<p>tokenadult,
I'm certainly not arguing that Rice's brand is that strong outside of the Southwest as I just don't think it is. The nationally ranked baseball team brings it some recognition, but my impression is that the school is commonly NOT on the radar screens of many top high school students around the country. IMO, this is definitely their loss, but as others have posted, lots of Rice folks like this gem of a college being somewhat out of the spotlight. That certainly doesn't diminish its quality in my eyes. Hope your son likes it...and Houston if he ever makes a visit.</p>
<p>token:</p>
<p>Cal has one thing that Harvard may never have: its own spot on the periodic table of elements (used worldwide).</p>
<p>
[quote]
the school is commonly NOT on the radar screens of many top high school students around the country. IMO, this is definitely their loss, but as others have posted, lots of Rice folks like this gem of a college being somewhat out of the spotlight.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm a Rice grad.</p>
<p>I know full well that most people snicker about pilafs when I mention my alma mater. I also have found, over the eight years since I began my association with the school, that the few who really <em>are</em> familiar with Rice grads are IMPRESSED. I can always tell those from the others. I'll proudly say, "I went to Rice," and the ones on the 'in' will sigh, "Wow... That's a great school..."</p>
<p>It's not because they've grown up hearing about Rice University, unless they've lived in Texas (and even so, I'm a Texan through and through, and Rice hadn't been on my radar until I was a freshman in high school and my senior secret pal ended up there). The reason they've heard about Rice is that they've been stunned by someone from there... A colleague, an employee, a friend... Some Rice grad, somewhere along the way, has made an indelibly positive impression on that person. Then, these people tell me the stories.</p>
<p>I hear about the incredible tutor from Rice who made a guy's kid understand calculus once and for all. I hear about the engineer who cheerfully stayed at the office for thirty hours and a few catnaps once, who stuck around for as long as it took to get the job done perfectly and make the project team glow in front of the grateful client. I hear about the caring physician who seriously listened to the patient's concerns, and who sent back copies of all test results within a week and would call to follow up and see if the patient had any questions.</p>
<p>I think that's why the Rice senior ring is one of the few college rings I've seen that people wear long into adulthood. I look around my office and see at least three or four project managers who wear the subtle gold Rice emblem on their right ring finger... One of my doctors in the med center doesn't wear his medical school ring. He wears his Rice ring. To us, it stands as a reminder that we are the ambassadors... We've all experienced it when people don't really know what our school is about, and we all know what it means to wear our learning lightly, but to wield it as the best marketing our alma mater has to offer.</p>
<p>To be a Rice alum is to quietly wear that understated ring and, even though nobody has heard of us, to confidently know that wherever we go, whenever we achieve the amazing standard that Rice always quietly held us to, people WILL remember us, and that they will remember Rice, and what Rice people <em>do</em>.</p>
<p>To us, to our way of thinking, it's the difference between published rankings and true prestige. We don't need to be well-known to make waves in this world.</p>
<p>^^ That is one of the best posts I have ever read on this forum. Thank you, and I know my daughter would agree.</p>
<p>Wow, that post absolutely blew me away. :) Thank you, that was much-needed.</p>
<p>Rice really is a truly amazing place that produces equally amazing grads.</p>
<p>LOL!...why do I hear some ABC After-School Special music playing in the background? ;)</p>
<p>
[quote]
LOL!...why do I hear some ABC After-School Special music playing in the background?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>^^^ Here's one of the pilaf ones I was talking about. ;)</p>
<p>(MoWC and Hotasice- thanks.)</p>
<p>
<p>You meet someone in the city of Boston/Philadelphia and tell them that you go to/graduated from Dartmouth/U Penn and they instantly recognize the college and accord it a certain standing and heft. Likewise, you meet someone in Houston/Dallas and tell them that you go to/graduated from Rice and you get a similar reaction. That's it.</p>
<p>As for renown beyond their regions, I don't think any of the non-HYP Ivies nor Rice would be recognized, on their own names, at a higher level than the local powers, private or public, eg, Duke/Emory/Vanderbilt and maybe U Virginia and U North Carolina in the SE, U Chicago/Northwestern/ND and perhaps U Michigan in the Midwest, Stanford/UCB/UCLA in the West. IMO, all of those colleges have greater local impact, name recognition, appreciation of the name, and influence than Rice and the non-HYP Ivies.
