Colleges Similar to Rice University

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hi! I'm an incoming Senior looking to apply ED to Rice. I love so many things about the place, and if there's another school that I could get just as excited about with similar qualities, that would be awesome! If you know of another undergraduate school that has all(or many) of the qualities below, it'd be awesome if you let me know. Thanks.</p>

<ul>
<li>Traditional at-least-kinda-good-looking Campus. Not a city-campus i.e. Columbia</li>
<li>Quality STEM programs. (I'm specifically interested in CAAM, applied Mathematics and/or economics)</li>
<li>STEM academics generally on with or better than that of Rice</li>
<li>Some amount of name-recognition, though this is not the most important factor</li>
<li>An at-least-ok-social scene. Not socially dead, i.e. JHU</li>
<li>Warmer weather is preferred</li>
<li>Not in Maryland lol</li>
<li>Generally selective. Acceptance rate below 30%. My stats make schools like Rice a low reach or high match.</li>
<li>Need-based aid is not important</li>
<li>If you can comment on the school's merit-based aid, please do so</li>
</ul>

<p>That's basically it. I would consider schools outside of the US as well. This is asking a lot, so thanks to anyone who responds!</p>

2

<p>Rice would never be a high match for anyone
WUSTL
Duke
UT Austin</p>

3

<p>Stanford, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, UVA, UNC Chapel Hill</p>

4

<p>@Lacoste‌ I disagree. And thanks for your input, these are schools I’ve looked at.</p>

<p>@quakerstake‌ Thank you. I haven’t looked at Emory or UVA at all yet.</p>

5

<p>Emory has a great campus. I loved it when I visited. Their academics are great too. I don’t know a lot about Rice, but it seems very similar to Emory and it fits your criteria. </p>

6

<p>Vassar and Yale have residential college systems similar to Rice’s. I fourth Emory because it has that traditional campus you’re looking for but also in the city. </p>

<p>I think U of Rochester would be a great match/low match for you! They have a quality STEM program, medium-size, decent social scene, very intellectual students, beautiful campus and you would have a chance for scholarships. Only problem is that it’s in a terrible cold city. </p>

7

<p>I also 2nd WUSTL. That’s the go-to school to name whenever someone asks for a school similar to Rice. I’m not exactly sure why since I never really looked into WUSTL, but it might be worth looking into.</p>

8

<p>To sum it up in one response, check out
-Emory
-WUSTL
-Yale

  • Rochester</p>
9

<p>As an alternative thought, consider Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna and the Claremont Colleges. Won’t get better STEM than at HMC and can take good economics courses at CMC. Collectively, the Claremont Colleges total about 5-6000 students, so roughly the same size as Rice. Academics, including STEM are similarly excellent and schools are very selective. Weather is also warm.</p>

10

<p>@ johnboehner</p>

<p>To look for colleges with similar academic structure/balance you can go to the Carnegie Foundation Institution Lookup search engine, enter the name of the school of interest and then hit the “find” button. Select your school of interest from the list. You then check the boxes that are of interest to you and hit the “find similar” button. Doing this for Rice reveals that it is unique. The closest match is Tufts which you get by relaxing the “graduate instruction profile”. Essentially Tufts has a similar academic balance to Rice except that it has a medical school, a dental school and a vet school (which happen to be located on separate campuses). See link</p>

<p><a href=“Carnegie Foundation Classifications”>Carnegie Foundation Classifications;

