<p>jdjd13 I don’t disagree with your assessment of lists and rankings, as I always find funny how one city can be top 10 in something one year, and off the top 50 the next. Nevertheless, I disagree with your assessment of Vanderbilt and Emory and think Rice is more nationally regarded. I live in Florida and more people view Vanderbilt as a good Southern school and Emory as a Georgia school. In my experience more graduates are concentrated in those areas. In talking to people, I find a higher regard in Rice, particularly in certain fields of study. Emory and Vanderbilt are fine schools, but from our due diligence we found Rice to offer quite a bit more. Rice pops up higher on certain lists than Vandy and Emory regularly; Vanderbilt and Emory don’t</p>
<p>I also think that Rice was under-ranked by USNews. I think it’s slightly better than Vanderbilt, Emory, Washington U and Notre Dame. I would also rank it higher than Cornell.</p>
<p>Neither Rice nor Vanderbilt is particularly prestigious. Both schools pay their top students a salary to matriculate, but still have embarassingly low yield rates. They are ranked exactly where they should be: below even the worst Ivies.</p>
<p>Rice’s yield was 33% in 2007, and I believe it was well above 40% this year. I don’t think that is “embarassingly low.”</p>
<p>Also, since when is offering generous merit- and need-based financial aid a bad thing?</p>
<p>“even the worst Ivies”? This is a strange perspective.</p>
<p>Within a certain range, ranks are MEANINGLESS. (Sorry, don’t mean to shout. :eek:) It’s like comparing vanilla Breyers, Hagan Daz, Ben & Jerry’s, and Amy’s ice cream. They are all fantastic, all slightly different in texture, flavor, fat content. So are the colleges discussed above.</p>
<p>P.S. Incoming freshman body is almost 25% with international experience (foreign nationals, or US citizens living abroad in other countries) Rice took 2 students off the wait-list. (I think that must be the two architectural students who posted previously about getting off the waitlist!) Yield went up in Non-Texas students. They ended up with many more students than they expected. [Freshman</a> class largest in Rice’s history - News](<a href=“http://media.www.ricethresher.org/media/storage/paper1290/news/2009/08/28/News/Freshman.Class.Largest.In.Rices.History-3758407.shtml?reffeature=htmlemailedition]Freshman”>http://media.www.ricethresher.org/media/storage/paper1290/news/2009/08/28/News/Freshman.Class.Largest.In.Rices.History-3758407.shtml?reffeature=htmlemailedition)</p>
<p>I’m always confused about how US News ranks colleges…I had a tour to Rice when I was in Texas,and I like this school.oh well.</p>
<p>OldCard, in regards to Rice being a regional university, I think to a certain extent all three schools have this perception. Something to note, while 47% of Rice’s class comes from Texas alone (data from Rice’s website), only 37% of Vanderbilt’s class of 2013 came from the entire “South.” I think Vanderbilt is far less regional than you think, which is understandable as Vanderbilt has been drastically changing its profile the past few years.</p>
<p>Amdn, I hope your Owls will be ready for the Commodores come September 26th. We will be protecting SEC pride.</p>
<p>Thank you HappyMedStudent, I suppose in comparison to HYP+, yes we all do have embarrassingly low yield rates. Thank you for pointing that out.</p>
<p>Anxiousmom is right on point.</p>
<p>Regarding yield, I believe Vanderbilt’s 2007 yield was 40%, and since it has been increasing every year (for at least the past 5 years), I can only assume it has gone up since then. But yes, compared to Harvard’s 76% yield rate, it does seem silly.</p>
<p>Rice should be at the same level as NU/WashU, but Rice has very little geographic diversity(this is the only thing keeping Rice down)…I am also surprised Emory is tied with Rice(rice should be ranked higher than emory, and I GO TO EMORY…rofl</p>
<p>Colleges00701 Do you mean demographic diversity?I think I saw quite a few intl students…</p>
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<p>Explain to me why Washington U has outranked a few ivies. How is Washington U any better than Rice?</p>
<p>no i meant geographic diversity, as in kids coming from different parts of the country…50 percent of rice’s kids come from from texas.</p>
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<p>What USNews fails to understand is that the State of Texas is one of the largest, richest and populous states in the US, so geographic diversity does not mean so much for Rice or UT as much as it is for schools in the NE where the population of most states there is tiny. Look at Stanford. about 46-48% of their students are from California, yet it’s as excellent as Y and P but not as highly ranked as them.</p>
<p>RML hit it right on the head. People who aren’t from Texas balk at the fact that about half of our student body comes from Texas, but they fail to realize that Texas is one of the most ethnically and socially diverse states in the country. Schools in the northeast also have roughly half of their students coming from surrounding states whose combined populations are equivalent to that of Texas, and nobody claims that they have any lack of “geographic diversity.”</p>
<p>It’s the same thing with Stanford; California is a gigantic, wonderfully diverse state, so naturally a lot of their students would come from California.</p>
<p>The other reason I suspect for Rice being ranked so low, compared to where it should be ranked, is that it receives a lot less applications. (Rice receives 10,000 apps, while Vandy and Emory receive around 16,000 apps…NU/WashU receive around 20,000 apps)…</p>
<p>but then again Rice is a much smaller school compared to Emory/Vandy/NU/WashU…which is better for more access to professors…</p>
<p>Colleges00701 oh,okay.Wow,I did not know that…
But it’s in Texas and it’s a good research school,no wonder kids are mainly from Texas…er never mind</p>
<p>“Explain to me why Washington U has outranked a few ivies. How is Washington U any better than Rice?”</p>
<p>WashU isn’t any better than Rice. WashU is very overranked.</p>
<p>Both schools, however, pay their top students a salary to attend there: a desperate ploy to keep their best admittees from enrolling at more prestigious and selective institutions. </p>
<p>Despite throwing “merit” $$$ around, both WashU and Rice retain only about a third or so of their admittees.</p>
<p>“What USNews fails to understand is that the State of Texas is one of the largest, richest and populous states in the US, so geographic diversity does not mean so much for Rice or UT as much as it is for schools in the NE where the population of most states there is tiny. Look at Stanford. about 46-48% of their students are from California, yet it’s as excellent as Y and P but not as highly ranked as them.”</p>
<p>(a) Less than 40% of Stanford’s undergraduate student body hails from California.</p>
<p>(b) California is more culturally diverse than Texas. NorCal and SoCal are almost like two separate countries.</p>
<p>(c) Comparing Stanford to Rice is truly laughable. The former is superior to the latter in virtually every single way. Rice is, like, Stanford lite or something.</p>