<p>Rice vs. Ivy
I plan to major in engineering and have to give an answer soon (within a week) due to athletic recruiting. I have been offered a spot at Rice and a spot at a major Ivy league and realize am lucky to have options. I am from the south so would be closer to family if I attend Rice. The money is somewhat close to the same, but definitely better package is from Rice. I am so torn and am interested in advice from others, especially others who have been in my shoes (or their parents) and chosen Rice or chosen a major Ivy having come from the south. I am naturally introverted/shy and do not make friends easily, do better having shared activity like sports. Some of my friends say I am crazy to not just choose the Ivy, but I picture being homesick or feeling out of place there. I spent 2 nights visiting on campus and did not feel at home. At Rice, I felt more comfortable--but I realize deciding based on 2 nights on campus is not much information for a major decision. Other friends say Rice is the way to go b/c the package is better and the engineering is great, plus I would get to live with or near other athletes, unlike at Ivy.</p>
<p>PROS: RICE
Athletes room together/near each other = more cohesion (at Ivy they do not)
There was camaraderie and a sense of fun at Rice
Engineering is very strong major there--great for jobs in Texas
Near home (1 hour quick flight or 1/2 day drive)
More kids who are smart but are also southerners are at Rice
Jobs in Texas after graduation (I am from the south and may want to settle here)
Easier to land internship in my hometown (this is an assumption--not sure if it's true)</p>
<p>CONS: RICE
Name is not as big as the Ivy
Humidity in Houston + Smog/pollution in Houston (not great for my sport)
Have worked incredibly hard in h.s. and have a shot at the "best" (Ivy)--Rice is not same caliber
I would be there as a recruited athlete, so certain responsibilities and pressures beyond academics
Lots of kids have cars/live off campus</p>
<p>PROS: IVY
I love the coach - a really nice person
It is one the most recognizable names
One of my parents is from that part of the country/have family within a few hours
It is not in Houston
It might be easier to make good grades in engineering courses there
Degree may ultimately be worth more (income/grad school admission) than Rice?
Most kids live on campus and do not need cars</p>
<p>CONS: IVY
Would not live with other athletes so would have to work harder to make friends
I did not feel comfortable w/ the kids I met (the other athletes)--different cultural background (they were from the northeast/prep school/etc.)
Kids did not seem as carefree, relaxed, happy--but I only met a handful
Far from home (3.5 hour flight)
Cold weather/short, dark days in winter (I am used to sunshine)
It might be harder to find a job in my home state (in the south) with a degree from Ivy than from an elite southern school like Rice--anyone know if this is true?
Harder to find summer internship in my home town from Ivy than from Rice--true?</p>
<p>I think it depends on which ivy it is. If it is HYP then I would go to one of those but if its say Cornell then your decision is harder since Rice and Cornell are pretty evenly matched in terms of academics.</p>
<p>Rice is a great university and people who go there have worked hard in high school too. I know someone who have studied at Rice and Princeton and he said he definitely preferred Rice. He is also an engineer and very successful in his field. Princeton Review ranked Rice #1 in quality of life.</p>
<p>All these aside, you yourself felt better at Rice.</p>
<p>Houston is a great place for engineers and it seems that Rice graduates have an advantage there.</p>
<p>On this list from Business Insider for top Engineering schools, Rice is ranked 21, while Cornell, Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn – even UT – are all ranked higher. Go for Rice if that is what your gut is telling you, but for me, the smarter play would be to attend the school that offers you the best education you can get, with the best opportunities for employment upon graduation. If your choice is between Rice and any of the ivies listed above, I would seriously consider the ivy.</p>
<p>FWIW: As you are a recruited athlete, your relationship with the coach is paramount, as you will be spending most of your time outside the classroom with the coach and team in practice. From your description, it sounds as though you like the ivy coach better. And, IMHO, rooming with your fellow athletes is a negative at any school. </p>
<p>As you posted this on the Harvard forum, I’m gathering that your choice is between Rice and Harvard. My advice: Go to Harvard! If you hate it, you can always transfer to Rice. On the other hand, if you go to Rice, it’s almost impossible to transfer to Harvard.</p>
<p>anon: If I can add this perspective. A “Pro” you listed for Rice is that the athletes room together/near one another and that equals more cohesion.</p>
<p>I dated a swimmer at Stanford and her entire circle of friends her four years were other swimmers. I attended an Ivy where my circle of friends contained JV/Varsity athletes in a variety of sports, musicians, theatre people, people of all sorts of different backgrounds (ethinically, religion, region)-- the full gamut. We pursued a wide variety of majors and subsequently we’ve taken many divergent paths in career/family/lifestyle. It was not difficult to make friends and we bonded deeply despite our different interests.</p>