I'm going to try this one more time.</p>
<p>You continue to talk about Penn and Philadelphia as if Philly is Penn's main sphere of influence and the primary base for its reputation. IT ISN'T. Not by a long shot.</p>
<p>Substantially less than 10% of Penn undergrads come from Philly. Substantially less than 10% of Penn undergrads stay in Philly after graduating.
I don't know how to make it any simpler.</p>
<p>If you insist on naming a single city where Penn has its greatest influence and reputation (in terms of job placement, etc.), then that would be New York City--and NOT Philly--because that's where, by far, the largest number of grads end up. Beyond that, in addition to Philly, Boston, DC, and LA are also popular destinations for Penn grads each year (and to a lesser extent, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.).</p>
<p>Further, as I've mentioned before, Penn receives more applications from California than from any other state, and almost 10% of its undergraduate student body is from California. I know, not surprising given that California is the most populous state. But I doubt that most of the other schools you mentioned have as proportionately high a draw from such a far-away region. </p>
<p>Additionally, last year Penn had a higher percentage of international students enrolled as freshman than any other major university in the country.</p>
<p>The bottom line on all this, hawkette, is that you continually insist on lumping virtually all the non-HYP top-30 schools together in terms of their relative prestige and reputations outside of their home areas. But the fact is that there is a continuum in this regard, and these schools are not all equal. While schools like Penn and Dartmouth obviously don't enjoy national prestige and reputations on the level of HYP, that doesn't mean that their national reputations are therefore equal to those of Emory, WUSL, Rice, etc. It's not a bifurcated choice of one level or national renown (HYP) or another (the rest of the top 30), and the non-HYP Ivies (and a few other schools such as Duke) generally fall somewhere in the middle of the continuum closer to HYP, as the geographic diversity and overlap of their applicant pools and job placement clearly indicate.</p>
<p>But leaving that aside, I agree that all of these schools--including Rice--are outstanding on a substantive level, and worthy of any prospective applicant's interest and investigation. I just think that it's inaccurate to imply that they all have the same level of reputation, prestige, and influence outside their local regions, because they clearly don't.</p>
<p>Penn gets a huge number of applicants from Texas, by the way. It is considered very prestigious and desirable.</p>
<p>I personally knew several Texans at Penn in the 1970s, and many of them ended up back in Texas after graduating. I also knew several Rice grads back then and they were, indeed, impressive.</p>
<p>
[quote]
While schools like Penn and Dartmouth obviously don't enjoy national prestige and reputations on the level of HYP, that doesn't mean that their national reputations are therefore equal to those of Emory, WUSL, Rice, etc.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This too is an important point. I grew up in Minnesota, and I knew of the first pair of colleges mentioned above at a MUCH earlier age than the three named at the end of the sentence. Reputation may have little or nothing to do with the experience of being an undergraduate student at a particular college, but it probably has more than a little to do with the lengthier experience of being an alumnus of a college.</p>
<p>45,
I can’t even say let’s agree to disagree because we’re not even talking about the same thing. I don’t think you understand my point.</p>
<p>As for Texans at U Penn and Pennsylvanians at Rice, the numbers are as follows:</p>
<p>U Penn’s entering class of 2373 students had 66 Texans, 2.8% of the class.</p>
<p>Rice’s entering class of 713 students had 15 Pennsylvanians, 2.1% of the class.</p>
<p>If you want to make that into a big deal, go ahead.</p>
<p>As for your comments about relative prestige and reputations, you seem intent on protecting and maintaining the status quo (which, given your position as a U Penn grad is completely understandable) while minimizing the position of other, less traditional powers. I’m always disappointed when I read such parsimonious comments that don’t appreciate the extremely high quality of these other schools and IMO certainly don’t reflect the local attitudes about all of these colleges. </p>
<p>What’s changed is that there are a lot more places these days that are seeing quality in and are producing quality graduates. I see this as an absolute fact and I suspect others operating in the for-profit world would have a similar view. I’d love to hear others’ impressions and if they would disagree or agree in their own experiences, particularly as it relates to brand power in various different regions of the USA. In their home regions, places like Emory, Wash U, etc. compare very favorably with the non-HYP Ivies. </p>
<p>As for how Rice factors into this, I created a thread last year that made several comparisons against the non-HYP Ivies. Here is that thread and an excerpt:</p>
