<p>I had never really heard about Rice until I came onto this forum, but I have done a little more research and I really love what I'm hearing about the school and it seem that the students love it too. But, I have also heard that Rice students are typically hippies, 'flaming liberals', etc. Is there any truth to this stereotype?</p>
<p>I doubt either of those are true. Flaming liberals? This is Texas..lol</p>
<p>That's what I thought... but multiple people have told me otherwise. So I'm just trying to figure out the truth from some actual Rice students :)</p>
<p>Flaming liberal hippies? In our 3 year experience with Rice, I've NEVER heard THIS description. There are conservative students, liberal students, apathetic students, and everything in between. There are probably even a few "hippies". </p>
<p>I don't think Rice students fit any real stereotype - that's one of the great things about the school. Students choose Rice because it's cool to be smart and it's cool to be yourself.</p>
<p>I'm very glad to hear that!</p>
<p>yeah i doubt flaming liberals. Most of my Texan friends are die-hard conservatives...</p>
<p>Hey for east coast and west coast students that's not a totally positive take..that there are so many conservative students. I know my son has tons of friends and he's liberal, agnostic and has friends both like that and not like that and no one minds. Great school to learn to get along! It is not a typical southern conservative school, at all!
Another good thing about the residential colleges, unlike frats or sororities, they can NOT choose like minded members. You get everyone and learn to get along with others, even if they are very different than you are. IMHO, that is one of the greatest of life's lessons!</p>
<p>found this somewhere, i guess it gives a pretty good stereotype of rice students, although there will always be exceptions</p>
<p>"I live in the fourth biggest city in the country, yet I can go weeks without leaving campus. Even when I do leave, it takes 30 minutes to go get gas, and an hour to move a mile on the 45 or the 59. I was either a dork in high school and am still a dork, or I was a dork in high school and now i pretend to be cool. If asked where I'm from, I respond with my college and not my hometown. To relieve stress I run around campus naked twice a month. If I go to the library at midnight, there's a good chance I might not be able to find a free computer, in which case I can always just go to the pub. The pub is heaven on earth. I worship the baseball team, play drinking games in class, and firmly believe that Martel is not a college. I was a pre-med until orgo made me its two semester b*tch, now i'm an academ. Beer bike is the biggest event of the year, yet 90% of people pass out before the races even begin. I think it's cool to cuss at the top of my lungs and call it a cheer. Even drunk or stoned, I'm still smarter than you.
I am an Owl."</p>
<p>Neither of my kids were dorks in high school, and they both love (loved) it at Rice. Both my kids are reasonably attractive, fairly athletic, smart, funny, kind, liberalish, non-religious folks. They have a variety of friends of many types, and both of them have told me many times how glad they are to go (or have gone) to a school like Rice. :) (One graduated last year, one is a proud Sidizen)</p>
<p>Um, I haven't seen/met a "flaming liberal" or hippie... maybe there are some out there, but I don't know. I'm a moderate liberal, and it's been a shock to me about the underlying presence of conservatives here. Maybe it's because I grew up in a liberal Northeast neighborhood and never really had any conservative friends, but yeah I would say there's a reasonable split in students between liberals and conservatives.</p>
<p>I've certainly never heard that description of flaming liberals and hippies before--most of the reactions given when I tell people back at home that I go to Rice / college in Texas, they give me wide-eyed stares and tell me to not turn into a diehard Republican gun-wielding conservative who says yall every five seconds. It's a certain knee-jerk reaction to Texas in particular, not to Rice, I guess (in the Northeast, anyway, perhaps?) and it doesn't help that our current president is from Texas. Hahah. </p>
<p>Yeah... this is Texas, and there's a huge presence of Texans in the student body... no way that Rice can ever be described as flaming liberal--that'd be Berkeley or maybe Brown.</p>
<p>^ Ha yeah Texas is really die-hard conservative. My government teacher is pretty much brainwashing her kids to vote Republican and always make sly remarks about Obama and the Democratic Party (i go to school in TX)</p>