<p>I can tell you that these people were incredibly stimulating and expanded my horizons. I wouldn’t have traded my experience for my ex-GF’s experience in a million years.</p>
<p>Do you want your entire circle of friends at college to be mirror images of you? You’ve stated you seem to lean that way. But you only go to college once in your life. This SHOULD be the most expansive, most ground breaking, most adventurous time of your life. If not now, then when? If you foresee your future life as one that only is a slightly broader universe than the one you’ve been accustomed to, then Rice will more than fill your need. If you value expanding your horizons to the brink, some of the other institutions might better provide that. Many of the Ivies are fine for introverted people as well. Everyone harbors those inclinations – hopefully you’ll see that quickly and it’ll enable you to bridge gaps with others easier.</p>
<p>Something to think about. Best of luck to you</p>
<p>@Gibby I am very surprised at your advice that OP should go to Harvard since you have posted about how your daughter has been absolutely miserable there and can’t wait to graduate. Although my daughter is enjoying her first year there, I think Harvard can be a tough fit socially for many people (especially those who do not make a huge effort to go out and meet people their freshman year) and if OP did not have the right vibes there now, it can be a very long four years ahead of her (as your daughter knows). Rice is a really great school jobwise, btw.</p>
<p>I think the OP should go where her gut takes her. She will thrive where she is most happy and aside from name recognition and liking the coach I don’t see her jumping up and down about the Ivy school. Also, it can be hard to transfer either due to inertia, or if a kid is really unhappy, it is oftentimes reflected in his/her grades.</p>
<p>@Falcon1: I think Harvard is a wonderful school, it’s just not been a great match for my daughter. I’ve often wanted to call the Admissions Offices of Harvard and Yale and say “You’ve made a mistake. Can you just switch my son and daughter to each other’s school.” If I could have done that, I think each of my kids would have been happier, as Harvard was probably a better match for my son and Yale a better match for my daughter. But, the Admissions departments of each school thought otherwise.</p>
<p>Congratulations on you accomplishments. Very few people excel in both academics and athletics the way you have. Enjoy the ride.</p>
<p>My kids’ experiences might be informative. We’re from a laid back rocky mountain state and one kid went to the NE and one to the South. S just graduated from Princeton as a student/athlete an D is a current student/athlete at Duke. It’s worked out well for both of them.</p>
<p>I’ll address a few of your issues:</p>
<p>
I don’t think this a “pro”. Neither Princeton or Duke house their athletes together and my kids wouldn’t have wanted it that way. They would have found it too isolating. Your teammates will be an instant social group for you from the beginning and you’ll also end up making friends in your dorm. More opportunities to meet more people should be a good thing.</p>
<p>
You can’t overstate the value of HYP connections. After freshman year S wanted to do a biophysics internship in his home state and asked the department head if he could help. It was amazing. The Princeton prof googled the Bio department at our state flagship and it turned out he knew several of the professors from their work in the field. Within 20 minutes S had two internship options.</p>
<p>
Houston’s weather would be a deal killer for me.</p>
<p>^^I don’t think the OP is being recruited by one of the HYPs…but, one from the “athletic league”…that is why the decision is so difficult…</p>
<p>…and to T26E4…to be frankly blunt…I would strongly fathom…if the OP was offered a rare slot at Stanford for athletics…along with its prowess in engineering/STEM and its general prestige …the OP would not be having any indecision whatsoever…</p>
<p>@gravitas: My use of my ex-GF’s experience as an athlete at Stanford was to illustrate (from a personal example) a downside I saw of an isolated athletic community. I don’t think there’s a need to state the obvious fact that Stanford offers an incredible experience over a broad range of areas. As an aside, Palo Alto’s weather is paradise!</p>
<p>I’m from the South and went to a Southern school for undergrad and then to an Ivy for law school. The Southern school was definitely full of likeable, normal Southern people and had a beautiful campus and was close to home and in a part of the country where I figured I’d end up, while the Ivy had none of the above, so the Southern school should have been to me like Rice seems to you.</p>
<p>However, I would DEFINITELY pick the Ivy over my own Southern school. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The Ivy will open doors anywhere; my own Southern school might or might not. (Rice is probably better-known than my Southern school, a liberal arts college.) I got a job offer in Texas with only one interview when finishing my Ivy, even though I have no connections there.</p></li>
<li><p>College is a time in your life when you can explore somewhere new, since you’re not tied down to a job and a mortgage and it’s good for you to be around people unlike yourself because that will help you figure out who you are and what you want in life. (Trust me, you’ll change no matter where you go to school.)</p></li>
