HELP. I'm ridiculously indecisive. (Rice v. Yale v. Harvard v. Pomona)

College Search & Selection
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<p>First of all, you face a no-lose scenario. Yale and Harvard present the prestige, resources, academic acclaim, and resources to aid your intellectual maturation process. Pomona is a top LAC that will provide you will close access to top professors and many scintillating intellectual discussions.</p>

<p>I’m a freshman at Rice, so I have an obvious bias toward the school of a 5-1 student-to-faculty ratio, close interaction among students of various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and a remarkable residential college system that provides a support system within an already supportive community. What makes Rice stand out is that it offers the ethos of a tiny liberal arts college with the resources of a large-scale research school like MIT, the discussions of existential realities that one might find an University of Chicago or Williams, and the endowment per-student resources that outpace even those of venerable Yale or Harvard. Anti-intellectualism which unfortunately pervades many college campuses is not tolerated at Rice; being smart and cool here are rarely mutually exclusive.</p>

<p>At Rice, you can discuss Diderot with a football player – who helped lead Rice to a bowl win, debate the merits of a consumption based tax system with engineers, be offered research jobs by eminent professors after only one year, and have lunch with Thomas Friedman or the mayor of the nation’s fourth largest city. Rice is also one of the most heterogeneous, inclusive schools imaginable, which may seem unfathomable for a school in Houston, Texas. </p>

<p>Rice is situated in one of the most affluent neighborhood of Houston and it abuts Rice Village, an area with a range of shopping and culinary options. While Rice has its share of students from well-to-do families, there is no palpable tension between the haves and the have-nots. The polarity of wealth that is felt so acutely at many East Coast schools is simply not a factor here, for students are not classified by how many zeros they posses, rather, they are united by the common feeling that they are blessed to be at a school with nice kids, great professors, and innumerable opportunities for personal development.</p>

<p>Since the academic calender ends in April and begins again in August, you will not have to worry about most of the miserable Houston summer. The honor system at Rice shows the level of trust that the faculty places in the student body. Even the school’s greatest weakness (poor grad school problems – which is being ameliorated by our likely merger with Baylor’s top ten medical school) is a positive because it reaffirms the faculty’s interest in the student body.</p>

<p>At Pomona, you will likely thrive intellectually, but you may regret that you’re not at a large-scale research university. At Harvard or Yale, you’ll revel in the storied history of these august institutions, but you may never actually speak with that superstar professor who is busy working with a more credentialed grad school. Rice will allow you to blossom as a writer (you can take courses with professors who have won national teaching awards or join our college newspaper, which is always searching for more talent), feel intellectually stimulated both inside and outside the classroom, and expand your cultural boundaries. </p>

<p>Simply put, Rice has the ethos of Amherst, the academic prestige of an Ivy (we regularly score second nationwide on the MCATs, and we have a top 5 architecture school ), our engineering programs surpass those of Harvard, Yale or Pomona, our music school is world-renowned (Itzhak Perlman sent his daughter here), and our omnipresent spirit of cooperation and kindness compelled me to take a break from studying to write about my beloved university.</p>

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<p>^ I agree most of what GregOden said, but i disagree that "Rice: it’s an Ivy for half the price ". Ivy league definitely offer better financial aid than rice. Though you have to consider that Rice is cheaper than Ivy leagues by 10 grand already. Though independent from financial aid, I would recommend Yale or Pomona. If you want to work in California it is a good idea to graduate from a college IN California, which can give you more career opportunities and stuff. Also, Pomona IS prestigious as ivy leagues in LACs community. Also, Yale pretty much offer everything you want. </p>

<p>Though if you want to be really successful and are able to handle heavy workload, go with Yale/Harvard.</p>

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<p>“At Harvard or Yale, you’ll revel in the storied history of these august institutions, but you may never actually speak with that superstar professor who is busy working with a more credentialed grad school.”</p>

<p>This is complete nonsense.</p>

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<p>“At Harvard or Yale, you’ll revel in the storied history of these august institutions, but you may never actually speak with that superstar professor who is busy working with a more credentialed grad school.”</p>

<p>DocT: This is complete nonsense.</p>

<p>DocT, are you willing to argue that that the professors at Harvard will give priority to undergrads over graduate students? In terms of research opportunities, small schools like Rice and Caltech offer unparalleled interaction with faculty. Larger schools like Harvard just aren’t conducive to that level of contact between students and professors, many of whom are caught in the all too-familiar “publish or perish” cycle. There are surely exceptions to this rule – friends of mine at Harvard praise notable professors who try to reach out to undergraduates, but in most cases, the faculty does not court undergraduates.</p>

<p>The residential college system at Rice facilitates contact between professors and students in casual settings. Want to eat lunch with the head of the econ department? Just stop by the Jones College servery. </p>

<p>Even my friends at Harvard, who are quite content with their academic environs, envy my ability as a freshman to know so many leading professors in formal and non-formal settings.</p>

