Rice Vs UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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I’ve been accepted into both schools. I’ve already visited Rice and will visit UChicago soon.

I applied to rice for engineering, and to UChicago as a math major, but I’m hardly committed to either of these. I’ve narrowed down my career possibilities a little bit (something involving math and science), but I’m undecided beyond that. I’m not even sure if I want to go into academia or the professional world.

All that indecision would probably make it seem like UChicago would be a good place to go, but I’m concerned that, should I eventually discover that engineering is truly my thing, I’ll be stuck. From what I’ve heard, it is much easier to go from engineering to another field than to go from another field to engineering.

But I’m similarly worried that, if I attend Rice, I’ll lose the chance to be exposed to a variety of fields and inevitably end up at least doing something very close to engineering - something that UChicago might have been better for.

On the other hand, Rice is about $2k cheaper a year. I have family that live near Rice, which comforts my parents. And as far as I can tell, Rice is almost as good/as good as Chicago for most of the sciences.

(There was a similar thread posted a couple of years back but I wanted to see if the general consensus has changed^)

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Despite what your parents may have told you, life is always a gamble. There is no perfect decision ex ante. Go visit both schools and see which one may fit you more. Then make a decision and don’t look back.

You are at a U of C thread. Of course you should expect a U of C bias in this forum: I would say unless you plan to work in the Texas area or in hard core engineering, go with U of C.

The cost difference of $2k per year is trivial and is not relevant to your decision.

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Congrats. Great choices!

The schools are actually quite similar in a lot of respects. They even tour the country together giving joint presentations

With either you will get

Good research opportunities as an undergraduate
Access to world-class faculty
Both have a very diverse student body.
You will study alongside some of the best students in both schools
Both offer a broad-based liberal arts curriculum with a well-rounded education in social science, humanities, mathematics and science
Weather wise there is a huge difference though.
I think Chicago is a better city for a student than Houston, in terms of things to do

Since you want to keep your engineering options open, I would say go Rice.

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UChicago is thought to be tip-top – IE top-5 or top-10 – in quite a few areas, while Rice doesn’t have quite the all-around academic rep. I’d give the slight academic edge to UChicago even without Engineering.

Of course, to go to UChicago, you’d have to be ok with giving up Engineering.

Then there’s the core at UChicago to think about. It’s awesome for breadth, but some might want more flexibility in their electives.

Then there’s also environment --Chicago vs. Houston, the campuses, weather – to think about, and housing, and social vibe. Chicago apparently is improving socially and Rice is thought to be generally more laid back/mellow; not Brown by any means, but mellower. Chicago is rigorous and hard (and I think that’s great). But Engineering at Rice would be hard as well.

The $2k – maybe just use that to break a tie. Also remember to figure in the cost of travel.

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I know a few people here that got to UChicago and then realized what they really wanted to do engineering. They aren’t too happy - so if you think there’s even like a 5% chance of wanting to do engineering, I wouldn’t recommend going to UChicago. And it isn’t like Rice is a terrible choice - their residential college system sounds great and, culture-wise, it doesn’t seem too different from us even if they are more STEM-y.

Still, there are tons of advantages to UChicago.

I cannot overstate how much I love and appreciate the core. The point (if there even is one) of a UChicago education is to educate you in the humanistic, Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier kind of way. I think it has literally changed my life. Most colleges will teach you enough to get a job. UChicago goes above and beyond in teaching you to understand the world. You read a ton - hundreds of pages a week, for years, of all kinds of books. From philosophy to literature to sociology to anthropology to books that kind of fit in everywhere. I guarantee that nearly every kind of shower thought you’ve had about how the world works has already had a book written about it that goes way more in depth and explains things far beyond how you would have realized and you will read it in the core. As buzzword-y as it sounds, you really do engage in a dialogue with the books, arguing with the other people in and out of the classroom about them and about life. Aside from just helping me understand more, it’s made me smarter, better at reading, and better at synthesizing arguments and better at reasoning. These are skills that everyone should have, in my opinion, and also skills that are easily neglected.

And, of course, you can get an incredible education in the sciences as well. I’m a math major (which I honestly think should be considered, if not humanities, at least an art), and I think our math education is in contention for the best in the country. It’s hard, really really hard, but it goes faster and deeper than most other schools. It isn’t about teaching you math, it’s about teaching how to think mathematically. We don’t waste time forcing you to take separate, computational classes on calculus (single and multi) and diff eq - you get one year of calculus which is heavily proof based and really more like baby analysis and then you jump straight into real (pun intended) analysis. Fair warning: some people think it’s too theoretical. I don’t really think there’s such a thing, if you understand the theory the math itself is trivial. Math here has taught me that I really can figure out a problem if I think about it the right way. Computational math has only taught me how to compute.

The quarter system allows for you to take a ton of classes, and there are a lot of options. If you’re interested in shopping around, this is a huge advantage - some people don’t start on their major classes until their second or third year and still manage to graduate on time. Also, if you are sure what you want to do from the beginning but you want to take all sorts of electives on as many things as possible, this is great. I have a million interests, I’m grateful that I can take a lot of electives and still double major. Professors are pretty generous about auditing, too.

