Reasons why I chose Rice:
COST-- most important reason, with trustee scholarship Rice was much cheaper than duke/penn
-Very close to home for me; a few hours drive away
-sister going to rice as well
-collaborative culture (for Penn, I talked to some people there and they said it is highly competitive)
-laid back environment, excellent academics, more of a tight knit and inclusive feel than penn and duke
also i preferred houston to durham and philly because Rice is in a nice part of houston and houston is the fourth biggest city in the country and has millions of things to do and job opportunities. Rice weather is what I am used to while penn/duke are much more cold.
I did love Duke and Penn, but I took the conservative approach to save money. While I regret turning down some of the schools now, I know in the future I will not regret when I go to grad/med school.
Turning down Tech and Vandy CV was really hard. I turned down Tech because it was less flexible than Rice in terms of switching majors. Also speaking to people at Tech they said sometimes it is overly rigorous and hard to maintain a high GPA. It was really hard to turn down Tech though and I’ll never know if picking Tech was the better decision or not.
I turned down Vandy CV because I heard that 60% of their class goes to med school, and they have severe grade deflation and weed out classes making it that at the end less than 10% apply to med school. Also, Penn/Duke/Rice is a better STEM school than Vandy going by the rankings. It was EXTREMELY hard to turn down Vandy CV as well though.
I turned down Penn because of cost and because it has a somewhat competitive culture.
I turned down Duke because of high cost and lack of chem e.
I turned down Cornell, 4 UC’s, WashU, Emory, CWRU, and several other schools due to cost/lack of flexibility/lack of fit.
Before I started this process, I had the flawed mindset that I would automatically attend the most prestigious school I was accepted to. However, it is much more complicated than that, and to future applicants, know that there are several other factors to consider, especially cost.
This being said, I made the decision at the last minute on the deadline, and it was somewhat of a coin toss.
I will never know if I made the right decision, but I am happy to be spending the next four years as an owl!