With a net price calculator saying they can pay $75,000 a year, I suspect their income is over $200,000 a year.
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Without knowing anything about you, I donât see how anyone can give you advice regarding whether youâd have a shot at Rice ED. If you think you really like it, go visit. Then, look at your schoolâs Naviance, talk to your college guidance officer, and see if they think you even have a shot, if youâre concerned about âwastingâ your ED.
Legacy is huge at ND, but if you donât see yourself fitting in with the likes of Amy Coney Barrett, I sure wouldnât REA (if thatâs what they have) there. Itâs a very conservative religious school. Donât pick a school solely because you have a higher likelihood of admission. Our twins just went through this process and while they had legacy at UPenn (and high scores, grades, and significant ECs), neither applied because they didnât feel it was the right fit for them. One did apply ED to Duke (also legacy), but only after ruling out all other schools that they thought had what they were looking for, visiting, and confirming âthe fit/loveâ for Duke. The other did not even apply.
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Notre Dame REA is restricted only in that applicants are not supposed to apply ED elsewhere. The applicant applying REA to Notre Dame is not restricted against applying EA elsewhere (within the other schoolsâ rules).
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This goes back to - assuming normal assets. Itâs not just an income scale.
I donât know Riceâs scale - but Wash & Lees assumes normal assets of 2x income (excluding retirement, including home equity).
RightâŠand we donât know that asset piece. But the OP does!
âI suspect that their income is over $200,000 a year.â
What you âsuspectâ really isnât relevant. Iâd like to get confirmation from her.
But if they can afford $75,000 per year, why are so many posters treating them like they canât. How they choose to spend their money is really their choice. The OP said that her father told her that if she chose Notre Dame, he could make it work. I believe the cost of Rice is comparable.
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Full pay at Rice is actually about $6K/year less than full pay at Notre Dame. Rice has always been incrementally more affordable than other private peer institutions. That said, $72K/year, while better than $78K (Notre Dame) or others that are now over $80K (full-pay first-years at UChicago next fall will be shelling out $84K) is still a breathtaking amount of money. Next yearâs tuition at Rice exceeds the entire cost of attendance when my daughter started there in 2013. She chose Rice over an in-state Regents offer at UCSD at the time, and Rice did provide a great undergraduate experience; but the price gap between the two has more than doubled in 8 years and Iâm not sure the decision would swing the same way if we had to make it today. Nonetheless, itâs a great place and a great education, if it works financially.
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Because the OP said âthe binding ED decision really scares me honestly. My family is in a position where we will not get much financial aid but paying a full 75k a year is a stretchâ.
That doesnât sound like a family that can comfortably afford full-pay at Rice to me.
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Thatâs why this student, unless their interpretation of their parentâs finances if wrong, has no business applying ED.
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As others have said, you shouldnât ED anywhere if you need to compare costs and/or financial aid packages and paying full amount will stretch the finances. With colleges opening up, you should try to visit Rice if you can to see if itâs your first choice before EDing there. Iâm assuming youâve visited ND.
At the risk of going in another direction, you may want to consider a couple of reach schools like CMU or Stanford, given your comments on Wisconsin, Midwest and Texas, not being ideal. There was another thread on c/c about CMU wanting gender equality in their engineering and cs programs. Stanford, Berkeley I know are trying to increase females majoring in CS and engineering, not that it means youâre guaranteed to get in of course, but it should help.
âRice has a 15% ED acceptance rate, so I wouldnât say itâs a huge boost.â
I think Riceâs female acceptance rate (9%-ish) is actually lower than the female acceptance at places like MIT and Caltech (10%, both have EA), based on the CDS. Not sure what it is in ED but 9-15% is still a boost.
âSo itâs pretty likely Iâd get rejected from Rice and also from ND,â
I think youâre underestimating your chances especially given your gpa/rigor/scores and ND legacy.
âBut if they can afford $75,000 per year, why are so many posters treating them like they canât.â
How do you know they can afford 75K a year, as purpletitan posted, the words, stretch, scary and very pricey as a con for both schools would indicate they couldnât comfortably afford it.
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Right, if you like the residential college system at Rice, maybe look at Mudd (like the Rice RC system, the Claremont consortium was trying to emulate the Oxbridge college system, but in a different way) and Caltech (also has residential colleges) too.
Like Rice, both have weather different from WI. Mudd wants to keep its gender ratio 50/50. Caltech is close.
For a small college atmosphere, consider Olin College too (they also keep the gender ratio 50/50). And Olin gives every admit a 50% scholarship.
In any case, this is all an argument against ED at Rice.
My DS is a a rising senior at ND. Your fatherâs memories still hold true.
I will not try to convince you either way on this. I will simply add some âfood for thoughtâ items.
Alumni network - in my opinion, ND has one of the strongest Alumni networking structures out there. My opinion.
LBGTQ - you might be pleasantly surprised by the on campus climate regarding this. There is definitely an active presence on campus - based on rainbow flags and stickers that say âAllyâ. My experience is that the community your father so values is also very accepting of many of todayâs perspectives.
