Rice, Dartmouth, or Berkeley?

I’m trying to pick between these 3 schools. Here’s what I have so far.

Rice
Pros: happiest campus/best student quality of life, private so small student to faculty ratios and lots of money, residential colleges, food!, Houston
Cons: Dartmouth is also a small undergrad focused college but has better “name recognition”, so they have similar pros besides location

Berkeley
Pros: CALIFORNIA GIRLS THEYRE UNFORG-…I love Cali. Large, so lots of people to meet and it’s not suffocating. Liberal-ness, perhaps my favorite part. Berkeley’s so progressive and active in social issues. Also food. San Francisco is hella amazing.
Cons: large class sizes, public so not as much student-faculty interaction and it’s more of a “you’re on your own” kind of thing. Lots of asians and I heard its really competitive.

Dartmouth
Pros: Ivy League… Picking which quarters to stay and which to break, good for internships, alum network strong af, connections…supposedly number 1 school for undergrad teaching, $$. Discount passes to snow slopes.
Cons: middle of nowhere, heavy drinking apparently (I’m a social-ish person, but whenever I drink I like can’t breathe and it’s just SOOO uncomfortable), idk about Greek life and I’m afraid there won’t be much to do there.

Although I would consider myself more of a city girl, I think I’d be okay with a nice, close knit college town. California is gorgeous but I’m willing to make that location sacrifice for a better education or academic experience. I just don’t want to feel like I have nothing to do in Dartmouth if I’m not interested in drinking… Opinions? Also, these are all based on what I’ve heard and felt when I visited. Any input about what your experience was like would be super awesome. Thanks!!

PS applied as Econ/finance major and considering law or MBA.

I’ll speak to some of your Dartmouth notes from experience…

Montreal is a couple hours drive North. Boston is 2 hours and NYC is 5 hours, both with regular Dartmouth Coach bus service. So you look at the town itself in your research and immediately say “isolated” whereas I considered it small New England town community and “centrally located” (har har)
Incoming students will often say “I’m going to totally go to [insert city name here] every weekend for STUFF TO DO” then invariably they, along with everyone else, always stays on campus because there’s a bunch to do and all your friends are there so why would you leave?

Check out some other threads on Greek life at Dartmouth. Freshmen can’t join houses, so there’s always plenty to do outside of the Greek system if you look around (comedy shows, midnight breakfast, movies on the green, Iron Chef Dorm Room competitions…). Additionally, just going to hang out at a Greek house doesn’t require heavy drinking. There are a lot of students that just don’t feel like drinking a lot or at all, and if you hang out at specific houses, you’ll find out which ones are totally cool with that.
I think sometimes people come in with the cliche movie plot idea where you say you don’t want to drink then an army of beefy frat dudes descend all around you with beer bongs chanting “CHUG CHUG CHUG.” This, in reality, rarely happens anywhere in life (Besides the Jersey Shore - BOOM take that Jersey!) and in my own personal experiences if someone asks you if you want to a beer and you say “naw” they generally reply with “ok, cool”

Dartmouth (small student body, small town, Northeast seasons) is so different than the other two you mentioned (many students, cities, Warm/temperate climates) that you should be able to pick Dartmouth or exclude it by visiting and see if something just clicks with you. Most people I know, myself included, visited and all said the same thing - when they stepped foot on campus, something just clicked and made them feel like it was home to them.

Love Dartmouth, but for those who want to be closer to some city than a couple of hours a way, that is an issue. Hanover is not a major city by a long stretch. As for internships, if you are not a “connected” student with family in places to help with the jobs and not in a field that has a lot of jobs out there, and not at the top of your class, getting a good internship, job can be a challenge. Though east coast name recognition is higher for Dartmouth, especially in Boston and NYC, Rice has a lot of opportunities that east coasters do not get a whiff of, as does Berkeley. So unless the East Coast is a priority , do look long and hard at the opportunity stats. And this winter was one that really is making a lot of people rethink living up north. Brrr.

Be aware that at Berkeley and RIce, you are less likely to know people, even indirectly if you are an east coaster. The overwhelming % of those at Cal are Californeans and RIce is nearly half Texans. My son went to an OOS public where a cousin goes. The cousin is in state. Big difference in having history in common, and tough for my shy, not so great in social situations son… Not a single kid from his high school there or anyone at all from the area that he knew even slightly. He’d have had more social ins at Dartmouth than there, without a doubt.

