<p>I just came back from an info session / campus tour from Rice. The info session speaker was an actual person from the Rice AdComm and I heard some pretty interesting things on the admissions process.</p>
<p>She told us they DO unofficially SUPERSCORE THE ACT (as well as the SAT) meaning they look at every highest section but dont give you an official "Composite Score" (Kind of like the way MIT does it) - so send all your tests!!!</p>
<p>Also, merit aid scholarships are aimed towards ED'ers but some in RD may get </p>
<p>To the deferred:
She mentioned almost 100 students this year got deferred. She said they were really interested in them, but hoped to view the semester grades/ any test retakes/ any additional info they can add. So retake a test or two, get an extra rec letter (thats meaningful) or do something out of the wild, and make sure you send it in!</p>
<p>If i remember anything else ill post about it. Best of luck.</p>
<p>I do not quite understand what you mean by “merit aid scholarships are aimed towards ED’ers but some in RD may get”. Do you really mean they are aimed towards RD’ers but some in ED may get? RD is a much bigger pool of applicants than ED.</p>
<p>No i meant what I meant, they have a limited number of scholarships and try to give them to students who are 100% ready to attend the school. ED students make a choice to choose rice as theyre #1 and thats why they get priority status on scholarships</p>
<p>actually it’s the opposite way around I’m pretty sure. They offer the the RD kids most to try to lure in the best people. There’s no need to offer that much merit to ED kids because they are already committed to coming to Rice</p>
<p>@pyles_m Im only repeating what was in the info session. The person who said this was an actual Adcom member who EVALUATED APPS. You dont have to believe me, believe what you want.</p>
<p>Ive heard some ED’ers have already received their merit awards. Also, when i asked over there they said some had already been sent out and others wont get there till later (for RD i assumed.)</p>
<p>So if you havent received anything in the mail, im geussing your on the same boat as me and have received nothing :(</p>
<p>I rceved the trustee rd for 19k, it makes more sense that they would save a proportional amount of merit aid seeing as a majority of their student body is rd.</p>
<p>It’s so funny that i was in yalls shoes a year ago. Come to rice, it’s awsome!</p>
<p>When we visited in October the adcom made no mention of tilting merit scholarships to ED applicants, and I would think she would have mentioned it to induce the assembled group to consider ED application. </p>
<p>Now, it may work out this way because, obviously, a much higher percentage of ED applicants will matriculate than RD applicants. Assuming that ED and RD applicants have generally similar application profiles, and therefore assuming the same percentage of ED and RD applicants receive merit aid offers, a disproportionately higher percentage of the students who attend Rice who receive merit aid will have been ED applicants.</p>
<p>Anyway, I hope this analysis is true because our son is working on his Rice regular decision application, it’s one of his very top choices, and we could really use the aid!</p>
<p>Well idk maybe it was a different adcom. Im not saying any of you are wrong, maybe she said the wrong thing accidently. I was just trying to help people out. either way good luck on your applications</p>
<p>My rational is like this. Merit scholarships are usually used to attract top students who might otherwise attend another school. ED applicants are committed to Rice while RD students are not. Also there are a lot more RD admits than ED in absolute number. Thus there are more scholarships to RD students than ED. I might be wrong but just to present a rational for discussion.</p>