Rice Rumors

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
1

Hi there.

I have heard rumors of Rice University in Houston being a bunch of uptight rich kids, which is probably at least partialy true since they have horrible financial aid packages that cater to a specific niche of the fiscal spectrum.

Nevertheless, I am thinking of taking a post-undergraduate (Wellesley–arguably its share of rich and uptight kids), pre-graduate (U of Houston Creative Writing Program – hopefully) course at Rice in French in the spring of next year.

Can anyone confirm or deny if the air of trust fund kids transcends the regular university to the graduate and continuing programs such as that for an isolated French course at the Glasscock School for Continuing Studies? I think it would be enriching and help my writing.

Thanks so much. Friendly and constructive opinions only please.

2

RIce is about middling for economic diversity, so no, it is not all ‘trust fund babies’, and they do well on rankings for racial interaction. The students that I know there- even from what you might consider well-off backgrounds- are a nice lot.

3

@collegemom3717 -look at the name and the number of posts for the OP.

4

I would ignore rumors like this. You are looking at a single course for one semester where your primary contacts are faculty and other people in the class. The culture of the school seems not terribly important if the course is providing what you want.

Although frankly, why not just go to France for a few months of immersion lessons? It will probably be cheaper, your language skills will leap, and you’ll have an excellent cultural experience before returning to Houston. My D did this in Berlin with the Goethe Institute, a private tutor, language cafes, and airbnb. The whole 3 months cost half of what a semester abroad would have cost her at her uni - and she started at zero in German and came back nearly fluent.

5

What? what “horrible financial aid packages”? Who told you that???

6

Did you actually do any research or are you just starting rumors? According to the Common Data Set, over 39% of the entering Class entering in 2014 received need-based financial aid averaging $38,304 per year. In addition, another 62 student were offered merit aid averaging $22,748 per year. That is in addition to 52 athletic scholarships, some of which presumably went to students who would otherwise have received need-based aid. So what is “horrible” about that?

As for diversity, Princeton Review ranks Rice as #1 in the nation for “Race/Class Interaction” and “Best Quality of Life” and #9 for “Happiest Students”. Niche gives Rice a grade of A+ for Diversity.

The Common Data Set bears this out. Less than half the students are white - 43.1%, with 25.6% Asian, 17.2% Hispanic, 7.6% Black or African American, and 5.1% multi-racial. That doesn’t seem like the pool of trust fund kids that you seem to have assumed.

7

I did research by word of mouth. Of the people that I know who have gone there, they are all ‘well off’ or ‘very well off.’ Friends who don’t go there but study in the area cited a lack of financial support at Rice. So I am asking based on that. Are you saying they are wrong then, mom2collegekids?

Sidenote: wandlmink, I dont think I need any kind of disciplinarians in tone regarding whether or not I am starting a rumor–since I am not. This is something I have observed in my couple of years living in Houston, in speaking to individuals from Rice, and so forth. I am not knocking the school, obviously, as, as I said, I am considering going there.

I went to Wellesley about five years ago so the diversity of basically any school doesn’t impress me, wandlmink. ‘Less than half white’ when the percentage is 43% sounds like political statistician-speak and fails to notice that 43% is um…very close to 50%.

I made no assumptions. This was a question and posed as such. Perhaps assumptions shouldn’t have been formed about my post or me, however. Don’t we think?

Ive been on this forum before for a long time, but I change my screen name periodically to avoid trolling. Who has the time to consistently post to forums nowadays when there’s real work to be done?

Clarinetdad16: Thank you but I thought talking about someone when they were in the room as though they weren’t was, well, passé, or perhaps, always out of style…

Thank you for the constructive advice, N’s Mom specifically. I am considering travel to France as I did in 2012, Spain in 2007, England, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Mozambique in 2012, but the issues are money, time, and my lifestyle currently.

Rice may be my best bet til then.

Thanks again! :slight_smile:

8

I meant to say to avoid t r o l l i n g, up there, but it censored my comment.

Best regards!

9

@randomnamegnr8r, when you say

you rather understate your own part in this- I see at least two assumptions in your posts. First, your original post asked

Your assumption is that there IS an ‘air of trust fund kids’. Second, your basis for this is knowing ‘well off’ and ‘very well off’ students at Rice, and statements by people who do not go there. Your assumption is that ‘well off’ students are

.

10

I would echo the other comments here. Rice is known for good integration of the students, especially due to the college system that causes a forced mixing. Plus, historically it has been one of the cheaper of the elite universities. Nowadays, that is less obvious since they are low 40s on their tuition, where many others are middle to upper 40s.

For an elite university I think it is fair to say it is pretty down-to-earth. Your mileage may vary, and you may meet some stuck up people - like most places.

11

In 1980, non-Hispanic whites comprised about 80% of the US population. That percentage has now dropped to an all-time low of about 63%. The percentage at Rice is, per the above-cited data, around 43%.

This means that if Rice truly aspires to “look like America”–i.e., to attain an ethnic mix that corresponds roughly to that in the nation at large–it will need to INCREASE, by almost half again, the percentage of whites in its student body.