Most of this ^^^ I’d kind of agree with, except for having to be connected to family in high places just to get an internship or job. With the D plan, internships can be less competitive. Since you can take, for example, your Junior Winter as an off term, you can go intern somewhere for that term. That means you’re not competing with every other college student in the country all trying to intern over the summer months. This does help you get your foot in the door and some real world experience, even if you’re not “connected”

If you care about quality of life, Dartmouth is #8 according to Princeton Review (only Ivy on the list) so there isn’t a huge discernible difference from life at Rice. If you’re going for the MBA and a major in Econ, Dartmouth is excellent for internships due to the D-Plan and Dartmouth is Morgan Stanley’s biggest recruitment college. Dartmouth also has one of the best and most popular study abroad programs in the nation, better cohesiveness/community/college feel, less competitiveness compared to Berkeley, more diversity (less than 50% of students are white), and a strong base for social justice/activism as a subset of the student body if that’s what you’re going for. Dartmouth has a niche social group for everyone, and these groups are not mutually exclusive. Dartmouth is also going to start a residential college system starting with the class of 2019.

Just go to Dartmouth.

Life at Rice is very different from Dartmouth, and I 'd read some narratives about the two and see what better floats your boat. It all depends upon who you are. Some kids go stir crazy in a small town away from any city especially in desolate winter months. In this regard, Berkeley and Rice rate higher. BUt the atmosphere in Oakland, Ca and Houston,TX is quite different from east coast cities. Houston is the 4th largest city, and Rice students do not suffer from lack of internship opportunites, and Berkeley is not at all far from a wonderful city, San Francisco. Those things do add to quality of iife. But for those who like being out away from the hustle, bustle, towns like Hanover, Hamilton, are a paradise. it really depends upon the person. Academically, you are not going to lose out, nor in terms of school rep.

IMO, Cal is not worth the OOS prices.

Heck, I’m not sure Cal is worth the in-state prices at this point. @cptofthehouse, Berkeley is in Berkeley, not Oakland. Granted, many students end up living in north Oakland (and elsewhere), but there is a difference. @Tank07, I don’t really think you should tell people Boston is only 2 hours away. If you have a car, yes, but watch out for the troopers in the air. If you’re taking the Dartmouth Coach, no.

I know nothing about Rice, but the best day (in hindsight) in D’s life was the day she got deferred to a spring admission at Berkeley after receiving a likely letter & admission from Dartmouth. As much as I would have liked to have her 20 minutes down the hill rather than 3000 miles away, there is no way she would have received the same education or had as many life-changing experiences had she gone to Berkeley rather than Dartmouth. But, I can understand Berkeley’s appeal. Heck, I came here in 1974 for law school and never left. Best of luck with your decision.

@AboutTheSame I Doublechecked google maps in case my memory of Logan-Dartmouth drives was incorrect - it says 1 hour 55 minutes by car (that’s going the speed limit, so no trooper-watch needed there, though it does have a lot of speed traps if you have a heavy foot) and Dartmouth Coach is 3 hours and 5 minutes altogether with the stops it makes.
But NYC Coach is actually 4:45-5 hours Dartmouth Coach, 4:15 by car, if we want to be specific.

I believe I agreed that 2 hours by car was do-able, although, in my experience, only with a relatively heavy foot – at least headed north, because those miles until you escape the greater Boston area can be slooooooow. My main point was the car-less folks who might think the coach was only 2 hours. Cheers!

I’m a Dartmouth alum. My son was just admitted to Dartmouth and Rice (and several other good schools) and chose Rice. He plans to major in Engineering, so for him the requirement to spend a 5th year to get a real engineering degree was a real drawback for Dartmouth (not to mention the cost of a 5th year at one of the most expensive colleges in the country, ouch!). He is also not a frat-type guy, and he loved the idea of a greek-free campus and the residential college system of Rice. The Dartmouth administration is trying to move in that direction and de-emphasize the greek houses (they have been since I was a student there in the 70s), but the frats are pretty well entrenched and will be around for a long time, I think.

Here in Texas, a Rice degree is a much bigger deal than a Dartmouth degree. When I mention I’m went to Dartmouth, I have had several people say “Is that one of the Ivys?”. People here have heard of Dartmouth but it doesn’t have the alumni network and brand recognition that Rice has. I’m sure it’s the other way around on the East Coast.

Oh, yeah, Thayer School is respectable, but not elite for engineering. Rice is probably better regarded. Obviously, this doesn’t matter unless you’re planning to major in engineering.