<p>Here are ten interesting comparisons of Rice against the non-HYP Ivies:</p>
<ol>
<li>Size of undergraduate student body</li>
</ol>
<p>3049 RICE</p>
<p>9730 U Penn
4085 Dartmouth
5260 Columbia
13,562 Cornell
6010 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>Acceptance Rate</li>
</ol>
<p>24% RICE</p>
<p>18% U Penn
16% Dartmouth
10% Columbia
25% Cornell
14% Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>2006 National Merit Scholars enrolling</li>
</ol>
<p>140 RICE</p>
<p>100 U Penn
69 Dartmouth
62 Columbia
64 Cornell
94 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>% of students from public high schools</li>
</ol>
<p>71% RICE</p>
<p>52% U Penn
61% Dartmouth
49% Columbia
na% Cornell
60% Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>Endowment Per Capita (from NACUBO a/o 6/30/06)</li>
</ol>
<p>$801,980 RICE</p>
<p>$224,151 U Penn
$537,476 Dartmouth
$243,184 Columbia
$220,032 Cornell
$266,663 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>Month of February High-Low temperature</li>
</ol>
<p>67-48 RICE</p>
<p>42-28 U Penn
34-12 Dartmouth
42-29 Columbia
33-14 Cornell
39-23 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>SAT scores for 25th/75th percentiles</li>
</ol>
<p>1330-1540 RICE</p>
<p>1330-1510 U Penn
1350-1550 Dartmouth
1320-1520 Columbia
1280-1490 Cornell
1350-1530 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>ACT scores for 25th/75th percentiles</li>
</ol>
<p>30-34 RICE</p>
<p>29-33 U Penn
28-34 Dartmouth
28-33 Columbia
28-32 Cornell
27-33 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>Student/Faculty Ratio</li>
</ol>
<p>5/1 RICE</p>
<p>6/1 U Penn
8/1 Dartmouth
6/1 Columbia
10/1 Cornell
9/1 Brown</p>
<ol>
<li>Annual Tuition Cost</li>
</ol>
<p>$26,974 RICE</p>
<p>$35,916 U Penn
$35,288 Dartmouth
$35,166 Columbia
$34,781 Cornell
$36,342 Brown</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>UCBChemEGrad probably answers this better than me since he went to a higher ranked chemE program. LOL! But I am gonna give a try. </p>
<p>I think what he said is correct. Ice-cream melts due to temp differential between itself and the surrounding air; the larger the temp differential, the faster is the rate of melting. When ice-cream melts, it absorbs energy from the surrounding air whose temperature drops as a result. That's why your finger feels the cool when it gets just close enough to the icecream without touching it. If the surrounding air is holding more water content (higher RH), the temp of the surrounding air is gonna drop more slowly, thereby maintaining a higer temp differential longer which makes the rate of melting faster. Why? Because water has certain heat capacity (that's why it takes quite a bit of energy to boil water) and the air with higher water content possess higher heat capacity. It's gonna take more energy to cool the air with higher RH down by a certain degree than one at same temp but with lower RH.</p>
<p>^ That's right. The ice cream will melt faster in a higher relative humidity environment at the same temperature.</p>
<p>The total energy content (or enthalpy) of humid air is much higher than dry air. To show the influence of humidity on enthalpy, one can look at the "equivalent temperature", which is the temperature air would have if all of the water vapor in the air was condensed out of the air and the latent heat was converted to sensible heat. Raising the sensible heat increases the temperature. For example, with an air temperature of 86 F, the "equivalent temperatures" for dew point temperatures of 32, 50, and 68 F would be 80.6, 100.4, and 136.4 F, respectively. The latent heat of the water in the air can be a large part of the total heat content in the air.</p>
<p>This is why you also <em>feel</em> hotter too.</p>
<p>another way to look at this is as the surrounding air near the ice-cream drops, its RH increases. The surrounding air with a higher RH to begin with is gonna reaches its dew point, at which the RH is 100% and dew starts to form, faster and earlier (at a higher temp). So the ice-cream in a place with higher RH would look more wet also and "warmed" by the dew at a faster rate at a higher temp.</p>
<p>UCBChemEGrad,</p>
<p>I actually forgot about terms like "enthalpy" or "sensible heat"; you breathe chemE stuff more than i do..what a nerd you are, out of that higher ranked chemE program! :p</p>
<p>
[quote]
I actually forgot about terms like "enthalpy" or "sensible heat"
[/quote]
brings back memories, eh?</p>
<p>
[quote]
what a nerd you are
[/quote]
Please re-read the TOS regarding ad hominem attacks...:p
<em>no offense taken though - we Bears have thick skin</em></p>
<p>
[quote]
out of that higher ranked chemE program
[/quote]
No denying...;)</p>
<p>^ <em>Bristles at video</em></p>
<p>Yeah...I know you were kidding, Mildcat. ;)</p>
<p>why do you have a habbit of having that first alphabet upside down? It's W, not M!!</p>
<p>
<p>U Penns entering class of 2373 students had 66 Texans, 2.8% of the class.</p>
<p>Rices entering class of 713 students had 15 Pennsylvanians, 2.1% of the class.</p>
<p>If you want to make that into a big deal, go ahead.
