<p>Agree with all posts above. Rice does sound like a perfect fit for your son. It isnt pretentious. It is a place where individuality is encouraged and, IMO, tolerance is supreme. Houston is a sea of blue in a red state, and Rice is pretty politically balanced. My H’s family is originally from Wisconsin. I am from the NE. We currently live in the SE (hello NYskins!). My s absolutely LOVED Rice, and would have been similarly comfortable in a NE school. The res. college system makes everyone feel at home and while the academics are strong, it is not a pressure cooker school. It is a laid back school where trying something outside that silly application box is encouraged. My s was on the breakdance team, and believe me, that is the last thing I would have expected him to do. But I am so tickled that he did, and felt compfortable exploring such an option.
Please, go visit. You will love it!</p>
<p>I agree that if possible, Hobby is easier to deal with than Bush, and the drive is a little shorter. But both are do-able. You can get cheap rental cars- try priceline or Hotwire. Or, if you happen to have USAA, go to the rental car deals through their website. I just discovered how cheap you can rent a car if you do it that way (rather than using the USAA discount code on the car rental website). Our rental car for that wedding we attended inHouston in June-- $15/day! Have fun. Go owls!</p>
<p>We typically stayed on Main st. near campus when we visited. We recently attended a wedding in Houston and stayed downtown. Parking was expensive. No need to do that.</p>
<p>Thanks for the additional input. My son took a long look at the Rice website the other day and was impressed. It will definitely stay on the list. </p>
<p>We are a generally liberal, non-religious family, but from what I can tell from this forum a kid like that would have no problem at Rice. And as parents we preach tolerance and listening to the other guy anyway, so a more “balanced” political culture is fine. Although I have actually never been to Houston, I have been to other parts of Texas on business on many occasions, and my experience has been that Texans in general seem like very friendly people, very much like we’re used to in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>By the way, our son tells us that his interests now encompass computer science, foreign languages (Japanese intrigues him), business and possibly physics.</p>
<p>We visited DS this last weekend in Houston, and looked around campus and the new recreation center looks like it is going to be really, really, really nice! Did I mention REALLY nice? The fences are still around it, but you can see through it to huge windows, and the pools are going in, etc. We also peeked in at the art installation in the art museum - very cool, had coffee at the new pavilion, saw the “zero house” that is going to be entered into the solar decathlon in Washington, DC, ([U.S</a>. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon Home Page](<a href=“http://www.solardecathlon.org/]U.S”>http://www.solardecathlon.org/)), looked in the undergraduate engineering design kitchen, scoped out the new rez colleges, had coffee with DS’s prof and his family (really great people), and saw a Houston Dynamo prof soccer game. The Rice campus is really looking good! ;)</p>
<p>On the traffic issue: There are many hotels near campus (near the med center, really), but if you’re planning on going anywhere else, you WILL need a car. Public transport isn’t good around here. :P</p>
<p>My kids take/took the lightrail from Rice a few stops to the transit station, then the express bus ($15) to the Houston International airport. DS it’s fast, pretty cheap, and easy to do.
Did I mention REALLY nice? The fences are still around it, but you can see through it to huge windows, and the pools are going in, etc. We also peeked in at the art installation in the art museum - very cool, had coffee at the new pavilion, saw the “zero house” that is going to be entered into the solar decathlon in Washington, DC, ([U.S</a>. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon Home Page](<a href=“