<p>Hi! I am seriously considering Rice. My questions are:
How stifling is the heat and humidity and what months does that last through?
What are off-campus options for socializing with friends. I am interested in restaurants and places to go rather than bars, near campus and in Houston?
Is it easy to get to the places to go closer to campus and those in Houston?
Thank you in advance to anyone who has time to answer.</p>
<p>First of all, Rice is amazing. Come to Owl Days then come to Rice.</p>
<p>The Texas humidity and heat can be bad, but you get used to it, or as much as anyone can get used to it. It usually runs from May to late september/early october. </p>
<p>Most socializing that I know of occurs on campus, since most things are centralized on campus and most people don’t have cars. That said, on weekends, especially on Saturday nights, most people either walk over to Rice Village or find someone with a car to go eat or something. It’s not a bad walk to Rice Village, and on Friday and Saturday, there’s a shuttle that runs over there. Farther from campus and you’ll have to find a friend with a car.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response! Isn’t there some kind of mass transit that runs from near the campus through Houston?</p>
<p>It takes a while to get used to the 2 seasons in Texas, hot & hot as hell. Other than that it’s pretty darned cool.</p>
<p>lol, thanks.</p>
<p>We have access to the Houston Metro through the Q Card, which Rice funds for us for free. There’s the Houston light rail that runs by Rice, but honestly it doesn’t go very many places. Only to downtown (which is pretty sketch and boring) and reliant.</p>
<p>I hope that this might help to counter the exaggerations above. Because Houston can definitely hot, but the vast majority of the year has not been like that.</p>
<p>I would say that when you first arrive, yeah, it is pretty damned hot. Suffocatingly so. However, it is kind of expected. By the end of September, however, the temperature had really started to mellow out.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, there was a period during which I was cold for a while! you get so used to nice weather that 50 degrees is cold. </p>
<p>From November to Now, the weather has been absolutely awesome. T-Shirts most of the time, otherwise a couple jackets and you are golden. </p>
<p>We end school stupid early compared to other schools, so we miss most of the summer heat.</p>
<p>In short, the weather is one of my favorite things coming from a colder climate.</p>
<p>Great! Looking forward to Owl days!</p>
<p>Regarding the heat and humidity, I suppose all dorms have air conditioning?</p>
<p>livn487… I don’t know specifically about the dorms, but it is a RARE building in Houston that does not have A/C!</p>
<p>I’m fairly sure just about every building is air conditioned. I’d see people carrying jackets in the August heat because the buildings were so cold.</p>
<p>Don’t know what part of the country you’re coming from Kerri, but I’ve lived in the North East for 20 years and it gets as hot as hell here too between June and early September (95F-100F and 90% humidity is very common) so I can’t imagine anyone born and raised on the East Coast /in the Mid West having a problem. Now, if you are a lucky sole from the West Coast, then it might require a bit of an adjustment!</p>
<p>My S, from the northwest, didn’t find the heat to be nearly as bad as we lead him to believe. But yes, he had to change clothes more than once a day, especially because he’s very active.</p>
<p>My S also uses the metro rail/buses regularly to get all over Houston. Well, and a bike. However, he is not the typical Rice student in that regard, but it is an option for you, if you want it to be.</p>
<p>And yes, you’ll be somewhere else in the worst of Houston heat. But the awesomeness of Rice will far outweigh any “inconvenience” of weather :-)</p>
<p>Weather is not an issue. It’s hot at the beginning and end of the year. The rest is gorgeous.</p>