<p>In terms of your other attributes:
The campus is “traditional New England” located in the suburban cities of Medford/Somerville adjacent to Cambridge which is adjacent to Boston. The med school, dental school, nutrition research labs and some of the health science grad schools are located at the downtown Boston campus. Because of the size and the fact that many of the grad schools are located downtown, the campus has some of the feel of a traditional LAC.
In terms of culture/social scene, Tufts has much less of the stereotypic “Northeast type A” personality than other selective schools in the region. There are some fraternities, but they do not dominate the culture. The social scene spills over into Somerville/Cambridge/Boston because Somerville has the second highest density of young people in the US and Cambridge has the third. Davis square (next to Tufts) is the most popular square in the area and Harvard square (next to ?) is the second most popular square. In general, the roughly 4 mile stretch along the “Redline” (subway) between Tufts, Harvard and MIT is teeming with college students, young professionals and artists. Kendall square (next to MIT) is ground zero for one of the top biotech regions in the world and home of east coast labs for the major Internet firms. Boston’s venture capital/ high-tech startup community is currently migrating from Route 128 into the city along this subway line. Mass General Hospital is just across the river from MIT along this subway line. </p>

<p>Tufts’ partnerships with the New England Conservatory and the Museum of Fine Arts School attract an artsy component to the on-campus culture (Rice also has a strong music program) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy adds an international politics component (Rice has a political think tank associated with it).</p>

<p>In terms of STEM academics/programs, Rice is quite strong, it just doesn’t have the depth of programs across the board that some of the larger schools do, but it has an undergrad focus, which is important. Likewise for Tufts. </p>

<p>Rice tends to be deeper in the physical/earth sciences and Tufts tends to be deeper in the clinical/life sciences. </p>

<p>On the Computer science/CAAM/Engineering side, Tufts has leading edge interdisciplinary programs in cognitive/brain science, the human/computer interface, data visualization, biomimicry/soft bodied robots and biomaterials/tissue engineering. </p>

<p>Weather is colder than Houston, but warmer than inland locations at the same latitude.</p>

<p>Selectivity for Tufts last year was about 17% overall and about 14% for engineering.</p>

<p>Here are some links to get you started. </p>

<p>Good Luck!</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/viswall.jsp”>http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/viswall.jsp&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/creepingcrawlers.jsp”>http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/creepingcrawlers.jsp&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Bioengineers create functional 3D brain-like tissue | National Institutes of Health (NIH)”>http://www.nih.gov/news/health/aug2014/nibib-11.htm&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.popularmechanics.co.za/tech/teaching-robots-right-wrong-morality/”>http://www.popularmechanics.co.za/tech/teaching-robots-right-wrong-morality/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

11

<p>WUSTL
Emory
CMU</p>

12

<p>I second the suggestion of Tufts. Covers nearly all of your criteria. </p>

13

<p>Except Tuft’s campus looks pretty ugly compared to other schools of the same caliber. But that’s just my opinion. The OP should still definitely check it out. </p>

14

<p>Don’t find Tufts’ campus ugly at all. Has traditional buildings, common areas, lawns, nice mix of old and new structures, classic brick facades and sleek stone-and-glass, all well maintained, great views of Boston and surrounding towns, ringed by tidy New England streets of Victorians, Queen Annes, etc. </p>

<p>The hill tends to be the feature most complained about, but works the heart . </p>

15

<p>Bucknell, USC, Lehigh, Northwestern</p>

16

<p>Different people have different tastes when it comes to campuses. Some like modern, some like colonial, some like gothic… Some like brick, some like stone,some like metal… Some like homogeneity of architecture, some like diversity… </p>

<p>I think the Tufts campus is beautiful in the spring and fall, but that is my taste, and may not be yours.</p>

<p>Last year, Tufts was chosen to film scenes for the movie Sex Tapes. The movie did not get great reviews, but I think it was for reasons other than the scenery. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>In any event, a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is a thousand pictures…</p>

<p><a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube;
<a href=“Tufts in Spring - YouTube”>Tufts in Spring - YouTube;

17

<p>“Not a city-campus i.e. Columbia”</p>

<p>Are you saying this after visiting Columbia? If you have and you didn’t like it, fine. If you haven’t, you might be overestimating how “city” it feels inside those gates. Untraditional city campuses, in my judgment, are NYU, BU, GW, etc.</p>

18

<p>@johnboehner have you thought about Syracuse? You would have a great shot to be the team mascot.</p>