<p>pixel, Trininty was the choice for 2 kids I know who grew up while parents held jobs overseas (oil company parents, indonesia and middle east). They have been very happy.
It was my D2’s second choice - might have been first but she wanted to leave Texas after being here k-12.</p>
<p>I think if we had visited we would perhaps have felt strongly about Trinity. The campus is nice and dorms are supposed to be great also. Whats not to like I say to my family!</p>
<p>A freshman I know here just reported back to me from Rice, that it is awesome!</p>
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The undergrad enrollment at Rice is less than our neighborhood high school. Maybe just one “tiny.”</h1>
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I said Trinity = “ditto SMU, except smaller, no PhD level programs, no professional schools, no sports.” Strip those things from SMU and it looks a lot like Trinity.</p>
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We live near UTD. Go to any Comets game, any sport, and there will be only a handful of spectators. The players are having a great time though. I should have said no “big time” sports.</h1>
<p>Diversity is what we are looking for, not sure if we will find it at TAMU?</p>
<p>Going to scratch out UTD and UH due to large commuter body.</p>
<p>So far Rice, UT and TU are looking good. I am still not sure about SMU though.</p>
<p>For those with kids who “refuse” to look at Rice, I would insist on a visit. Our daughter (Rice '07) agreed to visit (reluctantly) only because her voice teacher at Interlochen pushed it. She complained the whole way from Dallas to Houston and spent a lot of the tour with her arms crossed. I kept my mouth shut, even though it took me about 30 minutes to figure out Rice was the place for her. The place is simply awesome in every respect. (I have a kid at an Ivy, and Rice is the superior college experience) Anyway, she re-visited for her audition, fell in love with it and had a fantastic 4 years. She still tells people how she vowed to “not go to college anywhere in Texas”. She liked Houston a lot (hated her hometown of Dallas).<br>
I am not a SMU fan, except for a limited subset of students. UTD would not be my choice for most kids, either. There are many good choices in Texas- Trinity, Southwestern, Tech Honors, UT…</p>
<p>I can almost feel that Rice would be perfect for son!</p>
<p>UTD got its reputation as a commuter school since it started out as a graduate level school only. Now it has a greater percentage of students living on campus than UT does. The freshman residence hall had a waiting list this year. It seems much less a commuter school to me than say UH, but definitely more so than say Trinity with its three year on-campus requirement. The surrounding area looks safe and I know some students live around the campus. Richardson isn’t an exciting college town, but it’s basically a suburb of Dallas. SMU is approximately 15 minutes away.</p>
<p>One of the problems not often mentioned with Rice is that on campus living is guaranteed only three years. Our tour guide was to be a sophomore and she had to live off campus sophomore year (lottery system). Major hassle to arrange apartment living for one year and then plan to move back to campus junior and senior year. Housing in the Rice area is not cheap and a car for transportation needed. She was working through the details with another girl, but the system surprised me.</p>
<p>"For those with kids who “refuse” to look at Rice, I would insist on a visit. "</p>
<p>I know Rice is a great school, but DS (and DH and I) REALLY want him to go away to school. We will be in Houston for the next few years, so that’s the main reason we have not really looked at it. Still - it’s a possibility for grad school since we are sure to be long gone by that point! :)</p>
<p>Texas has a boatload of state schools. I find it rather depressing that the only state schools that have been mentioned are UT (not an option for 90% of the students), A&M, UTD and Tech Honors. I"m not disagreeing, but isn’t it pathetic that no one is recommending any of the others?</p>
<p>I think the fact that OP mentioned Rice and Trinity kind of raised the bar for “like” state schools. But I get your drift.</p>
<p>ignatius- That information is incorrect about Rice/housing. It IS correct that housing is not guaranteed for all 4 years. However, odds are pretty good that if you really want to stay on campus, you can find a way to do so. That said, there is GREAT and inexpensive off-campus housing immediately adjacent (and close by) to Rice. It varies from garage apartments at prof’s houses to apartment complexes to houses that a group of students rent. A car is useful but many students get by without one. Most Rice kids look forward to a year or more off-campus. Rice is the easiest place I have seen to find good off-campus housing that is close to campus. My daughter had a one bedroom apartment by herself her last two years in a gated complex which had a lot of Rice grad students living there as well as some younger faculty. It was a little over a mile from campus, but she had options that were a few blocks from campus. Her apartment was really cheap and she saved a fortune on food by preparing her own meals.</p>
<p>missypie- In MOST states you won’t see state schools other than the flagships get a lot of mention. No one comes on this forum and advocates applying to Tennessee-Martin!</p>
<p>Ah, Momofwildchild, I was thinking of Texas as being in the same league (at least population-wise) with New York and California, thus comparing it to NY and CA.</p>
<p>Just as an FYI about international students - Texas has 3 schools in the top 25 in terms of international enrollment according to the International Educational Exchange Open Doors 2008 report:
8. UT (5,550)
17. TAMU (4,094)
25. U of H (3,420)</p>
<p>Of course that doesn’t tell the whole story on diversity, but I thought that was interesting…</p>
<p>MomofWildChild - The young lady who was our tour guide mentioned the housing lottery; she did mention that she could have put her name back as a request to stay on campus, but that she would have had no idea where or with whom she might end up. Another of her roommates was also being “kicked out” for the year and so they figured the lesser of the two evils was to stay together. The problem in this case was that both girls were sophomores and planning to return to campus living at the end of the year, so any cookware, etc. was only going to be needed for a brief period of time. I can see the off-campus living being a boon, but to leave and come back not so much. I would not have been surprised at all if she had been a senior and just looking forward to apartment life.</p>
<p>Probably easy enough to find housing as many med students and others working in the med center there live close; however, I can’t imagine anyone I know saying that a car is not pretty much of a necessity, maybe not on a daily basis but close enough. Did your daughter have a car?</p>
