I am in 11th grade and working on narrowing down my list of colleges. I currently have 5 reach schools on my list and I will likely apply to three of them. They are:
Harvey Mudd
Carnegie Mellon
Northwestern
Rice
Washington University St. Louis
My plan is to earn a computer science degree and although Rice and WashU are excellent schools, I am wondering if the culture of the surrounding area may be a deciding factor. I am from a very liberal state on the west coast and am wondering if anyone could provide some insight into my dilemma (I am having a tough time narrowing my list down to 3). Thanks in advance for your help.
Full disclosure, I’m reasonably liberal by national standards, not religious, and from Kentucky. Rice is not really conservative, though I have a decent number of friends who are religious, but things like acceptance of gay students and stuff is pretty ubiquitous. The student body would be more conservative than the others you listed, but it would be pretty hard to detect. Honestly, it’s not very political. Like I don’t know anyone in a political club and I’m not even sure which ones currently exist. Houston is also fairly liberal, though Texas isn’t.
Is it important to you that you go to an explicitly political and liberal school? Are you hoping to be in clubs that reflect your views? Because if you want to be politically active then you’re not gonna have much of a community around you. Are you afraid of the idea of a non-liberal student body, and if so, why? It seems from this post that this is how you plan to make your decision. Is that true? These are just questions so I can understand what exactly is driving this decision.
P.S. CMU is the only program that I would say has a clearly better CS program than Rice. WashU is definitely a worse-thought-of-program, and I think Northwestern is too. Harvey Mudd could go either way I think. I’m open to disagreements though. Feel free to ask any follow ups or other questions!
Houston actually is a liberal city. It might be surprising, but most of Texas’s large cities are democratic due to diversity such as Austin, San Antonio, Houston. Houston is pretty accepting because it is so culturally diverse. Dallas/Fort Worth is more of the conservative city you might be mistaking Houston as, but I wouldn’t worry about not fitting in at Rice.
@jfking01 I am not looking to join any political clubs necessarily, but I do feel that I would enjoy my college experience a bit more if I am surrounded by like minded students and community members…
@jritch I understand that. I think there’s also a lot to be said for getting to understand how others think and where they’re coming from. E.g. I have a good friend who’s pretty religious, and talking to him about his scientific beliefs really illuminated for me the fact that a lot of people (esp. those who come from religious private or catholic schools) don’t even learn about evolution properly.
That being said, I should reiterate that Rice is actually not conservative, it’s liberal. It’s just that any school of this caliber is going to be liberal. I’d say on a scale of Brigham Young to Swarthmore, Rice falls just below Wash U, which is about in the middle. The middle just happens to be fairly liberal.
I definitely understand wanting to be at a more political school. I live in Houston and am definitely pretty liberal, and as someone mentioned earlier, Houston itself is a lot more left-leaning than Texas as a whole. Rice is right near the Montrose area and museum district, which have a reputation for being more liberal parts of the city as well. As for Rice itself, I believe it leans to the left, and from what I’ve heard, it’s a pretty politically aware campus. My friend whose parents work there said that the students are pretty progressive but the administration is a little less so. I also know there were protests (that both students and faculty participated in, I believe) after Ferguson, so it’s certainly not politically unaware. Keep in mind that some of that is heresay, but as for Houston itself, I promise it’s not a Texas-in-miniature city.
Most Rice students are very tolerant of all views. Most of my friends lean liberal but still respect the views of our conservative peers. Rice tend to be very apolitical and not too into activism. But students still tend to have passionate views on political/social issues if you can get them started talking about them. There is a sentiment of “you do you” and racial, sexual, religious, socio-economic, and political diversity tend to be well-valued by all.
As a point of interest, Houston was one of the first major cities to elect a woman mayor (Kathy Whitmire, 1982), a black mayor (Lee Brown, 1998), and an openly gay mayor (Anise Parker, 2010). All the urban counties in Texas except for Tarrant County (Ft Worth) voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Rice isn’t Reed or Swarthmore, but it isn’t Baylor either. About half of Rice students are from Texas, so there are some conservative students, but overall I would guess the student body leans left.