Based on these numbers, I suppose one could reasonably conclude that Rice “lacks diversity,” since whites are under-represented. Is that a concern of yours?

As for issues of class, I suspect that if you got along with Wendy Wellesley &co., you’ll experience the social scene at Rice as a sustained exercise in “slumming.”

12

“As a sustained exercise in slumming.” Oh come now-what do you know about Wendy Wellesley & co, I mean, really know? :smiley: like I said, diversity diversity diversity. If you mean that everyone put on a clean shirt every day then yes; If you mean people knew who Yeats was or else could solve complex organic chemistry sets then yes; If you mean we have societies and not sororities, and teas instead of rushes, then yes: It’s a classy place. But there was a niche for everybody. So it works. I just wondered if Rice is similar in that regard.

Thanks again, signing off.

13

So you purposefully change your name after making posts like this one?

Very interesting.

14

Google “Rice welcomes students for O-week.” Trust fund babies and stuffy rich kids do not fit in at Rice. It is as inclusive and welcoming as any college you will ever find.

15

I’m late to this conversation but I think a good measure of how many wealthy or “trust-fund kids” that attend Rice can be found by the number of really expensive cars one can count in the student parking lots. I made a point to check out the student parking lots at Yale, Princeton and Stanford as well (Harvard was much more difficult to assess) when I visited and they were all populated with far more new (or otherwise) BMWs, Mercedes, Porches, Infinitis, etc. than what I saw in the Rice student parking lots. Thank God for that. While schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford have extremely high admission standards, they still are bastions of privilege and entitlement for the wealthy with forty percent of their students coming from very wealthy families. And as far as Wellesley goes, how can you even consider such a place diverse when only one gender of the human race attends. Furthermore, out of the five girls I have met that have attended or attend Wellesley, all five of them are snots, though “only” four of them were from very wealthy families.

16

I’ve read that about 40% of Rice students receive need-based financial aid. If I’ve done my math right, that means about 60% pay full price. If a family can afford to pay $60,000 per year for four years, then they are at least upper middle class. So, yes, there are a lot of well-off students at Rice just as there are at any elite university.

Having said that, there is nothing wrong with being lucky. It’s just as wrong to dismiss a classmate because their parents are wealthy as it is to condescend to someone because their parents are poor. It’s what you do with your good fortune that matters.

17

I am an undergraduate student at Rice and feel like I can give some actual insight. From my experience, many of the kids are well-off and are at least upper middle class. Although Rice is a little bit cheaper than other elite institutions, it’s still expensive. I read the census survey results from last year that revealed over 60% of kids are AT LEAST upper-middle class. The comment about new expensive cars is invalid because most of the kids who have money here don’t show it. Rice is not a flashy school (Although I did park next to a new Range Rover and M4 the other day). Additionally, Kinkaid and St. John’s (the 2 best private schools in Houston) send a lot of kids to Rice each year. Overall, Rice has many wealthy kids just like any other elite top 20 school. It’s just that the wealthy kids who go here are down to earth and not trying to rub money in your face.

18

Yes, you’re both right: 40 percent of Rice undergraduates receive “need-based” financial aid. I wish that number were higher. However, another 12-14 percent of Rice undergraduates receive merit-based scholarships (Is that the right word? Or has the word scholarship been nixed by the PC-police?). And while those students receiving merit scholarships are likely from upper middle class families, many such families, especially those whose incomes are at the lower end of the upper middle class income range, still need financial help when paying to send their kids to private universities. I should point out that most economists define an upper middle class family as a one who earns an income in a general range of $125,000-$250,000 annually (of course, it varies from state to state). This no doubt explains why Stanford University offers financial aid for incoming undergraduates whose household income is less than $125,000/year, which I think is a reasonable cutoff. And while 60 percent of Rice’s undergraduate student body may come from upper middle class and wealthy families, Rice does not have the large number of students who come from deeply wealthy families (families whose wealth exceeds $25 million). These students are found in much higher numbers at schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. These are the kids I have often found troubling as they truly believe they are entitled to things that others aren’t because they come from considerable wealth. I say this because I grew up with and attended private schools with these very wealthy kids. I have been lucky in having had many great privileges available to me, though my family is at the bottom end of the upper middle class income range. These kids often disparagingly referred to my father, who worked for the government, as a government servant. And guess where nearly all these kids are going to college? Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Stanford, Brown etc. (and, of course, Wellesley). Not one of them applied to Rice. So I’m very glad to hear from jzzd18 that Rice students from wealthy families are “down to earth” and don’t “rub [their] money in your face.” And to Horde56, I have no problem with people “being lucky.” That’s the nature of life. What I don’t appreciate are people who equate their luck with privilege, entitlement and some kind of innate superiority. With that in mind, I did not find my associations and interactions with the majority of such “lucky” kids to have been that enriching.

19

Maximilias- I come from what you call a “very wealthy” background and attended one of the best private schools in the nation. Please don’t impose your negative assumptions of “very wealthy” kids on others. As someone who actually attends Rice University I can give real insight as to what it’s like. Get a life. Peace out.

20

Did the OP start this thread to insult Rice? Just go to France so you and Rice won’t have to deal with your issues.