<p>Rice University is located next to the Texas Medical Center, which has 13 hospitals located in within it, as well as 2 medical schools. It's the largest medical complex in the world. Research and volunteer opportunities are endless there. My son, who is a h.s. junior now, got a paying job this past summer as a research intern at MD Anderson Cancer Center in the Department of Biostatistics and Applied Mathematics. It was an invaluable experience for him (and they had him doing real work).</p>