<p>My just son applied to Rice last week (regular decision, but we did all his apps early), and we received a letter from them today thanking him for his interest and encouraging him to visit. I have heard before that Rice really wants people to visit. But the thing is, it will cost us like $1000 to visit Rice (even more if we try to get out there before the regular decision deadline of Jan 1...is that necessary?), and we are really uncertain whether we can afford Rice at all. In fact, I'm rather certain we cannot afford it, unless he was to get a very good merit aid package. My son is a good student with good grades and test scores. He got an 800 on the math portion of the SAT and an 800 on the Math2 SAT subject test, so he's a good match for Rice, but still I don't know that he's at the top of their candidate pool. I'd imagine he is somewhere in the middle, or perhaps in the top of the middle. In other words, I think he's got a good shot at acceptance, but maybe not such a great shot at merit aid, which is hard to get anywhere, and harder at the more selective schools I'm sure. (We actually spent the money to visit the U of Miami a few months ago because I'm hoping he's got a decent shot at merit aid there since its a less competitive school.)</p>
<p>My question is: Should we spend the money to go visit Rice? If we don't are we pretty much guaranteeing he won't get merit aid? If that's the case, maybe it was a waste of an application! :(</p>
<p>I am not sure if Rice is one of those schools that tracks demonstrated interest. However, I suspect that Rice encourages its applicants to visit because it is hard to capture how amazing Rice is just by looking at pictures on the internet. Although Rice is located in the middle of Houston, and has access to all of the amenities of a major city, Rice was actually established (all 300 acres) before the city grew, and therefore Houston developed around Rice. So it has a remarkable campus that is “behind the hedges”. Also, seeing Rice first hand allows a prospective student to get a feel for the culture of Rice, and the residential colleges, and the relaxed and friendly demeanor of its students.</p>
<p>I know that Rice has become a top choice school for many prospective applicants who have visited, when it maybe wasn’t a top choice before the visit. It’s a pretty amazing place.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that if you can’t visit while school is in session, there’s no harm in waiting to see if your son is admitted and then flying him to Houston for the admitted applicant weekend. That’s a great way to get a feel for the culture and “place”.</p>
<p>Rice does keep track demonstrated interest. If you have visited campus before submitting your application, it will help a little bit in the admission process, but it is absolutely not a deal breaker if you haven’t visited yet. There are also multiple ways to demonstrate your interest besides on-campus visit, such as off-campus information sessions, interviews, Rice student contact, etc.</p>
<p>Rice tracks demonstrated interest, however it is one of the many many things that they consider. Rice understands that everyone who lives far away cannot visit due to time, schedule, finances etc. and thus it wont count against you.</p>
<p>I did not visit Rice or have an interview and still got in. </p>
<p>Ok great advice, thanks everyone! I’ll see if he can do an interview or an information session or something. It is really prohibitively expensive to try to visit right now.</p>
<p>@chris17mom Also, if your son come to visit Rice he can stay on campus as “overnight visit” so that he doesn’t need to pay any fee for the hotel. It can help you save significant amount of money.</p>
<p>Faulkner is extremely right on the fact that a complete visit does and will change your views on the school. I was pretty much set on a different top 20 school, but with a overnight visit, my views were completely shifted. Rice was amazing. </p>
<p>Since your son already submitted, visiting would be one less interest point he had in the app.
You can just hope for the best and visit after your son is admitted for his final choice of college before May 1st. </p>
<p>Yes I think we are going to have to wait until he gets some acceptance letters and only visit the schools that are offering him affordable packages. He applied to 13 schools (long story, but we felt we needed to do this to get a few affordable offers back) and we can’t possibly visit them all. I wish we’d visited Rice and got those extra brownie points though, because I think Rice is one of the best matches for him academically and in other ways (location, weather, etc.). But we will just have to wait with fingers crossed!</p>