<p>Are all of the dorms air conditioned? </p>
<p>-I'm a potential freshmen and I was wondering: What is your favorite part about the residential colleges/ rice?</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>I'll give a lengthier answer to the second question tomorrow; you deserve more than the type of answer that would be given at 2:30 a.m.</p>
<p>Not only are all dorms air conditioned, but most (if not all, I'm not sure) have thermostats in each bedroom, so you can control your room temp.</p>
<p>Favorite part about the residential college system? That's a very difficult thing to pick just one aspect of it. The residential college system is like an all-encompassing facet to Rice culture. They are really and truly distinct living communities and instill a whole new level of "school spirit" (which is already pretty high at Rice).</p>
<p>Yes, every builiding and college at Rice has A/C. (Pretty much a necessity in Houston.)</p>
<p>The residential college system influences nearly everything that happens on the Rice campus, so, as Clendenenator said, it's hard to chose one favorite aspect. If I had to pick out one (or two) thing(s) that I especially love about residential colleges, it'd be the sense of community they foster and the strong support system they provide.</p>
<p>Every building on Rice campus is air conditioned - I'd actually advise having a sweater or jacket or two for August and September.</p>
<p>My favorite part of the residential college system:
I also love the really supportive, family like community that it provides. At almost any time, if I'm just looking for people to hang out with, I'm sure to find some people from my college. There's also always someone willing to help out with anything - whether it's pulling together a campus event (I just spent the last 7 hours helping about 40-50 people from my college put together a party for tonight) or someone to help understand the math on my stat homework, I can always find people. </p>
<p>Another thing that no one has mentioned, probably because no one even thinks about it, is how much it forces you to get to know people you might not otherwise get to know. The colleges are small enough, and each contains the entire spectrum of people on campus, so you actually get to know people that, in a larger environment, you might never get to know very well.</p>
<p>Think about it like this: say you're a student at X university (I'll use Dartmouth as an example). Over the course of your time there, it's not that likely that you will run into a whole ton of students from other universities on campus, so you really don't get that much of a chance to utter the phrase "I go to Dartmouth" and then secretly smile inside at how cool that makes you. At Rice, same thing exists, but to correct that, you can say "I'm in X college" (e.g. I'm in Brown) to most people that you meet form another college and then smile to yourself because you really know that your college is the best.</p>
<p>That description really didn't make much sense, but that's kind of the way I like to think about it.</p>
<p>The Benefits?? So many...</p>
<p>Since many students here can be considered somewhat geeky, at another school they might be left alone in their rooms. Here because of the social pressure to be part of your College, you are far more likely to come out of your room and be forced to make many friends...almost instantly. I know of so many other schools where freshman found it hard to make friends, here it's said you have 250+ new friends right after O-week..and not only freshman, but all years. At other colleges you might get "freshman dorms" (even those with a res. system), that's that as good as Rice, where everyone is right there to give you guidence and support. Really a spectacular system that is so incredibly INCLUSIVE, not exclusive, like with sororities and fraternities. My son, now a junior, has a wonderful large group of friends, all bright, a bit quirky, funny and interesting. I don't think that would have happened as easily at other schools that he looked at.</p>
<p>The geeky-aspect is, in my opinion, heavily exaggerated. The vast majority of people here are completely non-nerdy (in most aspects save for intelligence) and in many cases, good-looking.</p>
<p>Another nice thing to point out is how much the residential colleges are self-governing. Students really do everything for the college (except clean and provide regular meals). Each college has a constitution, a government, and elected officials. They get a budget (usually around $50,000) that they can spend however they like, be it on pool tables, parties, tee-shirts, water balloons, beer, "trips", etc. The masters and RAs really have no power in the governing of the college; they serve merely to give hugs and support the students.</p>
<p>I promised a longer answer for a few days ago, and I'm finally getting around to giving it.</p>
<p>The college system at Rice is truly something remarkable. The colleges are completely student-run, which means that all of the students are personally invested in the well-being of their living spaces. You get out of the college system as much as you put into it, so there is this amazing collaborative community that the college system creates. You really feel like you are a part of something bigger than yourself, and you are involved in in from day one.</p>