Thats not the point. The point is that Penns and Dartmouths entering classes are MUCH more nationally representative and geographically diverse than Rices. This whole discussion started with your implication that, similar to Rices reputation in Houston/Dallas, Penn's and Dartmouths reputations were largely based in Philly and Boston, respectively. As the totality of the data proves, thats clearly not the case. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>hawkette, the LAST thing knowledgeable Penn proponents would be, is "intent on protecting and maintaining the status quo" regarding Penns relative prestige and reputation. On the contrary, they emphasize the steep upward trajectory of Penns national and international profile over the last 30 years, as Penn has:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>increased its US News ranking range from the teens throughout the 80s and early 90s to a consistent 4-7 over the past 11 years;</p></li>
<li><p>changed from a school with a mostly regional (i.e., northeastern) applicant pool and student body into a school with one of the most nationally and internationally diverse applicant pools and student bodies in the country;</p></li>
<li><p>significantly increased its selectivity and yield, so that they are now among the top 10 in the country;</p></li>
<li><p>significantly increased the relative size of its endowment, moving from the top 15 in the country to the top 10;</p></li>
<li><p>significantly increased its annual fund-raising, so that it now consistently ranks among the top 10 universities for amount of funds raised every year;</p></li>
<li><p>expanded beyond the traditional eminence of its professional schools by investing heavily in liberal arts departments and research, resulting in its ranking among the top 10 schools in the country for number of departments ranked in the top 10 in the National Research Council (NRC) rankings of the 1990s</p></li>
<li><p>ascended to the highest tier of research universities in the country--which it shares with only Columbia, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford--in the Annual Report on The Top American Research Universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance;</p></li>
<li><p>ascended to the top 15 in the two most prominent international rankings of world universities.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So when it comes to Penns relative prestige and reputation, hawkette, it is YOU who seems intent on protecting and maintaining the status quo, as you continually disregard the above and portray Penn as merely a regional power with predominantly regional influence comparable to that of Rice, Emory, etc. Your view of Penn appears to be stuck in a time warp somewhere back in the 1970s (or earlier).</p>
<p>Further, I am not parsimonious with my praise of other schools. I DO appreciate the high quality of schools such as Rice, Emory, etc., and none of my comments in this thread--or anywhere else on CC--has indicated otherwise. However, what I think YOU fail to appreciate is that not all non-HYP schools in the top 20-30 are equal in terms of academic reputation and prestige beyond their local regions. There currently are significant differences among them in that regard, and there also are significant differences in their momentum and trajectories.</p>
<p>So by all means, I agree that we should praise the excellence of less traditional powers as you call them, and cheer and encourage their ascents to greater national prestige. But lets do so without denigrating the greater national and international academic prestige that other non-HYP schools have already attained.</p>
<p>
<p>140 RICE</p>
<p>100 U Penn 69 Dartmouth 62 Columbia 64 Cornell 94 Brown
This is nit-picking, but if youre going to use the number of National Merit Scholars as a metric to compare the quality of students at different schools, you really need to count only scholarships awarded by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, and not school-sponsored scholarships. The number you indicated for Rice includes both. As you know, the Ivies (and some other schools) do not award merit scholarships, so their National Merit numbers include only scholarships awarded by the Corporation. Other schools, like Rice, do award merit scholarships and sponsor their own National Merit Scholars, which artificially inflates their National Merit numbers compared to schools that do not award merit scholarships. For example, there are many National Merit Finalists at the Ivies who were not awarded National Merit Scholarships by the corporation, but who would have been awarded a school-sponsored National Merit Scholarship if they had gone to, say, Rice. So, comparing a number that includes school-sponsored scholarships at one school with numbers that dont include school-sponsored scholarships at other schools, is not an apples-to-apples comparison. For a more accurate perspective, the numbers of non-school-sponsored National Merit Scholars at these schools in 2007 were as follows:</p>
<p>64 RICE </p>
<p>115 Penn
80 Brown
62 Columbia
51 Dartmouth
47 Cornell</p>
<p>Rices number is still quite impressive--especially on a per capita basis--but not as overwhelming as your post indicates.</p>