Rice and Texas/In-State Representation

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
1

Hello all - I’m a parent of a rising junior, and I had a question about Rice. As an aside, I’d note we are way too early along to know if she could even have a shot to be among the fortunate few admitted to Rice, whose selectivity makes it a reach school for most. Congrats to any Rice admits or grads who read this!

I am wondering if any perspectives on why Rice seems to draw a higher percentage of students from its home state than some other private, southern schools that have a nationwide profile. For freshman entering college in 2014, numbers looked like this:

Emory: 311 freshman from GA, 1513 from out-of-state
Tulane: 207 freshman from LA, 1440 from out-of-state
Vanderbilt: 134 from TN, 1471 from out-of-state
Duke: 203 from NC, 1518 from out-of-state
Rice: 429 from TX, 520 from out-of-state

A few notes:

Forgive a midwesterner lumping all these schools together as “southern.” Like “midwestern,” recognize it is a regional label with limited descriptive usefulness, especially when comparing colleges. I don’t use it here to signify anything other than schools broadly thought of as southern in our neck of the woods, recognizing lots of degrees and variations within any regional label.

Although Rice draws a higher percentage from in-state, it seems to limit enrollment more from neighboring states. But even adding in neighboring states, the other schools don’t seem to come that close to Rice as a % of students from in-state plus neighboring states. So even if an “in-state” lens has many failings, I am not sure a “immediate region” lens would change the picture tremendously, but I very well could be wrong.

2014 fall acceptance rates were in the same ballpark for Duke, Vandy, and Rice (11% to 15%) and higher for Tulane and Emory (around 26% to 28%)

Vandy, Rice, and Duke are in same average SAT neighborhood, Emory and Tulane a little lower but plenty good.

In coming discussions with my D about schools she does identify as schools of interest, I know she’ll gravitate midwest/northeast. In looking at schools she may not take a close look at because of geography, I wondered about the strength of a “nationwide student body” hook as to some “southern” (to us) schools. I guess I was surprised to learn that more than 40% of Rice’s students were from Texas (adding caveat here too that Texas is obviously a big and populous and diverse state, so not drawing a broad, “Rice has a homogeneous student body” lesson here).

At first blush then, Rice clearly has tremendous success in drawing top students, but might either have less success at drawing apps from top students outside of Texas or a stronger admissions preference for a relatively high in-state character?

But that’s very first blush - what do you think?

2

My daughter is a sophomore at Rice and she is from NJ. This is a question that had crossed my mind that Rice would be to Texan (of course nothing like Rutgers and NJ). My take on this is just that Texans love their state and don’t want to leave so Rice just gets a lot more applicants from Texas, and remember in any other context Texas would be large enough to be its own country with maybe three of the 10 largest cities in the U.S. in Texas, and if Rice just takes it’s best applicants a lot of those best are from Texas just because there are just so many of them. Even a place like Harvard takes the majority of it’s students from the northeast and if you laid the map of Texas over, it would cover the entire northeast . Anyway there are a lot of international students at Rice and I believe my daughter finds it satisfactorily diverse.

3

I think a lot of it has to do with name recognition. I’ve lived in the Northeast and I live in Texas now, and this is what I’ve noticed. Up in New England, almost everyone knows about Dartmouth and MIT and other such top colleges, but I never met anyone that knew about Rice (I didn’t know about Rice til after I moved down south). Where I am in Texas, everybody knows about Rice, but somehow only a few people that I’ve met know about MIT and Dartmouth. Why? To be brutally honest, Rice is essentially the only really good school in Texas (unless you count UT Austin for their engineering program). Couple that with the Texan pride that @robotrainbow mentioned, and everyone here wants to go to Rice, so they all apply. I don’t know the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more Texan apllicants to Rice than all the other states. BUT, Rice is currently trying to decrease the ratio of Texan students to students from elsewhere to add to that nationwide diversity you mentioned.

4

Texas has a bigger population than Georgia, North Carolina and Louisiana combined. Second largest in the USA.

