York City lawyer, signed by the late Rice, was noticed by a bank teller due to a misspelling in the recipient’s name. The lawyer, Albert T. Patrick, then announced that Rice had changed his will to leave the bulk of his fortune to Patrick, rather than to the creation of Rice’s educational institute. A subsequent investigation led by the District Attorney of New York resulted in the arrests of Patrick and of Rice’s butler and valet Charles F. Jones, who had been persuaded to administer chloroform to Rice while he slept. Rice’s friend and personal lawyer in Houston, James A. Baker, Sr., aided in the discovery of what turned out to be a fake will with a forged signature. It took nearly ten years for Jones and Patrick to be found guilty of conspiring to steal Rice’s fortune. Patrick was convicted of murder in 1901. Baker helped Rice’s estate direct the fortune, worth $4.6 million in 1904 ($112 million today), towards the founding of what was to be called the Rice Institute. The Board took control of the assets on April 29 of that year. In 1907, the Board of Trustees selected the head of the Department of Mathematics and Astronomy at Princeton University, Edgar Odell Lovett, to head the Institute, which was still in the planning stages. He came recommended by Princeton’s president, Woodrow Wilson. In 1908, Lovett accepted the challenge, and was formally inaugurated as the Institute’s first president on October 12, 1912. Lovett undertook extensive research before formalizing plans for the new Institute, including visits to 78 institutions of higher learning across the world on a long tour between 1908 and 1909. Lovett was impressed by such things as the aesthetic beauty of the uniformity of the architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, a theme which was adopted by the Institute, as well as the residential college system at Cambridge University in England, which was added to the Institute several decades later. Lovett called for the establishment of a university “of the highest grade,” “an institution of liberal and technical learning” devoted “quite as much investigation as to instruction.” [We must] “keep the standards up and the numbers down,” declared Lovett. “The most distinguished teachers must take their part in undergraduate teaching, and their spirit should dominate it all.”</p>
<p>Depends on what major you want to enter into.
Rice is more liberal arts-oriented compared to UT I believe.</p>
<p>Rice. No debate necessary.</p>
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<p>Depends on your definition of professional “programs.” Inasmuch as one could easily argue that the McCombs Business school is among the five best in the country when including its BHP, there is no doubt possible that the best program for accounting in the country is in Austin. It has dominated the rankings for undergraduate, graduate, and PhD programs for years.</p>
<p>Rice majors:</p>
<p>For Bachelor’s Degrees
Engineering: 17%
Social Sciences: 17%
Biology: 8%
Visual and Performing Arts: 7%
English: 6%
Psychology: 6%
History: 5%</p>
<p>Texas Majors:</p>
<p>For Bachelor’s Degrees
Social Sciences: 14%
Communications/Journalism: 13%
Business/Marketing: 12%
Engineering: 11%
Biology: 8%
Psychology: 5%</p>
<p>UT Law is very good.</p>
<p>UT Law is ranked a respectable #15 in the country, but if you want to practice law in Texas, I would imagine that only Harvard, Yake and Stanford Law Schools would be preferable.</p>
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<p>This is nonsensical…</p>
<p>You’re ignoring the geographical advantages of UT Law. No or little traveling involved for either party, firm or law grad.</p>
<p>Lots to choose from, from various levels of grads, top to bottom.</p>
<p>A probable geopgraphical preference to practice in the state of Tx by UT Law grads.</p>
<p>A lot of u’s in Tx feed UT Law, including top grads from Rice and UT.</p>
<p>Yeah, if you can get your hands on some of the really elite law grads, firms would do this. But would Dallas and Houston be hotbeds for these grads?</p>
<p>Besides, rankings, smankings. It’s mainly about geography.</p>