<p>I think one thing people on CC often assume, wrongly, is that you should just go to your "favorite" school, wherever that is. That's often not the best approach. If there's somewhere you want to end up living and working, it is often a good idea to go to school there. </p>
<p>Frankly, if you want to live and work in the south, I think it's crazy to go to school in the midwest, and vice versa.</p>
<p>Seriously please don't make annoying threads like this. You should be thankful that you have a choice between tops schools. At least you know you are going to get a good education. I'm still waiting to hear back from two schools right now and its the worst feeling in the world especially when you think you are going to be rejected.</p>
<p>Okay, don't bash the OP. He has a legitimate concern of going to the school that's best for him. If you want to complain and whine bitterly about how he'll be perfect wherever he decides to go, essentially NOT answering his questions or offering helpful input, I suggest you get off this thread and look elsewhere.</p>
<p>He got into those schools fair and square, and should not apologize to any of you who were waitlisted/rejected/still waiting to hear.</p>
<p>So if you don't have anything helpful or informative to add to the discussion, please go elsewhere. If I had to choose between Rice, Duke, and WashU I would be very concerned as well which school would be the best choice to go to. </p>
<p>Either add to the discussion to help the OP or do not post. Simple as that.</p>
<p>Best option? Visit ALL OF THEM. Or, talk to as many alums as you possibly can and ask them what they DIDN't like.</p>
<p>Congrats on the acceptances. BTW, it seems to me that you're still a little bit rusty on what the colleges are actually like, so read up if you can't actually travel there.</p>
<p>i live in japan, so visits are kinda tough, although i realize it would probably make my choice clearer. i'll run it by the 'rents lol. i'm not trying to brag or **** people off or anything, i just want some advice as to how you guys would choose. sorry if i came off arrogant or anything like that</p>
<p>I hate threads like these. selfish jerks.</p>
<p>Haha yeah this thread makes me feel bad.</p>
<p>I was waitlisted at Duke so.... whatever justification people are providing to go to Rice or Purdue I support that :D</p>
<p>Tell your friends haha</p>
<p>I so relate to this... I'm accepted to WashU and currently waiting on Brown which is the only school I'd consider over it. But after spending the last week in shock that I got in and finally adjusting to the idea and imagining myself there, I <em>almost</em> don't want to get into Brown and have to go through it again. But of course I still want to get in :) Congrats though!</p>
<p>haha its kind of funny how youre complaining about how you got accepted...haha congratulations anyway.</p>
<p>the opinions of people on an online forum should not influence ur personal decision, but don't even fret for a second cuz there are millions of kids out there dying to be in your situation</p>
<p>i know their opinions don't matter, i should have been more specific sorry. i'd like to know HOW i should go about choosing (reading the website, talking to people on cc, contacting alumni or current students, etc). in addition to the ones i just listed, does anybody have something i could do to sway the decision one way or another?</p>
<p>I would contact current students. Its a great way to get a feel for each school.</p>
<p>It seems like I'm the other way around; I got into Duke but was waitlisted at Rice. I'm excited nonetheless and am planning my campus visit before next week!!</p>
<p>I think the best thing to do is personally visit each campus and talk to the students and professors and get a tour. Someone basically said that already but I'll repeat it because it is honestly the only way. Find out as much as possible before committing.</p>
<p>I know exactly what you mean. When I started the application process I heard so many horror stories about not getting in to schools that my parents had me apply to 11 schools in the hopes of maybe getting in to three.</p>
<p>But now that I'm in a Madison, Michigan, Northwestern, USC, Duke, and Washington U in St Louis with 4 more schools to hear back from I'm going to have a real hard decision.</p>
<p>One thing you can do is find people who just graduated in your major. For instance, people who graduated last year and are in grad school somewhere else now. It shouldn't be that hard to track such people down online. Contact THEM and ask for their opinion. Current students often lack perspective, but being away for a year or so can give people clearer perspective.</p>
<p>My daughter graduated from Rice last year. We looked at a lot of colleges with her and a lot with WildChild (who is at an Ivy). I really believe Rice offers an outstanding college experience (better than my son's Ivy). The one thing missing at Rice is top quality athletics (except for baseball). If that is really important to you, I would pick Duke. Football and basketball at Rice are pretty much non-events. They play some good teams, but can't really stand up to them. The Rice campus is perfect and so is the surrounding area (in 3 of the 4 directions). My daughter was amazed at the wealth of cultural offerings in Houston and the ease of attending them. Rice has a top conservatory-level music school, so the orchestra and choral concerts are amazing. The weather is great- you won't be on campus for the really bad summer months and you can wear flip-flops in February! It IS humid, though. On-campus housing (the residential colleges) is good, and off-campus housing is convenient and plentiful. It is easy to have a car at Rice, too. You park out at the stadium, which is an easy walk or shuttle bus ride.
I, too, am not impressed with the current state of town-gown relations at Duke. Wash U is excellent, of course, but Rice has the edge in my opinion.
Remember that a majority of college students change their majors, so keep that in mind when picking your schools.
Congrats to all of you on the great acceptances!</p>
<p>Erm...yeah.</p>
<p>Case Western, Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Mount Holyoke....</p>
<p>And I got comparable scholarships to three of them. I have NO idea what to do; they're all lovely schools.</p>
<p>Depending on how the rest of my decisions turn out, I'm going to have some seriously difficult choices. I'm going to be doing a loooooot of visiting.</p>
<p>to the OP: i pretty much checked off wash u because the student life didnt seem that great when i visited and it doesnt have big time athletics. i was down to rice/duke/texas/michigan before yesterday and now that duke waitlisted me its just rice/texas/michigan ( i applied to carnegie mellon, but i dont care about them, and the jerome fisher program at penn, which i wont get into seeing as i got waitlisted at duke). honestly i think rice and duke have similar athletic scenes (duke's good at basketball, rice at baseball, rice basketball sucks, duke baseball sucks, rice is maybe a tad better in football than duke, but its really insignificant). college basketball is so much more of a "mainstream/televised" sport than college baseball, so duke's athletic scene seems a lot better than rice's, when in reality i would put it at just a little better than rice's. also I had rice ahead of duke before yesterday because of the RC system, which allows for bonding with upperclassmen too, since all Duke's freshmen get herded a mile down the road at east campus away from the main campus. i visited duke over the summer, and what everyone is saying about the town-gown relationship between Durham and Duke is true...it's not good. Duke probably has a great social scene on campus, but there's nothing to do off campus...whereas at Rice your campus has amazing trees (although not like Duke's forest) and is in the best part of Houston. Houston is an amazing city (despite its bad rap), and all you peeps from the NE, I can guarantee that you will be in for a bigger culture shock going to Durham, NC rather than Houston, TX. Houston is in Texas, and you have that Texas culture, but its also a cosmopolitan city with tons of stuff to do. Durham is a "city" that still has remnants of huge tobacco plants and its really not that great of a place to be in my opinion...it just felt weird.</p>