So I’ve submitted to Rice and am anxiously waiting for the results. So I don’t get too overexcited (or even worse, let down by rejection), what are some cons or annoying things about Rice?
The football team struggles. Look up the score in the Stanford game. However, most of the kids at Rice don’t give a hoot about the football games anyway.
.
LOL! Their football team is not particularly good, no one is afraid of Owls. Seriously, be excited and good luck to you!
It’s in Texas.
No cons about being in Texas! Except the humidity and it’s bad in Houston.
The weather! Texas is fine! Just hot and humid here in Houston but I still love it here!
You don’t get the somewhat unsafe, gritty city experience that Penn, UChicago, and WashU students have the privilege of experiencing.
Houston is miserably hot and muggy most of the year (or maybe it just feels like most of the year).
Also, hurricanes.
Hordes of birds used to flock to Rice in the 70s and 80s, with the mess that you’d expect from such a migration. I’m not sure if this is a problem any more.
https://ricehistorycorner.com/2014/04/28/birds-flock-to-rice-to-die/
Very pleasant weather at the moment - 78/60. Except for a couple of cold waves that sweep across the country, this will last into beginning of May. June, July, August, September - can get very hot.
I posted this in a general forum and realized I should be putting it in this one!
I’ve submitted to Rice and am anxiously awaiting the results. So I don’t get too overexcited or let down by rejection, what are some cons or things that suck about Rice? I know they’re hard to find but just humor me
There aren’t many negatives about Rice. It’s small, which won’t appeal to everyone, and it’s in big, sprawling Houston, which is a flat, low-density, new city with little planning and out-of-control outward growth. The areas around Rice are really quite lovely, with many cultural institutions and some urban density, but in general Houston is big and ugly.
Parking is something that could really use improvement. If you’re planning to have a car on campus, you’ll have to pay quite a lot and park far away from the colleges, especially as an underclassman.
Rice is hiring a new football coach from Stanford (offensive coordinator) so maybe this "con"won’t be one much longer.
Ok rice has been wonderful for my daughter, but cons: They don’t have eno
Cons, they don’t have enough housing. There is a lottery system and, even though you will LOVE your residential college you may have to move off campus your junior year and the neighborhood right around rice is very posh and not full of great student rentals. But then if you take advantage of their great study abroad system like my daughter did you might miss out on things like the incredible bonding experience Rice went through last semester with surviving Harvey and then Houston winning it’s first championship. So basically the negative is Rice will make you never want to leave campus.
Here’s a list of some actual cons to be aware of.
Parking: As someone mentioned, it’s a pretty big inconvenience. Most student parking is about a mile away from where undergrads live and is still a few hundred per year. The parking lot closer to the residential colleges is mostly reserved for upper students and I’ve heard that sometimes they oversell the spots, so if the parking lot is full, you’ll have to park at the far away lots even if you paid for the close lot.
Financial aid: Rice is known for being fairly generous with financial aid, but at the same time, once Rice gives you a number, it’s hard to negotiate with them about it, even if you’ve explained your circumstances. I’ve heard that even presenting Rice’s NPC calculator has been ineffective on occasions. Also, tuition is raised every year to “match trends of other schools” or something.
Certain departments: Quite a few departments experience heavy growing pains in that the huge influx of students recently have overburdened the faculty. So some courses are overbooked, even though they might have long been a required course in the department. The administration is fairly slow at adjusting to balance these issues out, though I guess at least they try to do something about it.
Administration: The administration does quite a bit of good in general. The problem is that sometimes their priorities do not align with the students. Overall I think they try to do what they think is best for students, but that isn’t always what students believe is best. For example, they haven’t really listened to student concerns about parking, but seem to be discussing how to tweak the curriculum every year.
Residential colleges: As with the administration, there are a lot of good that comes from the residential colleges. But there are still some downsides too. For example, some people feel the residential college system can make people feel fairly excluded if they don’t make friends right off the bat. Also, the housing quality can vary greatly, so a lot of residential life seems to be based off luck, which some do not like.
Networking: A lot of companies that Rice has strong connections to are oil/gas and consulting. These companies are extremely high paying (which is probably why Rice wants to have these connections), but have little work/life balance so many students are turned away. Rice is one of the top schools in the country but I’ve heard a lot of my peers say they’ve found it hard to get into the industry they want simply because Rice doesn’t have close connections or alumni there. Engineers included. Also, there’s no co-op program so there’s no option to take off a semester or two to gain work experience, unless you take a backdoor way.
Sports: There is very little sports spirit. There’s actually probably less school spirit than compared to many high schools. Even when the teams are good, there’s been little school spirit. Also, the student athletes seem to be super busy so they aren’t really integrated with the other students. There definitely is a bit of a wall between the student athlete body and the rest of the student body.
Food: The good thing is that there are usually 6 serveries (i.e., cafeterias) that have their own menu for food. The bad thing is that they somewhat have their own style of cooking and the servery closest to where you live might not be your favorite style. Also, Rice forces you to have a meal plan if you live on campus, so you’d be double paying for food if you just wanted to make your own meals. To some, the dinner hours are quite early, such as Saturday dinner hours, which are 4:45pm-6pm. And certain serveries get really full at some hours because of their location with respect to where most classes are.
Weather: Not Rice’s fault, but it can be blazing hot for about two weeks out of the 30ish weeks of school.
Campus: If it rains, buy a canoe.
Do not get me wrong though, Rice is a wonderful school. I really enjoyed my time here and I don’t think I could’ve had a better undergrad experience anywhere else. But at the same time, not everything is perfect and it’s foolish to believe that any school is perfect, not just Rice. There’s a reason that people transfer out of Rice every year, but at the same time, there’s a reason that Rice’s student body is among the happiest at any college.
@ChiGuy123 What majors are overburdened?
@billybobby54 My son is in engineering and has not had trouble in getting into those classes. I have heard the socail sciences like psychology and sociology classes seem to fill up and seems there are waiting list. He did have trouble getting a computer class. Appears not too many people take computer science as a major. It seems engish classes fill up. He didnt have it as his major so he just signed up for another english class something else. It seems non majors have to take some non major classes so there is no system where those that need it for their major get first priority. it seems nice in some ways because there seems to not be a limit on how many can be in each major which is nice, but is hard when a bunch kind of change majors and jump to something different.
@billybobby54 Mechanical engineering was very overburdened a couple of years ago but after much complaining to the administration, they’ve been trying to fix it. I think there’s still work to be done. Required kinesiology courses are almost always over 100% enrolled and I’ve seen a class top out to about 200% before. I think economics used to be overburdened but may not be anymore or may be less burdened. Computer science has been overburdened, but they did crank a class up to try and weed people out from the major (basically a band-aid fix to a compound fracture problem if you ask me). Not sure if the fallout has settled from that yet.