<p>Any insights into the Rice ED program? It does not seem to provide as large an advantage as other ED programs. I attend a strong HS in NOVA, but one that does not have much of a history sending students to Rice. I am very interested in Rice because of its top pre-med program and relatives in Houston. Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>Apply to Rice if it’s your top choice. Don’t just use ED as a strategy.</p>
<p>I’m also in agreement with runallday here: if you’re absolutely certain in your mind that Rice is your #1 choice, then apply ED and don’t look back. However, if you’re not totally set on Rice, then don’t. I applied ED, but I had known that Rice was my #1-dream-school-top-choice for quite some time, so I had no reservations about doing so. Before applying ED to Rice, or to anywhere else, for that matter, I’d strongly recommend that you visit the school (and I’d even recommend an overnight stay) just to make 100% sure that it is definitively where you want to go for the next four years of your life. </p>
<p>In terms of practical advice about applying ED, just make sure that you start everything regarding your application well in advance. August would not be too early to start drafting some essays, asking for recommendation letters, figuring out if/when you’d like to do a campus visit/interview/overnight stay, and taking care of all the little odds-and-ends with the application process. You’re working with a smaller time frame, so planning ahead becomes all the more important. That goes for standardized testing, too. If I remember correctly, there’s only two SAT testing dates in the fall before the ED deadline (last year, there was one in October, and the second one was November 5th, which is after the Nov. 1st deadline, but they’ll still take your scores just fine). </p>
<p>Also, I’m not quite sure where you’re getting the notion that ED doesn’t offer that much of an advantage. For this past cycle, the acceptance rate from ED to RD went from basically 1/4 to 1/6. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s fairly sizable, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I hope that helps! Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions. :)</p>
<p>Thanks, both posts are helpful. Rice is my number one choice and I have visited there several times because it is where my relatives live. I plan to come back again this summer, hopefully for an interview. 1/4 vs 1/6 is enough of a bump that I will apply ED. I just wanted to make sure there was some advantage or I just would have applied RD and not applied ED anywhere.</p>
<p>Just a word of caution regarding on-campus interviews during the summer: Houston’s at its hottest then. Most students are not at Rice during the summer, of course, so visiting campus during high summer will give a bad impression of the weather you’ll experience as a student (spring in Houston is wonderful, for example). OTOH, if you find that you can tolerate even Houston’s summer heat, you’ll have braved the worst and will have no difficulty spending the next four years here. haha</p>
<p>While there is definitely at least some advantage to applying ED, it’s not as large as it appears from the acceptance rates. Certain types of hooked applicants (e.g., recruited athletes and legacies) disproportionately apply ED, which increases the acceptance rate. The difference in the acceptance rate for unhooked applicants between RD and ED is smaller than the difference in the overall acceptance rate.</p>