Do many Rice students commute to Rice? Is there any free parking near Rice or the medical centers?
I am wondering if any Rice students choose to rent (or even buy) in bigger houses outside the loop and then commute to Rice. I am wondering if it would be wise for me to buy a house in South Side, South Central Houston, or Greater Third Ward for my child to go to school at Rice.
Most students want to live on campus all 4 years because of the residential college system. Very few students commute. There is lots of on campus parking near the football stadium, and buses run from the parking lot around a campus loop to most of the major buildings. The charges for on campus parking can be steep, My daughter parks her car on campus and lives on campus. Many students that do not live on campus try to find places within walking or easy biking distance. Talk to a local realtor before you invest in a house in the Houston area. The parking in and around the medical center is very expensive and limited because of the large number of visitors to the hospitals and employees that work there. There is a metro rail that stops close to the medical center and the Rice campus.
Thank you so much for your post. I have looked at the parking prices for medical centers and they are all mostly around $200+ per month. Is there any where that is cheaper than this? Is there a place where my son can park and use the metro rail or bus to get to the medical centers/campus? He will be volunteering and working in the medical centers during his time at Rice.
Not sure if this is helpful but the MetroRail map is here https://www.ridemetro.org/Pages/Rail.aspx overlayed on top of local highways, etc
There’s a website
http://parking.rice.edu/
If he lives on campus he can easily walk to the medical center from there.
Do the grad students live on campus?
No on campus housing for graduate students. There is some Rice managed off campus housing for graduate students and I believe Rice runs shuttles from them to campus.
Actually, a sizable portion of Rice kids live off-campus (we call it “OC.”) It’s about 25% of the undergrad population- not anywhere near the OC populations of state schools, but still sizable.
Most Rice students want to live on-campus because the social life revolves around residential college and on-campus culture, and in general our facilities/food are pretty nice. Some do choose to go off for the extra space, but the vast majority of people try to stay on for social life and convenience. We don’t have space for everyone, though, so as an upperclassman you may lose the on-campus housing lottery and be forced to move off.
I do know one or two people whose parents purchased houses for them in the area in order to get in-state residency for medical school applications, but that’s fairly rare.