@1Dreamer Thanks so much. Really - I wish you were in charge of all college counseling and such because I feel loads better. I guess the smaller, residential system at Rice would be great for freshman year, but I would fear by my senior year I’d either love the roughly 80 (?) other seniors in my college, only be friends with a few of them, only have friends in other colleges, or just feel like I’m suffocating, as you said. Being surrounded by endless people, pretty much on my own, is incredibly exciting - and a great type of scary. UT will push me in other ways besides academics, and I definitely feel that at Rice it would be a lot more hand holding and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to put myself out there into foreign environments and forge my own way. Also, the lack of school spirit I felt at Rice really bummed me out… I don’t want to feel like I just happen to to be in the same place as all these other students!
Your personal experience definitely helped and now I just have to move on and quit looking back and second guessing.