US News ranks high schools. Eight of the top 50 are in Texas, as are 19 in the top 100.

Louisiana had 0 top 50, 1 in top 100.
Georgia had 1 top 50, 2 in top 100.
North Carolina had 2 in top 50, 3 in top 100.
Tennessee had 1 in top 50, 1 in top 100.
(So TX had 8 top 50, 19 in top 100, LA/GA/NC/TN combined had 4 top 50, 7 top 100 high schools)

Princeton Review 2017 Lots of Race / Class Interaction - #1 school is Rice

5

@jms111 Thank you for posting this. We are also very curious about the high number of Texas residents at Rice. We have been looking at Rice for my DD and to be frank, the high percentage of Texans is a bit of a turnoff. I was wondering whether anyone could comment on diversity at Rice and how well the students typically mix?

6

Rice enjoys a great blend of students any way you slice it.

7

Name recognition outside Texas, Houston not being the top choice for lot of college students outside Texas, a weaker merit aid program for pulling in high achieving our of state students compared to some of its southern peers and national competitors and a brand that is still grounded in being a science/engineering school all contribute to this phenomenon. The size of the competitive pool in Texas doesn’t help either.

A quick way to fix this would be to really turn in the merit aid tap to entice out of state students. Several schools have done this and radically changed their demographics within a short time. Rice is either unwilling or unable to do this.

Btw, I remember reading somewhere that given the population demographics in the nation, the southern schools are actually the safest in terms of long term viability. LAC’s in the NE may actually be the most in danger from this demographic trend. So Rice may just be riding the southern wave happily. In the future, many colleges will need a healthy number of students from the south to survive.

8

^^true. I didn’t know much about Rice until I started hanging out here at CC.

9

Plot these 2 columns of numbers, and a pretty obvious trend appears:

population  %instate

GA 10,214,860 21%
LA 4,670,724 14%
TN 6,600,299 9%
NC 10,042,802 13%
TX 27,469,114 83%

The larger the state’s population, the larger the pool of instate students to draw from.

10

@CollegeAngst who do you feel are are Rice’s peers?

Do you feel Rice’s percentage of in-state/OOS has increased or decreased in the past 10 years?

11

My Son is a sophomore at Rice. I totally agree with @Robotrainbow and @ClarinetDad16. Texas is the second largest state in the country both in terms of population and in terms of land. But having said that there are two other pieces of info that are important:

  1. Rice was established primarily as a institution of excellence for Texans. Rice has walked away from this theory in recent times but still admits 40%+ from Texas.
  2. The most close comparison to Rice would be Stanford (based on your question). CA is the largest state in terms of population and Stanford like Rice admits almost 40% from CA. Why ? Because CA students prefer to stay in CA and Stanford knows once admitted, they will most likely come to Stanford (lowers admission rate).

The other schools you refer to Vandy, Duke, Emory etc. have to be dependent on other states to get good students. To put it in perspective… TX has 1700 high schools. If Rice admitted just the valedictorian and Salutatorian from each of its own Texas high schools they would admit 3400 students (Rice admits 2500 to 2600 students each year). Rice has a yield rate of 35% to 40% and a class size of 950 students each year. At this yield rate that would result in about 1200 acceptances which are higher than the whole class at Rice and Rice would not have a single out of state or International student. Now I just laid out a theoretical perspective as all top students may not apply to Rice from Texas but hopefully it points out the effort Rice and Stanford type schools take to reject its own to accommodate out of state and International students and to make sure the entering class has the diversity of thought, social causes, economic background, political thought process and Race.

That tells you how selective Rice (and Stanford) has to be that students from Texas that are #1 and #2 in their 4 years of high school cannot and do not get offers for admission. Just another angle to look at the selectivity of Rice! Hope I was able to shed some additional light to the comments mentioned before me.

12

My son got into Amherst and Wash U, but was waitlisted for Rice. We were surprised, because we thought Rice was a good fit for him. So yes, Rice is selective!

13

^^wow interesting analysis @TinTintoo.

