<p>I'm a century scholar, but I'm wondering if there are any scholars at rice(or ppl who know scholars) who can tell me about the program. Are there any certain proposals that would be more interesting, and what is the time commitment? I'm going to be working at Rice so I hope these projects don't take too much time out of my schedule.</p>
<p>You can go to this site - <a href="http://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Ecentscho/students.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~centscho/students.html</a> - and read about the projects that current century scholar students are doing. My friend, Ben Jedlovec, is doing work with sports statistics with the Houston Astros, so if you have any specific questions about the program I can find out through him. I dunno exactly what you mean by proposals that are "more interesting," but I'm sure they're very flexible with accomidating what you're interested in. You have a faculty mentor and everything, and it seems to be a very good program.</p>
<p>Congrats, by the way! That's exciting.</p>
<p>I did some more browsing around that website, and it looks like you choose from a list of proposals by the faculty members, and you indicate your top three choices in Sep/Oct when you arrive at Rice. I'm not sure if you can propose something completely different (and try to find support for it obviously) but that seems to be the general procedure. However, I don't know a lot about the program myself. Just poke around the website a bit and see for yourself...</p>
<p>Hey, me too!</p>
<p>I called Diane Havlinek and she'd like for us to return our priority ranked responsed by mid July.</p>
<p>As far as scheduling issues go, you'll have to cold call some of the professors you're reading about and introduce yourself and ask more about time demands. They'll be expecting calls/e-mails from other scholars, so I'm sure they'll be helpful.</p>
<p>I'm a century scholar.</p>
<p>Well, I guess not anymore, because I am now done with my second year, but whatever.</p>
<p>Anyway, your project can take as much time or as little time as you want. Some people want their project to be really indepth and they get really into it, and they spend several hours each week on it. </p>
<p>Others have a lot of other stuff they also want to do, and so wish to spend less time on their century scholars project. I was in the second group, and even though I am really interested in my project, and plan to continue it until I graduate, I also wanted something fairly low-key. I probably spent about 1 hour per week on mine (some weeks more, some weeks less).</p>
<p>When I was an entering freshman (no guarantees that it still works like this), we sent in our preference list online, and then the first week or two of school we had a lunch or meeting of some kind where you could talk to all of the professors. I basically asked the ones that I had ranked to tell me a little bit more about their projects, what kind of work I would be doing, and what kind of time committment they expected from me. One professor said about 6-10 hours a week - for some people, this might have worked - but not for me. The professor I ended up working for said she was very flexible - if I had more time one week than another, that was fine, if some weeks I had no time, that was fine, but she said an hour or two per week on average. So that was what I went with.</p>
<p>Anyway, I would encourage you guys to at least strongly consider doing your project in something outside your planned major or primary area of interest. I did my project in Sociology, got really interested in it, and am now a sociology major. My century scholars mentor has really helped me out at Rice - I just got an e-mail from her today, in fact.</p>
<p>Good luck choosing your projects!</p>