<p>You will be home for several weeks over winter break and can get back to CA for Thanksgiving and spring break if money and time permit. </p>
<p>I’d rather be in a colder climate with people I liked than a hot and muggy climate with people I didn’t click with as well. I would choose Carleton for sure.</p>
<p>You are wrong about Houston. It is a great city for a college student. There are lots of inexpensive, great ethnic restaurants, lots of things to do with easy access from Rice, beautiful neighborhoods around Rice and lots of parks and museums. There is a lot of green space. I know that Houston has a bad reputation, but none of the common objections affect the Rice students.</p>
<p>Sorry, MOWC, but I’m not “wrong” in having my own opinion and never suggested it was universal. And sorry if I hit a nerve. But Houston could be the poster child of car dependent suburban sprawl and this does get a little personal with me. Flat as a pancake with nary a hill in sight, built (as it reminds you regularly) on marsh/swampland. Even the “Village” around Rice provides for cars first, pedestrians second. It’s always felt more like a series of strip shopping malls strung together than any “village” I’ve ever known (and certainly no college town).</p>
<p>There’s lots going on in the city, no lack of things to do. But frankly it has always struck me as just plain ugly. “Green space” is not what I’m usually reminded of when conjuring images of Houston, more likely Joni Mitchell’s lament “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Sorry. Do generally like Rice’s campus though.</p>
<p>I grew up in a warm climate, but I did live for a few years in Minnesota as an adult. I got used to the intensity of the cold, though I could never get used to the length of the winter. The Minnesota winter is six months long, and that is NOT an exaggeration. If you are from a warm area without real winters, you will get really tired of that winter after about four months, and you will still have two months to go!</p>
<p>Houston is miserable from early June to mid-September, but those are the summer break months and so if you wish you can escape for almost all of that period. Also, I would agree with MOWC that Houston has fantastic restaurants and plenty of things to do, and the weather will rarely keep you from engaging in those activities.</p>
<p>1190- You are merely spouting the usual stereotype of Houston. You didn’t hit a nerve with me, other than I hate when people spread incorrect information. I would not want to live in Houston, but as someone who has spent a lot of time there on business and around Rice, it is a great part of town with plenty of public transportation options.</p>
<p>MOWC, the usual stereotype of Houston seems to be well-founded, at least in terms of the aesthetics of the city. It regularly makes “world’s ugliest cities” lists and for many is a depressing, sprawling wasteland with too much concrete and too few trees. Whether that matters to college kids in the “bubble” of Rice is another matter.</p>
<p>The stereotype of Minnesota winters being long and (often) brutal is also founded in truth.</p>
<p>The part about the trees in Houston is simply incorrect. There are LOTS of trees. Houston is much greener than Dallas, in fact. The problem with Houston is the traffic and the zoning, which allows really random, undesirable businesses to pop up where they would not necessarily belong. The area around Rice has lots of trees, lots of parks, beautiful homes and neighborhoods and good shopping and dining- including inexpensive options. The cultural opportunities are wide-ranging, including great opera, museums and theater. Students play frisby on the lawn in February. </p>
<p>By the way, New York and LA have often made the ugliest cities lists, too. So has Philadelphia. Are they not great cities for college students?</p>
<p>The reason I’m arguing this is that my daughter (Rice '07) grew up in Dallas and absolutely refused to go to college in Texas. She spent her last 2 years of high school at boarding school in Michigan. She thought Texas was ugly, conservative and shallow. She visited Rice because her voice teacher insisted. She had her arms crossed and sulked on the drive from Dallas to Houston. Obviously, she changed her mind, spent 4 happy years at Rice and an additional year working in Houston. Her husband went to medical school at UT Houston (across from Rice) and both of them found it to be a great city for young people. There were things they didn’t like, but it was plenty liberal and they still miss all the ethnic restaurant choices. I have run all through the neighborhoods around Rice and around the campus loop. There are, indeed, lots of ugly parts of Houston. There are ugly parts of every city. Yes, it is flat. Minneapolis isn’t exactly hilly (I’ve spent a lot of time there, too). It has snow this week, by the way.<br>
The view of Houston from the interstate is not a good one. That is what sticks in people’s heads. I was guilty of that, too, until I learned more about the city. Again- lots of trees. Lots of grass. Did I mention great Mexican food and margaritas?</p>
<p>^I am just commenting on stereotypes. I would have loved for one of my kids to go to Rice. It is a fantastic university. The cultural scene seems great, and yes–the food.</p>
<p>I don’t like the sprawl of the Twin Cities much either. Carleton is in Northfield, BTW (about an hour south of the cities).</p>
<p>As far as employment goes, would employers prefer to hire someone from a research univerisity over, say, an LAC? Does anyone know? A lot of people say it doesn’t matter and I know it also depends on the career field and the person hiring, but I am just wondering in general. If you had two equally qualified people.</p>
<p>They wouldn’t care if they were both top schools.</p>