<p>Dear CC parents. This thread is to share our experiences:</p>
<p>After first year my son is extremely happy with Rice. His only worry is that he has to leave rice after three years!
For summer he got three paid research assistancy offers and one paid tutoring offer. Now he has to choose.</p>
<p>Also he is going overseas for a month, trip fully paid! </p>
<p>I cannot ask for anything more. Yes. Rice has exceeded my expectations..</p>
<p>I’m the parent of a graduating senior and I’ve been thrilled with my son’s experience at Rice. I really couldn’t have expected more from any school. And yes, in fact, Rice exceeded my expectation.</p>
<p>My son was a Century Scholar and he started research from day one. He had the wonderful fortune of finding a professor who became an unbelievable mentor to him over the past 4 years. She really helped him in so many ways, including discovering what he wants to do in his future. He will be attending a top 10 program to pursue a PhD. And he just learned that he was awarded a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, due in no small part to the recommendation from his mentor and the research he performed under her guidance while at Rice. This included presenting the research at a national conference while a freshman and being first author on a paper that was published in an international journal.</p>
<p>Thank you, Rice. So sad to face graduation in a few weeks.</p>
<p>Me, too! I have to say goodbye to Rice after 7 years of kids at Rice. I’m really looking forward to graduation, but sad that those days are over! </p>
<p>DD had a great run at Rice, culminating in a departmental cash award at graduation (totally unexpected), and a yearlong Rice travel scholarship, which allowed her to spend a year studying and working in Turkey. (Goin’ on three years there now… ready for her to come home!!!). Links through her include a professor/mentor who is now a family friend of ours; we met through our daughter, but liked each other so much, we now visit and stay in each other’s homes. 
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<p>DS had a wonderful professor mentor, and did two years of research with him, but his biggest love is/was his club sport team. He found good balance at Rice, wonderful friends, and participated fully in all that Rice had to offer. (It was a surprise to find my son so involved, since he stayed away from all things social and school at the high school level.) He was an O-week advisor for several years - again, an amazing tribute to Rice, since he was never one for that kind of thing before.
He is not interested in further education at this point, but his prof/mentor is/was enthusiastically willing to support him in that area if he wishes to pursue it. DS is already working parttime for an engineering company in his area of interest, and will go to fulltime as a staff engineer upon graduation. (3 weeks and counting.) Rice has been really wonderful for our family, and the ties that both kids have forged there will last… </p>
<p>I really am surprised at how emotional and sad I am that they won’t be part of the Rice family anymore, except in an alumni way!!!</p>
<p>My daughter loves Rice after her first year in biochem/molecular bio. Rice was the perfect fit for her. She has a great roommate, lots of new friends, challenging courses, and great research opps as a freshman - great to have the medical centers right across from campus. She’s staying in Houston over the summer to continue research. She’s only coming back to SoCal for a brief 2 weeks.</p>
<p>We too have a graduate this year. These 4 years have been everything expected and more. It has just flown by and we will also be at graduation with mixed emotions. She has had the perfect combination of university and conservatory with Rice and the Shepherd School of Music. A music education of the highest level and a great release with her involvement in other activities and friends from other majors. She plans to stay in the area for a year or 2 and stay with her studio teacher as she prepares for graduate school.</p>
<p>Ok, a little twist to this post: For people who paid full price (or close to it) Did Rice meet your expectation? Let me know if I should just start a new thread with this instead…</p>
<p>Congratulations to all the parents with seniors this year! I hope you’ll continue to check in here, even after your kids leave Rice. Your advice and opinions have been invaluable.</p>
<p>I can’t believe I’m the parent of a Rice junior! It seems like only yesterday when I was sitting in the <em>brand new</em> Pavilion for the Family weekend of my daughter’s freshman year, meeting some of these other CC parents. My daughter has had a great experience, both academically and socially. Aside from all the academic opportunities she’s had, I think I’m most grateful to Rice for all the support she got during her first year or so, when she was adjusting to so much. Her friends, the masters, the residential college system in general, the counseling center, all the professors who know her by name, the IM sports, the clubs she joined (and several my normally shy daughter has held offices in). I’m tempted to say what she’s gotten from all that is even more valuable than what she’s gotten from her BioE classes. </p>
<p>Just one more year at Rice for her. I’m sure we’ll all miss it!</p>
<p>Bronzeleaf–I didn’t see your post until after I’d sent mine. We’ve been fortunate that our daughter had a substantial merit scholarship. She wouldn’t be at Rice without it, not because Rice isn’t worth it but because we couldn’t have afforded to pay that much for any school! And, if we’d had to decide against Rice for financial reasons, I’m sure she’d have been happy at one of the UC schools where she would have ended up, but it would have been a very different experience.</p>
<p>DD had merit and need-based financial aid, DS had some need-based financial aid - in either case we ended up paying about the same, and the amount that we paid was what we could afford. I guess we are naturally frugal, because we managed without taking out parental loans, and we paid out-of-pocket. If we had had the money to pay full-fare and had not qualified for financial aid, I would have been happy to pay full-fare. My kids went to public school from K-12, and learned a lot - still, it was a treat for each of them to spend 4 years at a university filled with so many bright, quirky, interested and motivated students and so many professors, instructors and support staff with a collective vision of making the Rice experience full and rich. :)</p>