Then finally, there’s location. I really appreciate being in Hyde Park and Chicago. Hyde Park is a beautiful self-contained neighborhood that feels like a little college town, but you’re still in Chicago and can easily take advantage of all that. I think it manages to strike a nice happy medium between being a city school with no campus and being a non-urban school with not much to do.

Good luck deciding! If you have any further questions I’d be happy to answer them. There’s really no wrong choice here.

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@HydeSnark

Can you elaborate on this. I got confused by these two statements. Thanks

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You can’t go wrong with either school, although they will provide entirely different experiences.

Chicago is on the quarter system, has more stringent requirements related to fulfilling its core, is more urban, and – while they have been working on their “Where fun goes to die” image, is still a pretty intense place with very harsh winters. It consistently ranks low on the “schools with the happiest students” lists.

Rice is on the semester system, has more flexible general education requirements, has a stunning campus in a more suburban environment with a well-established residential college system, and a generally more relaxed – but serious – atmosphere with wet but mild winters. It consistently ranks high on the “schools with the happiest students” lists.

If you wanted to major in economics or something in the social sciences or humanities, I’d say Chicago. For STEM (and particularly if you want to do engineering), Rice is the clearer choice.

Either will give you a great education.

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Both universities are very good (engineering at Rice and economics at U Chicago). You can change your majors later after you join:
(1) Rice (“Undergraduate students must declare a major during or before the spring semester of their second year”. https://registrar.rice.edu/students/majors_minors ).

(2) Chicago (“Unless otherwise specified by the department, the deadline for declaring a major is Spring Quarter of the third year, although students are urged to decide upon a major by the end of second year…” https://college.uchicago.edu/academics/declaring-majors ).
Winter is cold at Chicago while Summer is hot at Rice.

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@bandicoot12

I faced the same choice as you - 55 years ago! I My information is therefore a little out of date. However, for what it’s worth here are some thoughts as to why I chose Chicago over Rice…

I had grown up in Texas and had only once been out of the state in the 18 years of my existence. Even Rice was culturally a stretch for me, being in a huge city on the other side of the state, but at least most of the kids there would have been Texas or southwestern kids with whom I would have had much in common. But that was a negative factor for me: I very much longed for a different kind of experience - that of life in a big iconic northern metropolis, a life of intensity rather than of laid-backness. I wanted to meet and make friends with kids who came from everywhere in the country. I suppose I was in revolt against my roots - the stultifying culture of the southwest (as it then seemed to me). You only go off to college once, and I wanted it to be a big life-changing deal.

The University of Chicago also had all that history behind it - all those Chicago Schools of this and that, all those famous profs, all those visiting lecturers. Rice had some of these things but not to the same degree. Why not go the whole hog, I asked myself.

On the other side, though I came to love the University of Chicago and made wonderful friends I still keep up with to this day, the initial experience proved to be dislocating and painful. In those days very few kids came to Chicago from the south or southwest. A southern accent was socially awkward, if only in one’s own mind - it seemed to scream “undereducated cornball”. You will have to fight some stereotypes, even if largely in your own mind.

The distance physically, the distance culturally, are going to be daunting, though possibly less so today than then. Be prepared to be intensely homesick. For much of my first year I felt real pangs of loss every morning as I woke up, especially in the dead of a Chicago winter. I had to fight those feelings as well as the feeling that it all would have been so much easier if I had gone to school near family and friends and with kids similar to me in background. These thoughts are an illusion, but you are going to have them all the same.

In time Chicago came to seem just the right place for me, but it didn’t happen quickly. I look back on my experience today with real gratitude and nostalgia and the feeling I was once part of a truly distinguished institution. If the cultural dislocation and the academic challenges had been lesser, if the whole experience had been easier, it wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying. The hard things are the ones most worth doing.

These thoughts may not apply very closely to you. I offer them for what they’re worth. You must look into your own heart and then go all in on whatever choice you make. If you do that, you will have a fine life wherever you go.

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@nevrgiveup Take a concept like the chain rule. If you’re taking a class on calculus, it will be given to you and you will learn it. Now you know the chain rule. If you’re taking the first year math sequence at UChicago you will prove it is true. You will see exactly what concepts lead to the Chain Rule, how it was discovered, and why it works.

At other schools after you take calculus you will know calculus. At UChicago, once you have taken calculus you will know calculus and you’ll know how to reason through problems and see how it all fits together. It doesn’t just teach you calculus, it teaches you how to think.

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@HydeSnark Thanks. I think I pretty much got the meaning of the first sentence. It is the second that threw me off. What did you mean by “Computational math had only taught me to compute” and it’s relation to the first sentence? The two sentences seem orthogonal to each other

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@nevrgiveup If you don’t prove it, you’ll only come away with knowing the concept and nothing else. Math becomes a check list of techniques and tricks to memorize.

https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

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@HydeSnark: When you said “Computational Math” I thought you meant the area of “Computational Math” and were comparing it to “Pure Math”, since Chicago has a Computational and applied Math major" in addition to a traditional “Math major”