Thanks so much, guys for your help, I’ll let you know what I decide in a couple of days
I wanted to send in a few final comments regarding Rice in particular, and also some final thoughts. Keep in mind I am a Rice alumnus, so I may be a bit biased.
Rice students are very heavily recruited for management consulting. Every year, dozens of people from Rice work at MBB, either for an internship or for a full-time position. Dozens more work at smaller firms, such as Accenture, Oliver Wyman, Credera, and the like. I’m not saying Rice is better for consulting than UPenn or Duke, but I wanted to assure you that you will have no issues networking with a variety of consulting firms. And, as others have noted, Rice students are recruited very heavily into oil and gas, being in Houston and all. So if you do decide to study chemical engineering and decide not to go into med school or consulting, you could potentially have many lucrative opportunities related to the energy sector.
I also want to assure you that Rice is extremely diverse, even though Rice does accept a lot of students from Texas. According to their respective common data sets for 2017-2018, Rice’s undergrad population is 34.3% Caucasian, Duke’s is 43.6%, and UPenn’s is 42.6%. Additionally, Rice reaches out to underrepresented minorities with their VISION program, and Rice is very committed in the QuestBridge program for students coming from a low income background. Further, with the newly implemented Rice Investment program that provides greater financial awards to students of lower incomes, I suspect Rice will achieve even greater diversity in terms of economic background.
I believe Rice’s residential college system really is second to none. I transferred into Rice from a different, fairly well regarded school, and I can whole heartedly say that Rice’s campus life was leaps and bounds better. However, Rice’s social atmosphere is more of a summer camp type feeling rather than a rah rah enthusiasm like Duke, as you have mentioned. So Rice may not be for everyone. Rice does have a crowd that consistently goes to sporting events and such, but Rice is definitely not a typical D1 school in terms of school spirit.
All of this being said, I also wonder why you are picking between Rice/Duke/UPenn and did not mention Vandy or GT. It seems you have reservations regarding each of Rice/Duke/UPenn (Rice and social fit, Duke and cost plus its lack of ChemE, UPenn and cost). If you’re considering the end result of where you’ll end up working after undergrad, I don’t think it’ll matter as much on where you go between Rice/Duke/UPenn if you want to do consulting, and I don’t think it’ll matter at all where you in terms of Rice/Duke/UPenn/Vandy/GT if you want to go into ChemE or med school. So you are basically paying a premium for the college experience, or to not go to Vandy. I personally thought Rice was worth the extra money, but I also recognize that Rice had many shortcomings as well (e.g., lack of school spirit, lack of recruitment in other engineering fields), and to some people, those shortcomings would have made Rice unworthy of the extra cost. So please keep in mind the aspects that are most important to you when you make your final decision. It may be difficult to select the absolute best school to attend, but I don’t think you’ll go wrong with any of your options. Best of luck.
Your lack of diversity comment about Rice was interesting to me. I have been to several of the schools discussed here including Rice, Duke and Vandy and Rice was by far the most diverse. Maybe there are a lot of kids from Texas but the cultural diversity was outstanding.
Why you would not pick Vandy is my biggest question? With the CV, that is a no brainer. They get recruiters from top companies with every major. I too, would love to know why that is off the table.
It is striking that for a student who mentions money and chemical engineering as important factors, neither his cheapest top-20 option (Vanderbilt) nor highest-ranked chemical engineering option (Georgia Tech) made the list of finalists. It is fine of course to make the decision for other reasons but it would be helpful to know what those are.
You’re not picking between Duke, Wharton and Rice. Anyone who thinks that there is a difference in post-graduate employment options between Duke (Pratt) and Penn SEAS is borderline delusional.
Duke is one of the biggest I-banking and management consulting target schools. In the recent Wall Street Journal ranking of “student outcomes”, Duke placed 1st (tied with Harvard) and Penn placed 8th.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-colleges-whose-graduates-do-best-financially-1506466920
@CupCakeMuffins implication that Duke doesn’t have a “well-placed alumni base, prestige, and rigor” is nonsensical.
This poster has made similarly inflammatory statements about Duke in the past. Example: “Ironically, Duke even though not as awesome as other two…”. OP (@yaleivyleague), be careful where you get your information from.
"I would go to Penn. It has the most cross-industry prestige of the 3. Duke is very very close. It would be my 2nd choice. I think Penn and Duke also have very powerful networks (with the slight edge to Penn). Rice has more of a regional alumni base. Rice is an excellent school but its lacking in the name recognition / prestige area compared to Duke and Penn, especially on the coasts.
For Penn, it is also easy to switch undergrad schools if you want to switch to CAS. For Wharton, you will need to maintain at least a 3.7 GPA in math and econ courses but it is do-able. I think in the long-term, Penn will give you the most flexibility and the best recruiting opportunities"
@StanfordGSB00 This is a reasonable take. I’d argue that whatever minuscule edge Penn has in cross-industry prestige comes from Wharton and would only apply to Wharton graduates. The OP clearly prefers Duke over Penn and should attend Duke if he/she decides to go with one of the full-pay schools.
Cross-admit data:
Duke-Penn: 50/50
Duke-Rice: 77/33
Penn-Rice: 69/31
As expected, Duke and Penn are in a dead heat and they both outcompete Rice handily.
