<p>I am considering Rice for chemical engineering, but why is it never ranked as a top school for it? Is it just a bad ChemE program?</p>
<p>No (ten char)</p>
<p>Rice is not really famous for Engineering in general … Biomedical seems to be the best known of them.</p>
<p>I just visited Rice with my son and toured the Engineering facilities, also thinking mainly of ChemE - we were not really impressed! … We had just visited Georgia Tech before and Carnegie Mellon a few weeks before that - Rice can NOT live up to the expectations we had after those schools! What I compare is size & quality of staff, equipment in labs, details of curriculum, etc. </p>
<p>Maybe it was just a poor presentation of the Assistant Dean, but it came across as very ‘lame’ … we all got the impression that Engineering is NOT a core department of Rice! </p>
<p>Again, Biomedical seems to have more money and be a ‘hotter’ department these days …</p>
<p>LOL! Maybe it was a bad tour! Usually on here the question is, “How are the liberal arts/humanities/social science?” since Rice is so well-known for its Engineering departments! Did you check out the new design kitchen, and look at all the departments in the links? If I remember correctly, Rice is ranked in the top 20 for almost all, if not all, their undergrad engineering degrees, and the top 10 for several. They are somewhat eclipsed by UT-Austin, due to its sheer size (lots of faculty and grad students, attending lots of conferences and churning out lots of papers makes for a big presence and a high peer evaluation.). THere’s so many terrific undergrad research ops and project going on at Rice, and DS says the equipment and facilities are great. My kid was a ChBE, but switched to Civ E this year since his focus is on Environmental issues, and that is grouped under the CivE department. He has had an awesome mentor in one of the profs, and is doing his own research (paid) and even spent several weeks in another state being trained how to use a very expensive piece of equipment. I’m sorry you didn’t get a very good impression, but maybe perusing the engineering websites will provide more info. :)</p>
<p>eml – your post really surprises me too! Rice has an excellent reputation for its engineering program, which is consistently ranked one of the top programs in the country. For its size, it is incredibly well-funded, with a wealth of research opportunities, incredible facilities and well-regarded faculty. I am very familiar with Carnegie Mellon (being an alum), and Rice’s program would be considered a peer. If I were majoring in engineering, I would choose Rice in a heartbeat over CMU taking into account its social environment, the strength of its other schools, down-to-earth student body, and milder weather. </p>
<p>I don’t know what tour you went on, but you certainly came away with a different impression than I’ve ever heard before!</p>
<p>I agree with blackeyedsusan, in fact, I chose Rice <em>because of</em> the strength of its engineering.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Rice has fewer than 3k undergrads; of course there is no way we can compete with the likes of GATech in terms of size of departments, but there is no denying that Rice has a high quality program.</p>
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<p>Are you kidding me? </p>
<p>It’s what Rice is best known for, as well as its sciences, music, and architecture programs.</p>
<p>I saw their design kitchen, yes … and our guide actually took us yet to the ChemE lab, too.
I can’t really comment on the ‘kitchen’ too much; yes, they seem to do a lot of cross-functional projects there that look interesting. As a seasoned chemist (worked 20 years in production) I actually believe I can judge the ChemE part a little better - and there, clearly, Rice is not on the same level as CMU (which surprised me, too) or GA Tech. </p>
<p>Admitted, for the size of Rice, the facilities are great - but we saw a group of 4 students work on a distillation on a lower level course - whereas in CMU they worked only in groups of 2, and CMU had the better/fancier equipment … GA Tech actually had “topnotch” equipment, but I also heard that it’s difficult to coordinate the experiments with all the students … </p>
<p>Please take my comment as what it is (and not more) - we evidently just weren’t all that lucky with our tour. My son’s comment was quite to the point: The equipment & students from GA Tech in the Rice campus - that would be his dream … LOL</p>