<p>I went to Owl Days and loved it, but now after looking at other schools Rice seems kind of dull. For instance, I visited emory and there was just more life as people walked to class amd stuff. Rice seemed perfect for me when I was there, and between my top two choiccs(tufts, and rice) it has the best acedemic program for me. I am just worried about the social scene on a day to day basis. I know Rice students do go to parties and stuff, but I am not into that. I like simply going out and hanging out with friends. Can anyone address these concerns. Is there life on campus?</p>
<p>Llama,
Your concern is something we struggle with when putting on Owl Days. While the party scene at Rice is shown (and honestly a bit exaggerated), the day to day social life is put on the back burner a little bit. I can say that there is certainly stuff to go out and do all the time if you never touch a beer or go to a party. The metro pass will be your best friend, as there is TONS of free concerts, cheap food, shows, and sporting events a short tram ride off campus. On campus, sporting events are free (and usually have free food!), we have concerts that come to Shepherd (Orchestras, Vocal Performances), Pub (Small Band/DJ types), and things like the KTRU Outdoor show (Michael Cerra’s band played and we saw them FO FREE!). </p>
<p>Other stuff that happened this year:
1.) Rice rented out 8 theatres for an advanced screening of Harry Potter 7 (we saw it 3 hours early) for it’s students.
2.) Rice gave us 300 Tickets to the Final Four
3.) Rice/Texas football game for free @ Reliant Stadium
4.) Associates Nights where you eat dinner with famous people and nom on amazing food.
5.) Many nights where I’ve gone out and found cool places to eat in Houston with my friends.
6.) There are 2 people in my commons debating god knows what, as I study for an exam, at 5:35 AM.</p>
<p>The only thing I can really say we lack socially is an outdoorsy culture. For as beautiful and spacious as campus is, you never really see people laying out or tossing a ball around in the quad. Also, the sports spirit is not as big as I’d like. </p>
<p>These are just my honest ramblings at 5:35AM while I’m procrastinating!</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your input. It is extremely helpful as I am completely torn. So would you say that during the week when classes are in session, students just go to class and study? Does all the fun only occur on the weekends?</p>
<p>llamapants - There is life on campus all the time. OwlDays is just placed in a really bad time. Students need to balance prospies, their final classes and upcoming exams.</p>
<p>The courts in the gym are always busy if you are into sports, the commons at each college always has something going on. </p>
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<p>Maybe not in the quad, but there is invariably a frisbee game going on in the Wiess quad…</p>
<p>When we visited DS or DD, several times we saw students playing a game across campus with golf clubs, tennis balls (?), and cans of beer. Also saw some kids bouncing in a bounce-house and on a slip-and-slide… and then there’s the hugest water balloon fight ever, and Willy Week, and all sorts of theme parties. My son visited friends at other universities and said that there wasn’t much going on, and commented on how active Rice social life is. Both my kids always said there were too many options --. Some examples of things (that they told me about… ha, sure lots of stuff I didn’t know about) the architecture parties, Engineers without Borders trips, free Japanese (?) drum concerts across the street in the park, lots and lots of between-res-college pickup sportsgames, and club sports games, and free study breaks (free food), going out to House of Pies, free concerts/ballet/opera/theater tickets through Rice, participating (Rice kids are big on participating in - not so much on being spectators…) in res college musicals… etc. etc.
I know what you mean about the campus looking kind-of empty - much of the fun is happening in the res colleges or at the sports centers. Also, Owl week is at a lousy time, when everyone is frantically finishing up projects and papers etc for class.</p>
<p>First hand experience of someone who doesn’t go to a lot of parties, but is still really social and likes to go out with friends at Rice:</p>
<p>Rice is fun in the way that you make it. You can have fun by going to parties, or have fun hanging out with friends or going out exploring Houston. Owl days is at a a really academically awkward time of the year when everyone is basically super busy with end of the year assignments. So, a lot of people that are ready for fun on weekends were in the library Thursday night finishing Friday problem sets 
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<p>About weekday vs. weekends:
It’s a trade-off that happens at any academically challenging school. A lot of people will not be as social during the week so that they do have time on the weekends to relax, go out with friends, and go to events. There’s enough work that, if you’re social every night, you probably won’t have time for your classwork.</p>
<p>Yeah the problem is that Owl Days is in the last couple of weeks of school, typically the busiest time period in terms of workload. Things are definitely livelier when things aren’t so busy.</p>
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<p>Rice has 3000 undergraduates over a 300 acre campus. That is part of the reason that it seems empty/larger than some other schools.</p>
<p>Not just 3,000 undergrads —*less than 5000 students total. A lot of schools have way more grad students than we do, so even if they have similar undergraduate numbers they can have three or four times as many students on a campus half our size.</p>
<p>yeah… compared to other schools i visited like UVA, Gtown, stanford, columbia, vandy, washu, etc., rice has way fewer students than any of those schools (all of them at least 2x the size), but has an equally big, or bigger, campus. so i think that sortof makes it seem emptier/quieter than other schools when it really isn’t.</p>