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<p>the lurking variable here is that the average harvard professor is also probably better and more important than the average rice professor. World class professors at the top of their field should not need to reach out to (‘court’???) college freshmen; it is the students’ responsibility to do that, and the professors’ responsibility to be inviting, accomodating, and attentive. i know this sounds pretty d*****-baggy, but so do you when you make untrue claims about harvard professor-undergraduate-graduate student relations based off of hearsay from a handful of friends who attend the school. professors here at harvard do not prefer graduates to undergraduates. most i have interacted with have no preference except on the basis of who is more interesting to talk to or knowledgeable about shared academic interests, or are more interested in undergraduates than graduates.</p>

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<p>I’m willing to argue that based on my kid’s experience and others who have taken courses with nobel prize winners and other leading scholars that what you are saying is nonsense.</p>

<p>Example: Freshman year, my kid takes a course with a professor who has been written up as one of the most promising chemists in the world and is still 2 years later constantly in touch with her. </p>

<p>Example: Small freshman seminars with nobel prize winners - such as Roy Glauber.</p>

<p>Example: Nobel prize winners who are house masters who by definition have significant interaction with students.</p>

<p>These are small subset of cases. Many times students who complain about lack of faculty interaction are probably too lazy or self absorbed to make any contact.</p>

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<p>Misnomer, your preemptive acknowledgment that your comment about teacher quality at Harvard and Rice is “d-baggy” is entirely accurate. Most of the profs at Rice who I’ve taken courses with earned that PhDs at so-so universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Michigan.</p>

<p>Do the Noble prize winners at Harvard work with undergraduates? Rice’s Dr. Curl has and continues to reach out to chemistry majors here. Another example: A national professor of the year who teaches at Rice regularly converses with freshman and shares his ribald sense of humor. These anecdotes demonstrate the Rice difference – we care about our undergrads first and foremost. I don’t have to worry about some kid from the Kennedy School being first in line to work with a prof. and I’ve never been turned away by any professor.</p>

<p>If Yale law grad/Princeton PhD profs at Harvard take two hours out of their day to discuss an essay with a freshman, then kudos to y’all. Those moments happen here, and we don’t have to pay $50k a year to experience them.</p>

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<p>i think yale would be best, htough i am a bit biased lol</p>

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<p>GregOden - what the hell are you talking about? Did you suddenly forget that Rice is a university with tons of graduate programs? You are spitting out the argument for a liberal arts school (Pomona in this case).
When you were attacking Harvard professors for supposedly picking Kennedy School students over undergrad students (for research assistants or just in general: well duh), did you just forget that Rice professors can pick from their own crop of graduate students to?</p>

<p>Oh right, but Rice is different from Harvard and every single other university with a graduate program in the world, because there’s some “culture at Rice” that changes everything. And apparently when DocT posts anecdotal evidence of an exception to Harvard’s stereotype, you posting exactly similar anecdotal evidence about Rice somehow proves definitively that your anecdote means more than his, and Rice is definitively a totally different school than Harvard (and every other university…)</p>

<p>Look, you’re not trying to spread propaganda, I get that - you’re just trying to advise the OP. But this “oh well at Rice we care about our undergrads first and foremost!” bull IS spreading false information. On average, Rice and Harvard/Yale/whatever professors act exactly the same, and you saying an anecdote or copying a line from Rice’s admissions literature about “we care about undergrads” doesn’t change that.</p>

<p>OP: if you want the benefit of engaging with smart professors that GregOden is talking about, and being able to do it with some ease, then go to Pomona. Hands down.</p>

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<p>McGoogly, as I already noted, Rice is mainly an undergrad-focused school. The difference between Rice and Pomona is that the former is a research university with the ethos of a liberal arts college, whereas the other is a liberal arts college w/o the resources of a research university. Rice combines the best elements of Pomona and Caltech into a slightly larger school with more range of academic disciplines than the aforementioned colleges.</p>

<p>These are, of course, only opinions, so take them with the requisite modicum of salt.</p>

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<p>McGoogly is correct. The myths about Harvard or Yale are just that myths. There are good professors and poor ones at every university. There are ones who are student or research oriented professors at every university.</p>

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<p>"If Yale law grad/Princeton PhD profs at Harvard take two hours out of their day to discuss an essay with a freshman, then kudos to y’all. Those moments happen here, and we don’t have to pay $50k a year to experience them. "</p>

<p>Neither do we. Harvard and Yale give the best financial aid in the country, and Rice is not even close in its ability to match.</p>

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<p>…sigh</p>

<p>final statement here: you will get a great education at any of these schools. it is impossible to say that one will be “better” than another. ultimately, you need to visit them all and see how you fit in.</p>

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<p>Ok, first of all, your math SAT is NOT low. A 690 is way above average on the national scale, and even compared to other Harvard and Yale undergrads your math score falls within the middle 50% of students there. Even if it were low, however, no one is good at everything.</p>

<p>Don’t pick your undergrad based on what you think your major might be. I think it’s a bad idea even if one feels that they are super tip-top sure about what they’re going to major in, but it’s an even worse idea if you’re not really sure in what you would like to major. You mentioned so many different things – computer science, literature, theater, etc. – that pinning yourself down based on CS is going to make you unhappy.</p>