<li><p>Once you’ve been through the Ivy, you’ll be able to run in multiple circles. I ended up staying for most of my career so far in the Northeast, even though I never would have considered it before going to the Ivy. My Ivy was large, and so there were plenty of people who I really bonded with and was alike, even though my demographic was a tiny percentage of the student body. Basically, by broadening your experiences, you’ll broaden what you like, and you’ll broaden the pools of people who you can click with.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>One caveat: if you’re from a smaller city, you could have trouble getting a job there with a fancy degree. I got one job in my hometown with my Ivy degree, but most employers there would react, “you go to an Ivy; why would you want to work with little old us?” So the degree can close some doors. </p>
<ul>
<li>I ended up having an amazing, life-transforming experience at the Ivy. I never would have guessed that I would have. (I was intimidated by other Ivies that I got in and turned them down, unable to fathom attending them, since they seemed so cold; when I got into the Ivy that I attended, I figured that I just couldn’t turn down a school like that.) So basically first impressions shouldn’t be what makes your decision. Think of what you’ll be able to look back on. In my case, I really like being able to look back and be a graduate of my Ivy. The experience at any school lasts just a few short semesters, but the degree is for life, so think in the long term.</li>
</ul>
<p>To add to my post: Rice is a superb school. You’ll certainly be in very good shape coming from there. My post above is more based on my own experiences at my own Southern school vs. my Ivy, and so please keep that in mind. I would still go for the Ivy over Rice, Duke, Vanderbilt, etc., though, due to my personal preferences.</p>
<p>Gibby, your post about one child being at H and one at Y really interested me. Would you be willing to describe what Yale was like–and what Harvard was like, relative to your son and daughter (personality traits, how far from home, etc.)? Both schools are still in the mix for me, but I am introverted and worried about being at a school where it would be a long 4 years b/c I am somewhat shy and intimidated by the Ivy scene. I you are willing to send a PM (I cannot reply b/c I don’t have enough posts) or to post here, that would be very helpful.</p>
<p>“Also, CityEntrepreneur’s LAC is probably not in the same league as Rice. Take his experience with a pinch of salt.”</p>
<p>My LAC is in the top 10 in US News. Unlike Rice, however, my LAC is small and just isn’t well-known. I’d choose Rice over my LAC.</p>
<p>When I was considering which Ivy to go to, the one odd reaction I got was when I was thinking about Columbia. In the South, people would say, “you’ll be going to school in Columbia, South Carolina?”. So not every Ivy is as well-known as HYP.</p>
<p>@alicejohnson,
OP is interested in Engineering, so I think you should look for undergraduate Engineering strength before you give advice. OP is an athlete. Athletes graduated from ivies are unlikely to go into professional sports so the degree is important. The engineering world knows the strength of ivy engineering.</p>
<p>I think you should at least seriously consider Rice over any Ivy, including (or especially) Harvard. </p>
<p>I have something of a unique perspective: I’m a senior at Harvard, but I’m from Houston, and a parent of mine is a faculty member at Rice. </p>
<p>Harvard is very close to my heart, but the reasons that I love it have very little to do with the institution itself and more to do with the people who I met here - and I probably would have met people I like anywhere. Over the years, my family and I have been shocked by how much better Rice is - how much more care and energy than Harvard it puts in - at so many things: undergraduate teaching, undergraduate mental health care, undergraduate happiness in general. This may seem counterintuitive, as Harvard has way more monetary resources than Rice - but this observation has held true and consistent for my entire 3.5 years here. This combined with the fact that you’d prefer Rice in terms of being closer to home and to friends makes me think you’ll be far happier at Rice.</p>
<p>So I think that you’ll almost certainly have a better undergraduate experience at Rice. The question is whether or not the ivy league degree will be a significantly more powerful asset for whatever you want to do after college than will the Rice degree. So ask yourself what you think you might do after undergrad. If you want to go into banking/finance/consulting, Harvard might be better: it’s a HUGE feeder for these kinds of careers. If you want to further pursue engineering, I think it wouldn’t significantly hurt you to go to Rice. While the Harvard brand name is strong, we actually have a comparatively week engineering program, and Rice’s engineering is pretty strong. </p>
<p>So basically: I think you should consider carefully what you want to do after college and whether the Rice v. Harvard degree will be a lot better for that. But if it’s engineering, I’d push you in the direction of Rice. </p>
<p>This is a pretty Harvard-specific comment. I can’t speak to Yale or Princeton. I get the impression from my friends that they treat their undergrads at least somewhat better, though, so this may not apply.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me with any questions. I had to make this decision myself, so I know how tough it is (:</p>