<p>BTW - I’m not trying to be negative about Rice. As I mentioned I know more than a few current students and on the whole they are a good set of kids. I was only surprised about how the housing was handled. We more or less told our daughter to keep in mind that if she couldn’t live on campus her sophomore year she would probably live at home and commute. We live close enough to Rice that paying for the college life experience is one thing, but an apartment nearby her second year another thing altogether.</p>
<p>And truthfully, I don’t know any student (off-campus Rice or med student) in that area who doesn’t have a car - although I’m sure he/she exists. And again truthfully, I sure would need that car if it was me.</p>
<p>My daughter had a car because we lived in Dallas and she drove home for vacations. She chose her particular apt in part because she did have a car, but usually in the student houses not everyone has a car. IT’s good if someone does, though. However, a lot of the housing is literally within a block or two of campus and a lot of the kids still get the meal plans (especially guys) and eat their meals in their residential colleges. My daughter actually felt that the Rice situation was ideal- most of the kids are more than ready to move off campus by junior year. Sophomore year is a little more of a stretch for some kids, but most do NOT come back to campus after moving off. My daughter wishes she had moved off soph year. By grouping up with a group of kids and applying to stay on, they were virtually assured of staying on soph year, and did so.<br>
If you want to talk about problematic off-campus housing, don’t even get me started on our experiences with Penn.</p>
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<p>This shows why visits are so important for towns that generate many divergent opinions. As someone who recently described Rice as a great school in the middle of a rather horrible city, I obviously offer quite a biased opinion. </p>
<p>After all, we are individuals and see things very differently. For instance, it so happens that I grew up in the same town as WildChild and his sister, and even attended the same school. Yet, I would never have considered spending four years in Philadelphia or Houston, unless forced by unusual circumstances. In addition, I absolutely loved my life in Dallas, and still plan to return as soon as I get this California-thing out of my system.</p>
<p>Probably the only thing we’d agree on is that Vanderbilt is very nice. :)</p>
<p>Everything is subjective!</p>
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It’s because those schools are generally much lower quality unless you are in certain specialty majors. For instance, Sam Houston State University in Huntsville (my alma mater) has a top criminal justice program. If you look at the stats on the incoming freshman classes at these schools, they don’t compare to those of the larger schools.</p>
<p>I have a friend whose D just graduated from UofH after majoring in Poli. Sci. or Government or something like that. She had an amazing experience and is headed off to D.C. to work for some think tank, I believe. However, this girl was a commuter and was happy with that. I’d say that a large proportion of the students who live on-campus are international students.</p>
<p>Based on what you said about your S, it sounds like Rice and Stanford are probably such reaches that they are not truly possible. You might hang out some on the message boards for each of those schools and see if you can figure that out, but they both take really only top students. If he is not one, you may need to help him adjust his expectations. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t apply, just that he needs to recognize that it probably won’t happen. UT may also be a reach. </p>
<p>Since you mentioned Stanford, have you looked more into California schools? There are lots of good schools in Southern California. My youngest S is attending Chapman Univ. in Orange and loves it (though I don’t know if they even have a CS program there). My older S just graduated from Texas A&M. </p>
<p>Some would say that Chapman is diverse while A&M is not, but I disagree. A&M is largely made up of conservative kids and Chapman is largely made up of liberal kids. Both of them have a large proportion of white students. The only reason I mention that is that you might help your S figure out what he means by a school with diversity. Does he mean racial diversity, political diversity, geographic diversity of students, or what? If he means that he wants a school where the students lean left politically, that’s fine, but help him understand that and find a school that would be a good fit.</p>
<p>Texas A&M might not be a good fit for your son, but you won’t find many TAMU graduates who would not recommend it. Yes, it’s in a little college town (about 1.5 hours from Houston Intercontinental Airport), but just as with most large universities, there are constant cultural events on campus. Houston is close by, too. All of their engineering programs are first rate, and I’d assume computer engineering is, too. All that to say that your S might want to apply to A&M as a safety. In the past, students with a combined critical reading + math SAT score of 1300 were automatically admitted (they call it an academic admit). I don’t know if that’s still in effect, but you could check.</p>
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<p>I am offended!! 
Sitting in the same room with me is my recent A&M graduate whose knee-high leather boots are finding a home in one of my closets. Yes, the Corps of Cadets is different, but mostly in the sense that it hasn’t changed much in 100 years. (Well, it has, but not like the rest of the world has!) It’s an ROTC program, but they wear a uniform that’s very similar to the one their grandfathers wore. That’s it. All universities have traditions. A&M started out as a military school and though it is not that any longer, it’s part of the school’s heritage and many of their traditions are based on that part of their history.</p>
<p>Gig 'em</p>
<p>I have to say I feel compelled to defend A&M a bit as well. As stated previously, we visited this summer and came away surprised. It’s a campus in transition, I think. You only need to hang out on the A&M board to see that – lots of old guard who think those who don’t live and die by the traditions should take HWY 6 out of town and then the new kind of student, who go to A&M for the good academics despite the conservative, small-town reputation. Here’s a link to my visit report: [Texas</a> A&M University Visit - Youdon’tsay](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/texas-aampm-university/8329667.html]Texas”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visits/texas-aampm-university/8329667.html)</p>