<p>I have a friend who went to Harvey Mudd who said cross-registering was relatively easy, as for class purposes the five colleges were basically treated as one. Also Pomona is a great school, so don’t be worried about the “lack of prestige”</p>

<p>I’m not really a prestige-driven girl, to be quite honest, but after coming back up to the Northeast (after 10 years in the South) I love it here. If I had to do it all over I’m not sure I would do college in the South again. That’s because I am from the Northeast and the culture is just very different. I visited Texas and it’s a nice place, but I don’t think I would want to go to college there. Rice wouldn’t even be in the running. I personally have always been biased against Harvard precisely because of the stereotype you mentioned, and I would pick Yale, personally.</p>

<p>(I will admit I have been influenced by recent events – I’m in graduate school now and while I will say that where you went to undergrad doesn’t matter MUCH, it does matter some, and a lot more than people will have you believe. I applied for an NSF this year and I didn’t get it, but looking at the stats on the website Yale (and Harvard) undergrads do extremely well in earning them no matter where they go to university, and they tend to go to some amazing graduate schools.)</p>

<p>Both Yale and Pomona seem to be well-suited to your interests and personality, but since you said you would be more interested in going straight into the workforce after graduation, that Yale name will net you some awesome opportunities. But I think either would be a good fit for you, and possibly a better fit than the other two schools.</p>

<p>I spent the last 10 years in Georgia and I love Northeastern winters! Very cold, but you’ll get used to it if you get some warm weather gear. Braving the weather is TOTALLY worth it to go a school like Yale, trust me. I’m at Columbia for grad school and I find myself wishing more and more often that I had gone to an undergrad like this place.</p>

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<p>These are all wonderful choices but I would have to say Pomona. First of all I believe in the effectiveness of a small liberal arts undergraduate education. You seem to be undecided about what you want to study in college and a liberal arts school will nurture all your areas of interest. Pomona has a very good reputation with grad schools and the work world so I wouldn’t worry about the prestige as opposed to HY. The campus is beautiful and you have access to all of the other colleges in the consortium. It seems like a real fit for you. Good Luck on your final decision. Wherever you choose, you will recieve a wonderful education :)</p>

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<p>“Rice is mainly an undergrad-focused school. The difference between Rice and Pomona is that the former is a research university with the ethos of a liberal arts college”</p>

<p>Dude, stop copying the words from Rice’s admissions literature. “Ethos of a liberal arts college” are you serious?! All of a sudden the college has an etho and disregards its university status to become the perfect, most utopian school ever created? Rice is 100% a research institution just like every other major university. I have seen plenty of research come out of Rice and plenty of government grants going into Rice.</p>

<p>Amongst the top schools of higher education, all schools are predominantly research-oriented (“publish or die”), with universities being MUCH more research-oriented because of their extensive graduate programs and oftentimes larger facilities, and liberal arts schools schools being less so. This is because they realize that they can’t compete in the research-game as well as big universities can, so they emphasize teaching skill (small classes, teachers have to teach more credits per semester, training teachers), and compete with the idea that they are the better schools for education. Of course, this is quite true. The OP will probably learn more (in her academic pursuits) at Pomona than at Yale or Harvard (and Rice is just out of the running right now). However, Yale does have slightly more to offer in terms of extracurricular opportunities and getting to be set up with a summer internship opportunity. Yet Pomona is not by any means lacking in this criteria.</p>

<p>Nevertheless… it’s Yale. Which is why I still think the OP should go to yale</p>

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<p>actually, if you look at the story behind rice’s founding, it WAS designed to be a utopia school, as the founder had some sort of research go around to the best universities to basically cherrypick the best features.</p>

<p>and if you read carefully, the poster was not saying rice is not a research institute, it’s a GREAT place to do research, however he was saying it still maintains that LAC feel.</p>

<p>i don’t see why you have such hatred for rice. the OP wanted advice on what made each school a good choice, not a bunch of people bashing other schools.</p>

<p>EDIT: whoops, so much for bowing out of this thread</p>

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<p>This discussion is bordering on the absurd. The bottom line is there isn’t a whole lot of difference between these schools. Nobody here knows enough about the OP to suggest where they should go to school. Also contrary to the stuff on these boards, most students don’t really have a clue where they will best fit in and most usually fit in wherever they go. Well adjusted students can fit in pretty much anywhere particularly in the schools discussed here.</p>

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<p>“are you willing to argue that that the professors at Harvard will give priority to undergrads over graduate students?”</p>

<p>Hell yes. And I’m saying that as someone who did both grad and undergrad at Harvard. If anything, it’s the grad students who are second-class citizens at Harvard, although for the most part each group just does its own thing.</p>

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<p>Think about what you’ll have offered to you while you’re at these schools. To what degree will you spend your time satisfying distribution requirements? What can you do on a weekend? How important are big college sports rivalries? Preppy versus not-so-preppy? These are all questions to answer once you know you’ll have academics locked down, and a bit of perusing these message boards can give lots of information.</p>