<p>Does anyone have info on the SOAR program at Rice (all expense paid visit for Rice's open house in Sept)? Is this just a marketing/recruitment tool or is there more to it? Thanks for any help.</p>
<p>The SOAR program is the minority recruitment weekend. Its a great chance to see the school, spend the night in the dorms, and have an on-campus interview. Yes, its a marketing and recruitment tool.</p>
<p>ScienceGirlMom - I thought that is what Vision weekend was for (<a href=“http://admit.rice.edu/vision.html”>http://admit.rice.edu/vision.html</a>)?</p>
<p>Thanks for the info.</p>
<p>I did some checking, and there are two minority recruitment weekends as far as I know.
SOAR, September for high school seniors, small event
VISION, February for high school seniors, big event</p>
<p>Its interesting that the Rice website doesn’t mention minority recruitment for SOAR. However, it was mentioned in a Rice newspaper article.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. I had never heard of SOAR before, only Vision. </p>
<p>The major difference is that SOAR is more for recruitment purposes while the students who are invited to VISION (while not officially accepted yet) can expect to receive a letter of acceptance. VISION is later in the year and those who are invited to participate have already had their applications reviewed and have been invited based on their application. It is still a recruitment tool, but those who are invited to SOAR have no indication as to whether or not they will even be accepted.</p>
<p>@abcerv14, its true that the SOAR attendees don’t know if they will be accepted, but the weekend is by invitation only, with travel expenses paid for by the school. There is some kind of pre-screening going on to make sure that the attendees are well qualified for Rice. </p>
My daughter is not a URM and didn’t get a SOAR invite. However, she did get an invite to Discover Rice which goes on concurrently, as well as an email waiving her application fees based on her SAT Subject Test scores. So it seems these are all tools Rice uses to encourage applicants who are on their radar as well qualified. But they may just be using one or two criteria and there are certainly no guarantees if there are issues with other aspects of the applicant’s record.
@wandlmink Did your daughter apply to SOAR? If not, I believe she has a few more days…
-psy
Yo, so I’m not an URM (also not first-gen) but I was invited to SOAR. Saying that SOAR is only for minority recruitment is not accurate.