<p>Austin is definitely not die-hard conservative! Texas is a huge state and should not be painted with a broad brush.</p>
<p>Rice students run the spectrum from liberal gay atheist vegetarian to conservative backwater gun-toting evangelical, and everything in-between. I'd say that, like any non-religiously affiliated private university, Rice leans pretty far to the left, but it tends to be more moderate than most other schools.</p>
<p>One of the interesting things about Rice's dynamic was that it was founded by William Marsh Rice, who was from Massachusetts, and our first president was Edgar Odell Lovett, from Princeton, which means that we don't have a lot of the old-money Southern conservative baggage that schools like Duke, UVA, and Vanderbilt do. Rice was the school where Houstonites sent their kids when they didn't want to send them to the Ivy League, which is how we built a reputation so quickly.</p>
<p>As for Texans being all conservative, my son's roommate is from Dallas and is a solid Democrat and an agnostic.</p>
<p>Texas cities are really pretty liberal, not at all like rural Texas. I know Austin definitely ranks among the top gay-friendly cities. </p>
<p>I would say Rice is left-moderate. There are quite a few nonreligious people and many liberal and liberal-leaning students and faculty. Rice, in this regard, is not your typical "southern school." Compared to other universities in the south, Rice is probably pretty liberal, but compared to northeast or west coast schools, Rice is very moderate.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I consider myself very liberal and probably would have fit in well politically at a place like Brown, Berkeley, Columbia, or Smith.</p>
<p>Thank you all so much for your input! I really am loving what you are saying about Rice, now it is just a matter of getting in and I have quickly come to understand that it is HIGHLY selective. Is it to my disadvantage that I come from the northeast? I do not think my school has ever had anyone attend Rice, and I think the last time anyone actually applied was sometime in the early 90s...</p>
<p>Being from anywhere in the US that is not Texas is good news. You still have to meet all requirements, but they want students from all over. Good luck :-)</p>
<p>Sugarplum54,</p>
<p>The people/sources telling you that Rice is full of 'liberal flaming hippies' may be comparing it to schools where much of the student body really is far to the right of Rice's students. </p>
<p>On the other hand, people responding here are mostly comparing Rice to the rest of the national, Top 50 Research Universities. Within that context, Rice is moderate, maybe a teeny bit right of center. They are right to do that, I think. Is this a concern to you, or just to the people who are commenting on this in your life? </p>
<p>Context matters. At my daughter's academically ambitious private high school here in the South, for example, applying to Brown is regarded as slightly insanely tolerant of hippieish ideas, and Naviance reports no-one in the last five years applying to Oberlin or Smith. These people are right - the prestige schools they prefer (Duke, Vandy, Davidson, UNC,...) have a much less hippy, gay-friendly vibe.</p>
<p>In CT, among my friends who are voting for McCain, one graduated from Brown in the 80's, one has a daughter who is a freshman at Smith --- and I think I've run out of friends who are voting for McCain.</p>
<p>I come from a school that is fairly liberal (some more 'flaming' than others, i guess you could say) and I want a college that is pretty moderate politically, although as long as it is not one extreme or the other I would be content. I consider myself a moderate, and at my current school if I expressed any speck of association with a conservative ideal I get endlessly badgered (talk about political intolerance). I do NOT want to experience this political intolerance in college, so being in a tolerant environment is definitely desirable. But, I would not be bothered if there was a tendency for liberalism at Rice if the students are accepting of others views. :)</p>
<p>I'm a Texan, and I definitely feel that Rice has a stronger Republican (and Libertarian, oddly) mindset than my earlier experiences - but it's still not that pronounced. There is a broad range of political views at Rice, whereas my previous school seemed very prominently democrat with little representation of other affiliations.</p>
<p>Rice is not very extreme politically. I very highly doubt that you will be met with intolerance - if anything, there may be a general feeling of apathy (or maybe a feeling of "to each his own"). This has been my impression, anyway.</p>