14

Thanks for all the replies and thoughts and sharpening of the inquiry - the tone and substance of the replies shows CC at its best.

As to this question from ClarinetDad: “Do you feel Rice’s percentage of in-state/OOS has increased or decreased in the past 10 years?”

The numbers, with first being in-state # freshman and second OOS # freshman and last % of freshman from Texas (data is released every two years):

2014: 429/520/45%
2012: 403/528/43%
2010: 444/505/47%
2008: 403/386/51%
2006: 331/381/46%
2004: 389/337/54%
2002: 325/374/46%

Stanford % frosh from CA was 33% in 2014, 38% in 2012, 38% in 2010, and 36% in 2008. Recent in-state target seems like 30-40% at Stanford and 40-50% at Rice, and the TX-CA comparison makes sense, thanks TinTintoo, given the population of those states (vs. the NC, GA, TN, LA schools in my post). TinTintoo’s note that “Rice was established primarily as a institution of excellence for Texans” might help explain in institutional outlook why the in-state percentage is generally 10% higher (give or take) at Rice than Stanford.

Rice is a tremendous university drawing top students from all corners of the country and the globe. Just mucking around in the numbers to explore its character a bit, and the perspectives are very much appreciated!

15

@JMS111 Thank you for your kind note. You are right that Stanford class on average has 36% of CA students where as Rice over the years average around 43%. Having said that, another point of key distinction is that CA has UC Berkeley and UCLA, both Top 25 schools. More likely Stanford also admits closer to Rice in terms of CA students but has lower % than Rice because some students may end up attending UC Berkeley or UCLA instead of Stanford due to cost differential and the upside in terms of prestige more limited (Top 5 schools vs #20 or #23 etc) vs. Rice and UT (Top 18 vs Top 50). That may explain the some or large part of the 7-8 points in state admission differential between the two schools.

16

Thanks CollegeAngst. I do think these reasons you mentioned resonate “up here” in the Midwest: “Name recognition outside Texas, Houston not being the top choice for lot of college students outside Texas, a weaker merit aid program for pulling in high achieving our of state students compared to some of its southern peers and national competitors and a brand that is still grounded in being a science/engineering school all contribute to this phenomenon.”

The percentages say Rice probably wants 40%+ Texans every year, but of course I’m not sure - all things being equal, would they like to have a smaller in-state % if they could keep the quality (however measured across quantitative and qualitative considerations) the same or similar? I’m not suggesting they should - as you and others have suggested, Texas is fertile ground for a large number of qualified students, there are strong institutional reasons to maintain a Texas character, and it’s a terrific university.

17

@JMS111 in 2009 Rice opened a few new residential colleges.

That increased capacity went to OOS and International students. So you see the Instate percentage dropping but the number of instate students fairly constant.

18

I agree with the point about Rice perception as a Texas focused college. But the ground reality is different. Another point to consider between Rice and Stanford is that Stanford is a big time Athletic school (over the past 25 years they have won 22 Directors cup given to the best overall Athletics program) . This forces them recruit student athletes from all over the country. Almost 12% of Stanford entering class is Student Athletes. if you took them out of the equation then the number of in state students for both schools will look very close or identical. As Texas is not a Athletics driven school.

19

Meant… Rice is not an Athletics driven school.

20

Exactly. Yes the percentage of kids from Texas is fairly high at ~40% but Texas is a huge state, and Rice is a small school.

Exactly, there are so many qualified students just from Texas and so few spaces, that Rice has to reject tons of them. It is difficult for anybody to get into Rice, but especially so if you are from Texas.

I’m a relatively recent Rice alum. I’m also not from Texas. You are worrying about nothing, Rice is an incredibly diverse school. Look at its student satisfaction rankings, it often wins happiest students, best quality of life, best race/class intereaction and it is ranked the 5th favorite college on niche.com

Sure you shouldn’t be too much stock in these things, but it does really well for a reason. Students tend to love their Rice experience, I know I did.

If you are worried that the 40% from Texas means the student body is racist, conservative, religious or some other stereotype I assure you this is a baseless, silly fear.