<p>My son carefully narrowed down his list of schools based on criteria that are important to him. In looking at the list, it may not make sense as to how they all fit, but trust me, they do. He wants a program that emphasizes early practical experience and a school that ideally isn't too large, but did include three larger schools (that actually feel smaller in practice) due to the value they represented (he'll very likely get WUE).</p>
<p>They are from East to West, WPI, RPI (he's a Medalist), Case Western, Colorado State, Utah, Oregon State, Stanford and Cal Poly SLO. He'd be happy at any of them and wants to weigh financial packages, but right now is leaning heavily towards WPI and Cal Poly.</p>
<p>He threw in a curve ball the other day and decided he might include Rice. He'd excluded a similar school, Tufts, feeling that their engineering wasn't strong enough to warrant a quarter of a million to go, but really liked the school otherwise. Stanford did make the cut, even though it's high priced because, well, it's Stanford. ;-)</p>
<p>So the question is, how does Rice's engineering stack up? He's interested in ME.</p>
<p>Oh, I do know that. I spent 4 miserable years in Houston. With that said, I was in professional school year round, spending every summer there, by far the worst season. My son would atleast get a break from the most oppressive months. I was always fond of Rice and the village while I was there.</p>
<p>The only large state schools he’s considering are his instate and others with tuition exchange. There are certainly lots of big state schools with good to great engineering that he elected to pass over. Rice is on there due to its size and reputation.</p>
<p>How does engineering at Rice stack up against the others on his list?</p>
<p>Rice is a nationally recognized university with many parents on CC from faraway places swearing by the school. We have at least one current CC parent whose son gave up Caltech to go to Rice. </p>
<p>You can check out the recruiters that come to Rice.</p>
<p>Lake Jr. loved WPI and RPI. We visited and I too, was impressed. He dropped Cal Poly from his list because it was unlikely he would get any $$ as we are not California residents. Also, as I recall the ME and Aerospace Engr majors were impacted and therefore no guarantee of being admitted to them.</p>
<p>I think it is second behind Stanford on your list based on the fact that it spends about $442k in research per faculty member and that 6.8% of the faculty has membership in the National Academy of Engineering.</p>
<p>“The only large state schools he’s considering are his instate and others with tuition exchange.”</p>
<p>We tell our 2016 the same thing - You will go to an instate state school (UT or A&M) if you are going to one since we won’t pay OOS difference for any OOS state schools.</p>
<p>Rice may be tough to get in because they do not accept a lot of people. DD1 is interested in grad Architecture at Rice, a top ranked program, but they accept like around 20 a year, maybe less even. Maybe engineering at Rice is like that?</p>