MY DC nephew went to Rice and thrived there. He majored in bio-engineering and just got his PhD from MIT. They had him doing research in a lab starting the first week of freshman year. We were very impressed with the education he got, the residential college system there and Houston is actually a pretty pleasant city. I couldn’t sell it to my son, but I’ve had a very favorable impression of it after nephew’s experience. My son did CS and Carnegie Mellon and had a great experience there.