My daughter is an incoming junior at rice. Her room mate for her first two years was a diabetic. They had a refrigerator in their room for her. She seemed to do fine at school. So your child will not be the only one there with these concerns.
Thank you for your input regarding my Type 1 son. He controls it very well and has for many years. Itâs time for my wife and me to let him go and make his way in the world. Houston21, my son is applying for Urban Immersion this summer. I only know what I read on Riceâs website. Sounds like a fun and worthwhile experience.
We got the information from Rice about the linens package. Has anyone used it? My D may want to decorate her room in her own style.
Welcome to the new Freshmen!
My son just had an amazing first year experience at Rice if anyone has any questions
Donât use the linens package. Buy your own. You can get cheap good sheets at bed bath and beyond. Enjoy rice you will love it! Itâs hard to believe my older son graduated nine years ago!
How do you go about getting your insurance approved so you do not need yo buy riceâs insurance?
@fun1234 There was a form to fill out and we needed to send it in by a certain date.
Right. There will be a way to submit proof of coverage. As an aside, be sure if you happen to have an HMO like Kaiser or something, that you have coverage in Houston. Lots of wonderful docs right off campus. You want to be sure your insurance covers, should you need. My DS shattered his femur on a ski trip his junior year. We were out of town, and the initial surgery was handled where we were. All the follow-up orthopedic care and physical therapy was done right off campus at the medical centers there. We were fortunate that all services were covered by in-network providers.
What are absolute musts to have at college? My son is traveling by plane so he wonât be able to bring like a printer. If he does not bring one is there a place he can pay to print? What other big items does he absolutely need? I wonder when they match roommates If they keep this in mind and maybe set him up with someone that may have some stuff that he doesnât have.
We bought my son a printer and a refrigerator when he moved in two years ago. Heâs hardly used either one. You can print stuff at the library for a few cents per page and it will just get put on his college bill. He hardly ever uses the ethernet adapter we got for his macbook either, he just depends on wifi and it doesnât seem to have been a problem.
Anything he decides he needs later you can just order from Amazon and he can have it delivered to his college in a couple of days. A lot easier than lugging on the plane!
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I have 2 Daughters that graduated Rice in 2016. Both of my daughters requested to be in the same college but not room together and filled out the roommate form. They both got along with their roommates but chose other people for the following year. They both had refrigerators and printers of their own. Refrigerators helped when they had leftovers and they wanted to keep other food esp for breakfast. Also, Rice has a bus on the weekends that heads to Target and other stores so the kids can stock up on food and other necessities. One thing you can do is order stuff online from Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart, Target and pick it up when youâre in Houston before O-Week. During O-Week, their O-Week coordinators would also take their groups out to check out other parts of the city and make runs to the store if they needed thing which was nice.
About the printer, my daughter liked having it. As did her suite mates that didnât ever contribute to the cost of ink. She ended up not using it into the second semester because of that issue. Also Rice does not support wireless printers so keep that in mind.
@livinginLA Really? Oh dear⊠thatâs disheartening to hear. I would have thought that Rice students were better than that. 
If I recall correctly, there was a study room in the residential college with printers. He didnât bother using the printer that he brought freshman year and left at home after that since he didnât really use it. He use the college printers
@JaneAnkamoon , if thatâs the worst behavior you ever hear of from Rice students, consider yourself lucky. Itâs like all highly-competitive universities - on one side of the admissions process, we all feel as if the only way to get in is to prove oneself to be not only smart, but mature and thoughtful and emitting the unmistakable glow of Character. On the other side of the process, we discover that plenty of immature and thoughtless people somehow passed that filter, with a few mixed in who are decidedly lacking in character. The kids Harvard rescinded this year are a case in point - there are kids like that at every top school, and most of them do NOT get rescinded. My Rice Dâs perspective is that, if anything, students at elite colleges may be prone to a certain level of immaturity and thoughtlessness, simply because they have been so occupied racking up achievements as to have little emotional energy left over for the more ordinary but essential work of simply growing up.
I donât say this to bash Rice students, or elite-university students in general. My D met brilliant and fascinating people at Rice and made wonderful friends. My point is that the stance of pre-emptive trust based on âwe must all be wonderful people because we got into Rice/Harvard/whereverâ is a common and quite frankly dangerous idea that we would all be well-advised to root out before dropping our kids off at college. The reality is this: your kid will be taken advantage of in college if he/she does not know how to set boundaries and advocate for him/herself. Printer ink will be the least of his/her worries. Your child will not get through college without meeting both sexual predators with true ill intent (thankfully rare), and others (not rare) who are not necessarily ill-intended but who are variously needy/manipulative, emotionally-unintelligent, or otherwise unable to keep the best interests of others in the forefront. Lots of ugly and damaging things can happen at college, especially to those who give others too much credit up-front. Seriously, sit down with any college senior and ask them for the rundown of bad experiences (and close calls that could have gone much worse) that they and their friends have had. It is eye-opening.
Every college takes a varied cross-section of young people and throws them together in close quarters as they proceed with not only seeking an education, but growing into the adults they are going to be. Navigating that successfully requires being a good judge of character, choosing oneâs close friends carefully, and as I said before, a generous helping of healthy boundaries and self-advocacy. I have definitely been around the âI would have thought that ____ studentsâŠâ block in my own mind; but in all sincerity, the sooner we extinguish that line of thinking in our thinking and especially in the thinking of our kids, the better-equipped everyone will be for a safe and positive college experience.
I realize that I have turned a conversation about printers into something much heavier, but I just needed to say that about how we calibrate our expectations of college peers. As to the printer issue itself⊠my D started out without her own printer but decided after a few months that having one would be very helpful. We purchased one on Amazon, and it served her well for the remaining 3.5 years. A cheap laser printer avoided the going-broke-buying-ink problem; she rarely needed to print in color and could do that on school printers if necessary. As a social-sciences student writing tons of papers, a printer was definitely a help; STEM kids might not have as much need. The main point is, itâs really not important to worry about this at drop-off. Let them settle in and figure out what they need; free Amazon Prime for students is your friend. 
@aquapt I want to thank you so much for your post. Yes, the printer ink statement turned into a much deeper post, but so well written and so thoughtful that I read it out loud to my D who still has 2 years before leaving for college. This is exactly the conversation I wanted to have with my kids, not just about college, but about life in general- but I could never have put it so elequently.
My daughter just found out she is in Martel College. She is excited.
My son found out heâs in Baker College. 5 weeks and counting!
Daughterâs in Sid Richardson. Sure wish we had seen the room or had any indication of floorplan, how others have their set up, etc. Feel so clueless making it difficult to know what all to buy:(.