Impression of Rice

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
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<p>I am considering applying to Rice as a transfer student next year and I was wondering how current students and alumni have felt about their time there. I have a few questions regarding your personal opinions of Rice. Feel free to answer any or all of the questions, or come up with some other insight regarding Rice. Thanks!</p>

<p>How good are the classes? How difficult are they? How good are the professors? Would it be terribly difficult to maintain a GPA above a 3.8 in a Biology major?</p>

<p>How is the social life? Is Greek life prominent? Is there a big party scene? How do most students spend their time outside the classroom when not studying? How is the area around Rice?</p>

<p>Finally, would you recommend going to Rice? Why or why not? Feel free to list any pros and cons that might stand out.</p>

<p>You might see this same thread in other forums. This is because I am considering a good number of schools.</p>

<p>Thanks for your time.</p>

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<p>

Not to be mean, but have you done ANY research on Rice?
Do you even know anything about Rice?
Please do some research before asking. You ask so many questions without doing any researching. How do you expect to get into Rice if you can’t employ the power of the search function. If you bothered searching, you would have realized that all of the questions above could be answered easily. In fact, ONE OF THE ANSWERS IS 6 THREADS DOWN IN THE FORUM!!!
Gosh…

Do you want us to write your why Rice essay for you?
BTW, no I would not recommend Rice to you. If you don’t bother trying to do some simple research about Rice before posting, Rice is not for you as you will need to know how to do independent study.</p>

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<p>If you would have employed the wonderful gift of literacy that has been bestowed upon 99% of the population of the United States, you would have realized that I asked for an OPINION of Rice from Rice students, but I suppose it is possible that you are part of the unfortunate 1% who lack the ability to read. I asked for an opinion on the academic and social life at Rice, not for a misguided rant by a bigoted high school student who thinks he/she/it has the right to belittle me for making use of a discussion board.</p>

<p>Research, you see, does not include what I am asking of this board. I am asking for each person’s individual opinion, not for a general consensus on whether Rice is a good school or not. Had I done research, I could probably tell you Rice’s acceptance rate, I could probably tell you the majors, programs, and opportunities offered at Rice, but I would not be able to tell you the answer to any of the questions I asked, or the answer as to why this particular little pubescent girl (and yes, I am calling a little pubescent girl whether you are a girl or not) has her panties all in a knot because of a superiority complex and, let’s face it, probably some degree of sexual distress. </p>

<p>If this is the kind of student that Rice has to offer, then I was sorely mistaken in my choice of school, although I hate to judge an entire student body on one idiotic little girl who thinks she knows more than someone else because of what she has looked up on a school’s webpage.</p>

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<p>Anyways, no more bickering. It reflects poorly on everyone here.</p>

<p>The answers to your questions, in my opinion are</p>

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<p>This is a hard one to answer as Rice has some excellent classes and some larger intro classes that are similar to anywhere else. In general, the quality of education is top notch. Professors make effort to know you and are easily accessible for questions and followup work.</p>

<p>Regarding a 3.8, it is possible. You will need to put in effort and put your best foot forward. I wouldn’t call it easy, but if you have an aptitude for the subject, the willingness to work and an interest, you should be good</p>

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<p>The social scene is not bad. It is not a party school by any means, but people do have fun. The best way to describe it is “something for everyone”. There are events/groups for people who do not drink/party, party but don’t drink, casual partiers and the hardcore party crowd.</p>

<p>Regarding the question about greek life, I will have to say - this is one of the first things you find out when researching Rice. we do not have a greek scene as there is a Residential college system. There are a lot of threads on the college system here, so take a look. Many good perspectives about the pros and cons there</p>

<p>There are a lot of activities going on outside class. Many students work part time, many play sports (IM, club, college and Varsity) and others have their hobbies. There are many sports going on during the semester. Some of my friends would play 6-7 sports a semester, which would result in games almost every day.</p>

<p>Sometimes you don’t have very much free time and you are pulling all nighters. That depends on your courseload.</p>

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<p>Yes. I loved being there. The amount of time and dedication put in on this forum by parents, current students and alumni (like me) shows that we really care about Rice and the community and want to allow others to experience the awesome time that we had.</p>

