There is no way Rice could have gotten 20K apps for ED, which is what the letter suggests.
it did say for “available” spaces, so perhaps that means one of 3 things: either 19X the 30% of total class spots usually filed through ED (so what, about 400 slots filled through ED which means about 8000 applicants). OR 19x the total spots reserved for entire class. Also, Rice probably offers more spots than they expect to matriculate in order to control yield. Perhaps as many as 2-3X more offers than anticipated entrants for RD, I’d suspect. In any case, those numbers all seem really high
Think they meant 9x more applicants. Last year there were roughly 18000 applicants and 2000 admitted so that would make sense if it was just a mistake
Happy to say that I have officially been admitted, so I thought I would join this thread to meet some of y’all (even though I have been stalking this thread for months)!! Are any of y’all from Houston? Is there a group chat of some sort?
For the official record, there were 16% more Rice ED apps this year over last year.
Off of that info, then Rice dropped from 21% ED rate to 16%. That is a very significant drop for just one cycle…
What percentage were accepted in the ED round this year?
Assuming they accepted ~320, then 16-17%.
I’m actually not super surprised about the drop in ED acceptance, now that Rice has migrated to being tied with Brown in the US News rankings. Hasn’t been that big a jump, but it’s now on par with multiple Ivies and it’s become a less “obscure” school, so people are noticing their slightly less expensive tuition and (previously) surprisingly high accept rates. Kind of a market correction
@aaronking Yup, we underestimated and expected it to be a shoe in! 
Those that were deferred it is still possible to get in regular decison. Don’t lose hope it is still possible.
looking forward to starting next fall with yall~
@aaronking The US News is incredibly biased towards low acceptance rates, Rice is probably trying to lower the acceptance rate to move up, which draws more applicants which leads to an even lower acceptance rate etc., either way, niche’s rankings I think are more accurate.
If it’s any consolation, Rice accepted wayyyy too many people last year. They significantly overestimated their yield. I I forgot the exact numbers, but we had the biggest freshman class ever and it was over 1000 students. Rice tries for around 900 students I think. Anyway, they accepted so many extra students that they had to ask upperclassmen to overcrowd dorm rooms and it was a big mess to find housing for all the freshmen.
So acceptance rates may be lower this year simply because they are trying to get back down to their optimal class sizes.
has anyone been able to view their merit awards status?
@ballup i haven’t
@zaltsmanben @ballup how did you find out you got a merit award?
@nonewusernames i didn’t find anything out