OP, it might still make sense for you to go to Rice. $120k is a large amount. You have to pick between Rice (finances) and Duke (fit/resources/prestige). There is no reason for you to go to Penn over Duke since you prefer the latter.
Rice, Vanderbilt or GaTech make the most sense, depending on what you want to do. All three can lead to
MBA degrees easily. GaTech is the best if you want a quantitative degree. Rice a close second. Vanderbilt or Case Western if you want to go into Medicine make sense, but Rice is right up there. Rice covers all your bases,
engineering, pre med, pre MBA.
There is no advantage at all to Penn or Duke, that I can think of.
Students get into management consulting from all the schools that the student has good scholarships.
Vanderbilt Cornelius puts you into a special category, and i would seriously consider that school for the networking options. . Rice is a great price too. GaTech ditto but a larger public school, with very strong quantitative classes and lots of school spirit, football, tailgating and a great campus.
@yaleivyleague can’t message you bc I don’t have enough posts but i’m between rice trustee v dartmouth v vandy cv message me!!
Rice has collaborative culture. Rice undergrads find jobs right away and they go to Ivy’s for graduate program.
Rice or Vanderbilt. 
No top 20 school is worth extra $130K when compared to another top 20 school, unless parents are loaded beyond worries. Even in that case go to UPenn.
Having just turned down Duke and Vandy for GT and with pretty much identical interests to you, I will say that you won’t miss out on consulting opportunities at GT. There are students at GT who are currently interning/working at McKinsey (though I would appreciate if someone else has more knowledge on this to pitch in). As I am also considering grad school, I find it quite hard to justify that much tuition and loans for one of the top privates over GT when you have Zell plus optional housing costs. If anything, I would say your best decision would be between Vanderbilt and GT since Vandy has a fabulous medical school and great programs across a diverse range of majors should you change, and not much needs to be said about GT’s incredible chemical engineering program rivaled primarily by MIT (its computer science is also phenomenal).
@bluedevillover, great username!
Georgia Tech may be a target for some management consulting firms but it simply isn’t at the same level as Duke when it comes to McKinsey, Bain and BCG. I’m not saying that no one from GT has ever ended up at one of these firms. It is just like to be more difficult.
https://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2018/05/25/target-schools-for-mbb-consulting-firms/
I smell (s)quid pro quo in the link. ^^^
Here is a paragraph I read about Rice, if you are still on the fence, read it.
“Rice is a small, top-flight institution which goes head-to-head with MIT for its science and engineering programs and with Juilliard for music. It boasts a student-faculty ratio of five to one, second only to Caltech. The campus, a mix of Mediterranean-Byzantine buildings , enjoys a prime location near several top medical centers and Houston’s world-class museum district. It’s a hidden gem which draws outstanding students.”
@bluedevillover I agree with you on GaTech. I don’t think you will have any problem getting a position at McKinsey, as they like the quantitative skills developed at GaTech, MIT, Caltech.
Chemical, BME and CS are all better at GaTech than Duke by a long shot. Rice though is compelling in my mind.
What did OP decide to do?
GaTech has a good social life, as its bigger than others. Bigger is always better for social life. Rice will be small, and the housing at Rice will be way less social than Duke or GATech.
@Coloradomama Interesting. So Duke’s BME program is ranked 3rd in the country but Georgia Tech is better by a long shot? I’m curious as to how that works.
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/biomedical-rankings
Duke doesn’t have a Chem E major so the question of Georgia Tech being better doesn’t arise.
As far as CS goes, Duke placed 8th in a recent LinkedIn ranking of best schools for software developers. Georgia Tech doesn’t crack the top 25.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-colleges-for-software-developers-2014-10
Duke is also ranked 1st for student outcomes (tied with Harvard and Yale) by the Wall Street Journal. Georgia Tech is ranked 18th.
Also, no one cares about departmental rankings at the undergraduate level. Schools like Duke, Penn, Columbia, Yale have lower ranked engineering programs because they have fewer students and faculty members. The rankings are based on aggregate research output, number of professors, etc. If you did a per capita ranking, these schools would more than hold their own.
The quality of Georgia Tech’s student body is not the same as the quality of MIT/Caltech’s student body. You are mistaken if you think that Georgia Tech students routinely end up at McKinsey. Maybe someone like @StanfordGSB00 can shed more light on this.
Vanderbilt free might be worth a second look.
My nephew (from DC) went to Rice majoring in biology and bioengineering. (He chose it over Cornell.) I don’t think he felt like there were too many Texans at the school at all. He wrote to a professor over the summer about doing research and got an invitation to talk to him during orientation - he started working at the lab the next week. He ended up with fabulous internships over the summer, including being one of the authors on what my husband calls “The Paper of the Century”. He loved the residential colleges system. I got the impression there was plenty of social life at Rice. Rice prepared him very well, he took the MCATs and did very well, but decided to go for a PhD at MIT instead.
“Also, no one cares about departmental rankings at the undergraduate level.”
Then I would probably attend UPenn since it is the most prestigious of these three schools. Seriously, undergraduate rankings do matter somewhat. For example, the undergraduate BME program at Duke is very good. I’m sure that helps that colleges reputation considerably. Yale is relatively weak in Engineering. An accepted student very serious about engineering as a career would probably hesitate attending if other better options came along.