Hello, I have been contacting Rice’s football program and have received some responses from them. Obviously, it would be very exciting to play Division 1 football, but I am also thinking about life after college. I live in New Jersey, and both of my parents say that while Rice is an excellent school, its reputation is not good on the coasts. I know that after college I want to move out west. Is it true that you have to live in Texas or near Texas to take advantage of a Rice degree? Thanks.
This statement is demonstrably not true - “its reputation is not good on the coasts”. My D is graduating and her and all her friends have had offers from top companies across the US - coast to coast! Good luck! I hope you get the chance to play football at Rice.
You are smart to think of life after college athletics. Rice has a new football coach for the 2018 season, Coach Blomgren from Stanford (former offensive coordinator). Look for the Rice football program to improve. Come visit the school and decide for yourself. One of my daughter’s friends that is a junior computer science major has an internship this summer with Apple in Cali working on Siri development. She hopes it leads to a permanent job offer. Many Rice graduates get jobs on the West Coast. Contact the Rice Career Development Department to get precise numbers. https://ccd.rice.edu/home/
My son just got a summer internship at Tesla, his roommate has an internship at an investment bank in New York and his other friend has an computer science internship in Boston. The general public may not be familiar with Rice, but the people doing the hiring are. .
This is what I’ve heard, even from competitor colleges. They say people who matter would know so unless you are worried about impressing random folks, its not a valid concern. What other options are you considering?
^^^^Agree, Rice is well known to anyone who matters.
I should add, that I was disappointed in the number of companies that actually came to rice recruiting for engineering majors. Didn’t really seem as many and as diverse options as I would have expected. Most of the interviews my son got were from applying from internships online that he found on his own. I think they rice career center is highly rated, but didn’t help at all in his finding something. Although, that could be his fault for not taking advantage of what they have to offer.
Don’t mean to entirely pour rain on this parade, but I wanted to provide a somewhat dimmer perspective from one who went through the job searching experience while a student at Rice.
Rice students are able to get jobs almost anywhere, but a part of me wonders if that’s because of Rice or because of the students. I probably don’t have to convince anyone here that almost all Rice students are ambitious and/or very well qualified. I would even venture and say that they would be able to get themselves into well-respected positions at public schools.
As for “anyone that matters will know Rice,” which I regret that I have to put so bluntly, the cliche is false. In a recent post here, I had mentioned that I had a friend talk to a recruiter with Boeing and that recruiter hadn’t heard of Rice. In addition, I was in the middle of an interview with a similarly sized (and respected, perhaps) aerospace company, and the interviewers hadn’t heard of Rice. Neither of us ended up working for the respective companies so perhaps to some extent they truly didn’t “matter,” but when large companies such as these haven’t heard of Rice, it makes you wonder which companies do matter. Rice, unfortunately, is too small of a school to have the wingspan to reach everyone. So while Rice has a solid foundation in Texas and some parts of the greater South, it still does not have the same name brand in other geographic regions that schools in that region might.
That being said, plenty of Rice students are able to find opportunities, whether through professors, colleagues, friends, recruiters, or whatever suitable method it may be. I simply wanted to warn that the reason might be more because of the student rather than the university. Wherever you end up working, I would doubt that ALL of your supervisors went to schools such as Stanford, Harvard, etc. Perhaps you’ll even most of your supervisors graduated from universities that are lower ranked than Rice. The difference between a 3.6 GPA at Rice and a 3.8 GPA at a respected public school is probably marginal, unless the person viewing your resume is a Rice graduate.
Congrats on being reached out to by Rice. It’s an honor in itself and despite my seemingly negative tone, in my opinion, Rice provides an undergraduate experience second to none. But if you have your head set on going out West, you may have better time going to a school in that region. Universities in general, not just Rice, tend to have the most opportunities in the surrounding area.
Its not that Boeing doesn’t know Rice (that’s highly unlikely)- its that those particular recruiters don’t know Rice. Their loss.
The school is small. It may not have the name recognition of Harvard or Stanford, but you’d be surprised at the # of people that aren’t familiar with Williams or Amherst or Pomona.
Here’s an N=1 : DS (a mech E from Rice) was interviewing with the company (in SV) he works for. He had 9 interviews. The last of the 9 was with the in-house counsel at the company, who was… a mechE Rice grad 
ChiGuy123
I guess I would agree and disagree with some of what your are saying. What I don’t understand is what type of recruiter would go into an interview with a college student and not know anything about college he/she was from. They would have reviewed the resume and application prior to selecting the individual for the interview. They may not be as familiar with the particular school as others, but do not see how a professional recruiter with a large organization would say I have never heard of the school. Especially, when they most likely receive applications for numerous students form that school every year. So, I am calling BS on that anecdote, whether the applicant is from Rice or any other college.
This is off topic, but it was a conference where thousands of students from hundreds of universities all over the country attended, so it’s not like the recruiter could research every school in attendance to the conference. It happens. A recruiter from a Boeing facility in Seattle attending a conference in Boston, having grown up in Colorado Springs all their life may not have come across Rice in their daily doings. Since Boeing doesn’t actually recruit from Rice, it’s believable.
As for my interviewers, I was rather annoyed when they didn’t know Rice as it gave me the impression that the interviewers didn’t do their homework on my application while I researched them up and down.
Regardless, there will be some recruiters/employees/interviewers out there that simply may not have heard of Rice. And they may happen to work in a company you want to work for. So to get the attention of those recruiters, you have to rely on your qualities as a whole, not just the words “Rice University” in your application.
The “professional recruiter”, i.e. someone in the HR College Recruiting department, probably knows about all the good colleges in the country (and the world). However, in tech interviews, you only see the recruiter briefly and her opinion doesn’t really count. The main interviewers – technical interviewers – are not trained and mostly selected randomly. Most engineers don’t really like to interview people, so we have to rotate interviewers so “everyone do his fair share.” It’s very possible that the technical interviewers haven’t heard of Rice (or Dartmouth, or Amherst, or Williams, or Pomona etc.) But it doesn’t really matter. They are geeks. If you blow them away with your awesome technical skills, they’ll accept you.
Trust your parents. They have your best interests at heart.
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Like @ChiGuy123, I’m a current student. Off the top of my head and JUST concerning aerospace companies, I have two graduating friends heading to Boeing and Northrop Grumman. I also know students who’ve interned at SpaceX, NASA, and NASA’s JPL.
Sure, we don’t have Harvard or Yale’s name recognition, so if someone has an offer from those places, “name” might be something to consider when deciding. Otherwise, I think the vast majority of people who matter do know, and if they don’t, at worst you will just not get an extra boost in the hiring process.
Ultimately, this topic is just a discussion of brand recognition (or reputation) and, no, Rice does not have the brand recognition of Princeton. But, then again, who does? So what’s the point?
I’m an alumnus of the University, and I found that my opportunities after graduation were diverse and, generally, excellent. Nobody told me, “Well, you know, Rice just doesn’t have a good reputation, so we’re not going to hire you.”
One thing you have to remember when approaching an opportunity is that your ability to market your own skills and credentials is just as important, if not more important, than the brand stamp on your degree certificate.
Rice is well known and loved in Texas. You can get hired at local offices of top employers and then later transfer to main national and international branches and by similar employers in other areas. It would be easier then breaking into east or west coast branches where competition is crazy and connection based.
As most candidates in NY type places are local, a degree from Rice and internships from top Texas employers can get your resume noticed.