Hi everyone,
I never thought about applying to Rice in the fall until now, but I don’t really know a lot about it besides what they say on their website and brief info session.
How is Rice’s CS program? I plan on majoring on CS in college. What makes Rice unique from other schools? How is the social life there? Are the classes small or large? Is the campus in a nice area?
If there’s anything else I’m missing please let me know.
Thanks! I appreciate the responses.
Rice has a very highly regarded Computer Science department.
Rice is unique from peer colleges due to its small size and residential college system which gives a a social scene unlike any of its competitors. This leads to it doing very well on happiest students and best quality of life rankings. You can find lots more opinions on the residential college system online, but the student body overwhelming loves it.
Go to Niche.com for a mass of student opinions about every aspect of the school. Rice ranks 5th in the nation on Niche because of the quality of its programs, particularly in STEM, and the residential college system.
I’m about to be a senior (still weird to say that) in CS. I’ve really liked the department and I feel like it gave me everything I wanted. It’s easy to get into classes, the on-campus recruiting is pretty great, and the professors and classes were all-around satisfactory for me! A possible negative is that for more advanced classes (past freshman/sophomore) there tends to be only one section and it’s only taught one semester of the year. In practice, that has never really negatively affected me. Required classes tend to be somewhat large (maybe the very largest are 100 per session? I’m bad at estimating that) but again, I haven’t found that to be an impediment, as the professors are almost always very accessible.
As for social life etc, I really encourage you to just peruse the last few pages of the Rice CC forums because it turns out a lot of people are wondering the same sorts of things 