I have seen so many different answers about this saying that Rice is the dullest school and has the worst parties and then I’ve seen stuff saying that it compares to Vandy as a party school. Anyone have any input about the truth of Rice’s social scene???
In my opinion, Rice covers the social spectrum quite well. There are plenty of people who stay in their rooms all year long and also plenty who (try to) go out every single day it seems. But for the most part, I would say it falls in between. There is never any pressure to go to parties and most people I know tend to go out maybe once or twice each week on the weekends or they stay in and just chill. I transferred from a school where it felt like most people fell in the extremes of that spectrum (either partied all week or never socialized at all) and I think Rice really contrasts from that by covering it all. There are certain aspects of typical Rice parties worth highlighting though.
There are two main types of parties at Rice: publics and privates. Each residential college (11 at Rice) plus the Architecture School (they’re sorta like their own dorm) hold one or two public parties each year. They’re open to the entire campus in that they can advertise it publicly and tend to have a lot more students show up than privates. Depending on the party, it could range from a couple hundred to over a thousand attendees. Each public tends to have a theme, such as 80’s music or jungle. The largest public by far is Night of Decadence, which has even been listed in the top 10 college parties by Playboy magazine. It has its own wiki article that you can check out. But given that it’s Rice, they also have a ton of other options specifically that night for those who aren’t interested in going to that party. Namely, a college hosts a large movie night and a student organization holds a swing dance event. Some main complaints about publics is that they tend to become the same pseudo-club like atmosphere as the year wears on and year after year, some of the themes get kind of repetitive.
Privates are a lot smaller than publics and instead of being advertised publicly, they’re often spread through word of mouth. Some privates occur annually and have a theme, similar to publics, but many are just simple get-togethers, sometimes organized the day of. Most privates have only a fraction of the number of attendees of publics, but there are some larger privates that are extremely popular. Perhaps the main difference in setting of publics and privates is that publics are more “dancing” and privates are more mingling. To make things even more confusing, privates also happen at the same time as publics in the same residential college, and a lot of people go back and forth between the privates and publics those nights. With exception to maybe one or two publics each year, parties tend not go past the level of that of bigger universities, but most Rice students don’t mind that.
Anyways that was the breakdown of the two parties but even though it seems right now that Rice’s social scene revolves around different parties, I’ve found the opposite to be true. Rice’s social scene revolves around meeting different people in different ways, such as class, extracurriculars, O-week, events, etc. Parties are there and an option, but never the only option. I personally was never too into publics but I’ve met a lot of people just by simply hanging out in my residential college’s commons and by staying active on campus.
Rice is a wet campus. Alcohol and partying is readily available if you want it, anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know Rice. You can also chose not to partake if you don’t want to, and many students don’t and have perfectly fine social lives without drinking.
@ChiGuy123 gave a great answer. I’ll add that there’s very very little partying done off campus. People might have little get togethers with friends, but no capital-p parties. That’s true of pretty much every aspect of life at Rice: everything’s on campus, and most students don’t have a problem with that (myself included)
Concur. Rice is by no means dull, and anyone who says so is just jealous of our wet campus. Even move-in day is a giant party. That said, there is a wide spectrum of partying and you can do anything from Edward-40-Hands to a quiet night playing cards. People are really accepting of whatever level of partying you want to you, and not drinking never excludes you from socializing at a party.
I will concur with all of the above! The party scene is what you make of it. There’s definitely no peer pressure to do anything, and the parties are by no means dull.