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<p>This thread makes me sad.</p>

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<p>Thank you very much, that’s exactly what I wanted.
For the record, despite what your incoming student above might think, I actually have done my research, as I was very interested in the extracurricular opportunities in Rice regarding pre-med students in clinical internships and research.
I am aware of the residential college system, as one of my close friends goes to school there and constantly (humorously, I assume) compares it to the Houses in the Harry Potter series. The reason I mentioned Greek life is because I copied and pasted the same post into all the schools I’m considering applying to, changing only the name mentioned. I did not expect some stickler like the one above to call me out on it like that.</p>

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<p>Yeah, except not having a Greek life is such a defining feature of Rice that asking about it really does make you come off as terribly uninformed. It’s much easier to answer specific questions than it is general ones.</p>

<p>Let me direct you to a post I wrote a couple of weeks before I graduated:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/917772-some-reflections.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rice-university/917772-some-reflections.html&lt;/a&gt;
It will give you a pretty good sense of how I feel about Rice.</p>

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<p>NYSkins - guess I missed that post when you put it up. Good read!</p>

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<p>

Just wondering. Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite since you continue to mock that “one idiotic little” person?
You resorted to personal attacks just like he/she did…
There is logic behind why lhd555 said that, mainly because he/she probably saw the Greek Life question and the question about the surrounding area around Rice which was a recent thread (he/she probably wanted you to used the search feature on CC, but you’re relatively new). Although, he/she took it overboard, you didn’t need to resort to making such a harassing comment and personal attacks either.
This is a sad thread.</p>

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<p>To answer your question, yes it is perfectly hypocritical for me to attack the poster for their attack on me, and I am aware I might have gone a little overboard. I would apologize but they’re probably never going to look at this thread again, and they probably wouldn’t apologize back if I did. I simply retaliated her personal attacks, and I am glad it was put to rest. No need to bring it back up. I apologize to anyone else I offended, but I don’t see why it would offend anyone else.</p>

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<p>I thought they were great questions. Regardless of what the website might say or other posts, its always nice to get new perspectives on schools since times are always changing. I’ve been on some threads were this question has come up several times over the last several months (ie. Tulane) and people are always willing to repeat themselves or direct you to a prior post with all the information, so I’m not sure why anyone got their back up with these questions. Peg92 you shouldn’t apologize you did nothing wrong. Its my understanding thats what CC is for. If people don’t want to repeat themselves then they shouldn’t and instead they should disregard the post completely.</p>

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<p>It’s hard to say how good the classes are, as I have never taken classes at another university. Overall the professors are good, but there are certain classes (some of them infamous, such as certain chemical engineering ones) that are known to be ridiculous.
The social life is pretty cool. I’m not sure how it is at other universities, but I went to Northwestern recently and there were virtually no parties, apparently because most of the events had become internalized to frats and their pledges. There are no fraternities or sororities here (although all students are in residential colleges, which I guess is similar in some ways, but much better ;P). The party scene is pretty big; we have a wet campus and no RAs so you can drink/have a party in your room whenever you want. Actually people have gotten so ridiculous with drinking that the alcohol policy was recently put on probation due to the increasing amount of EMSed/hospitalized students. Virtually all weekends (and often on weeknights) there are fun parties to go to. Students occupy themselves in various ways when not studying; there are a significant amount who never drink, there are people who always play video games, etc. It’s also worth mentioning that there is a fairly big drug scene here (not hard drugs, but it’s easy to find cannabis, ecstasy, etc., which is telling). The area around here is pretty cool; right next to Rice there is a place called Rice Village which is a sort of shopping center with lots of restaurants and stores; the zoo is near here, which students can go to for free, and there is plenty of other fun stuff in Houston.
I would recommend going here, because it’s relatively small (in a good way), we have residential colleges (hard to describe how much of a pro they are if you haven’t been part of one), it’s really easy to find research, we have #1 quality of life of universities in the US (I’m pretty sure), etc. The only cons I can think of are the weather (pretty hot here at the beginning/end of the school year, also pretty consistently humid) and location (Texas).
I’m currently a Freshman here btw. Hope this helps.</p>