CS ranking - really not sure of the value of these. Unless you are in the top 10 with a strong feeder program to industry, rankings are irrelevant. As noted below, they can help with some guidance on school choice, I just donât see that a degree from school âAâ is better or more valuable than school âBâ based on rankings. It might help you get your first job, but after that you path will be determined more by your performance and skills developed on the job.
Cost - Given your statements that $75k a year is a stretch - I would ask myself âwhat am I willing to pay?â Are you absolutely certain that CS is where you want to be? Do you have a specific area that interests you - Security, AI, Graphic Design, Programming, Networks, Robotics? These are better drivers for exploring schools. I did find a CS program ranking website that provides more specifics on specialties. CMU is usually listed as the #1 for CS. But, when you deselect certain specialties, it drops to #13. The site is âcsrankings.orgâ
Iâm not sure any degree is worth $75k per year. I love ND and the experience it has been for my DS. But, he would not be there unless we received aid. My opinion is colored by the fact that my FAFSA EFC is well below $75k, so even the Federal Government doesnât think I can afford it!
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âThat doesnât sound to me like a family that can comfortably full pay at Rice to me.â
So, we have contradictory statements with the OP also having quoted her father saying that he could make it work at Notre Dame, which is $6K per year more than Rice. Why donât we just give them the information and let the family decide how they want to spend their money?
Itâs precisely these contradictory statements that led me to ask the question if she knows that Rice is half tuition if family income is under $200K. Frankly none of us knows what the family makes or what they can afford. Everyoneâs just guessing.
That doesnât sound contradictory to me. That sounds like an ND alum for whom both Rice and ND would be a stretch financially but who loves ND so much that heâs willing to pay for ND for his D even if it wasnât financially prudent to do so.
The OP has already said that the Rice NPC says they will have to pay close to full-cost,for Rice, which seems to me like theyâre not getting that half-tuition discount (which would still mean a big cost; possibly too much for the OPâs family for Rice to make sense).
Our son went to ND and we are from the west coast and not super religious. ND is probably more religious than when your dad was thereâŠitâs a sign of the times. They have moved to now requiring 3 years on campus to live and they are very restrictive. Our son was very disappointed that they marketed accepting of minorities, different religious views, etc. and he found them not to be at all. I am taking the time to write this because based upon what you said, you might find them to be very restrictive. Itâs not about the dating scene, itâs about repression. Can you imagine a university in the US that does not allow any store within a X mile radius of campus to sell condoms? Welcome to University of Notre Dame. Our son wanted to ride the bus to go to the womenâs march and he and fellow students were refused an ND bus ride unless they agreed to go to the march for life. Our son really liked fellow students and there is camraderie and the academics are good but you have to bury who you really are since they are not accepting. We have another son who went to college in college station Texas and Texas is more accepting of others than NDâŠitâs disappointing.
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Sorry, I just read someone saying there are flyers up regarding LGBT. reallyâŠflyers?! Thatâs what I am talking about. They âmarketâ but they arenât accepting. Our son is liberal and felt that they were so hypocritical. As for computer science, they are okay but engineeering and CS are not there strong programs. They are known for law, science, business and the humanities. Our son was engineering. Wish I could offer comments on Rice but I donât know much about it as a university. We really like Texas A&M tho.
Iâd encourage you to expand your college search, particularly because students often go into college thinking they want a certain major only to discover that major is harder than they imagined and/or they like another subject better and want to switch. As an example, my nephew began as a CS major and ended up in econ and a friend of my D15 began as a business major and ended up as a math major. Picking a school based primarily on the strength of oneâs intended major might close the door on schools offering a better range of options.
As far as campus culture between ND and Rice, Iâd have to go with Rice. Itâs in a liberal city, its secular and more diverse than ND. ND values tolerance, diversity and inclusion and I believe theyâre working towards it, but it hasnât reached the almost secular status of Catholic schools like Georgetown (and to a lesser extent Fordham and BC) which I label CINOs (Catholic in name only). ND embraces its Catholic foundation, values, philosophy etc⊠and many students choose it for exactly that reason. Why put yourself in an uncomfortable situation when thereâs a virtual cornucopia of colleges across the country that would be a better fit for you?
This has not been my DSâs experience at all. Actually, quite the opposite. Sorry to hear your son felt repressed.
ND has a detailed statement regarding the universityâs stance on LGBT inclusion. Some might be comfortable with its content, while others surely would not. https://friendsandallies.nd.edu/
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I appreciate the link to Notre Dameâs policy statement. The current pope is certainly trying to move things in a different direction from where they have been.
Regardless, the institutionâs official position is not what any student will experience in their interactions with classmates and others within the campus community. The fact is that Notre Dame attracts both liberal and conservative Catholics, the latter including those like our most recent Supreme Court justice. Those on the right believe strongly that their position on LGBTQ+ is the âCatholicâ teaching and someone will go out if their way to promote that pov. Encountering such students will be part of the experience at ND.
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