I recently got offered a full scholarship to Rice University through Questbridge and ill be honest… I know practically nothing about the school. I’ve done plenty of research but all I get are random statistics. Could someone clarify what “#1 Student Quality of Life” means and do the people attending there actually see it that way? Rice doesn’t have nearly the same amount of renown professors that similarly ranked schools have or even the amount of research done. The only top-tier thing that stands out to me is their endowment size. What impact does the low undergraduate size have on the students? These all sound like loaded questions but I plan on having an engineering focus, and I’m wondering what Rice can provide that other colleges can’t.
Congratulations! There is a Facebook group for Rice Quest Bridge Scholars. You can ask to join and maybe they can best answer your questions.
If you were unable to identify why you would want tonnattend Rice or what makes it a top ranked school, why would you have put it on your match request list?
It has a residential college system with “houses” kind of like Yale’s.
It has very well regarded professors in a number of fields (I’m not familiar with the engineering program, though).
It’s a research I University (only 115 schools in the US have this designation) based on the quality and quantity of research done there.
It’s ranked a bit higher than Tufts or Wash U. USNWR ranks it at #14 of national universities along with Brown, Cornell, and Vanderbilt.
Edited to add: scroll through the entries about Rice University here on College Confidential and you should get a good sense of the school pretty quickly.
What do you mean by “random statistics”? On what basis are you judging professors’ research output? What other colleges and universities are you comparing it to? (It’s an excellent school, as are all the schools on the Questbridge College Partners list. Can’t speak to its engineering department specifically, but it’s known generally as a strong STEM school.)
Questions like this are interesting because they have the potential to turn the question of excellence back to the applicant, where it belongs. When we can put numbers on them we call them metrics as though they define value to all possible applicants. In the generally accepted view of the education consumer, Rice is a “top tier” school because of these metrics:
Rice is well endowed (i.e. it has resources);
Rice has and exceptional student to faculty ratio (6 to 1);
Rice has many small classes;
Secondary school counselors have high opinions;
peer faculty and administrators also have high opinions of Rice;
88% of entering class are from top 10% of their secondary school;
Rice only accepts 15% of their applicants;
For a school of their size they do a lot or research ($140,000,000 in 2015-2016 year);
Students have high standardized test scores.
What does this all mean to you? Do we just match these numbers to another school and decide a winner? Is the school that does the most research the better school? Does it make a difference if the student actually does the research and how is that demonstrated by the overall research budget?
As a general measure of academic rigor these metrics may have some value, but WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR? Where would you grow the most intellectually or is that the wrong question? A lot of people do, but not everyone likes chocolate.
Don’t wait for someone else to give you the answer by some “ranking” where you just pick the lower (or is that higher?) number. Use this aggregate analysis as a variable and throw in your own customized metrics.
Thank you for the question! :bz
Hey, fellow Questbridge matched kid here. Not sure who this is but we have a small group chat via Facebook messenger that I would love to add you to. You might (?) already be in it, I just don’t know who this is. If you’re feeling uneasy about Rice maybe some of us can ease your doubts, we are all in love with Rice. Just message me if youre interested. Congrats on matching!
@divinew99 I’ve been told by everyone I know how good of an opportunity is but I’m still uneasy about it. Could you add me to that messenger?
No need to be uneasy about the caliber of the school. Houston humidity is another matter…
Seriously though, congratulations!
You mentioned that Rice is ranked much higher than WashU which is 18th. That’s silly. They are both top 20 schools in USNR. When my D applied to both universities in 2014 WashU was ranked 14 ahead of Cornell and Rice (19th) at the time. In my opinion the top 20 schools are all top tier for sure. If you can get into a top 20 school that’s amazing.
Also these schools move up and down but are still in the top 20 so they are both very good schools. So I’m sure WashU and Rice will move up/down a little bit again.
Just pick the school that fits you. What’s really interesting is they are very similar in many ways but they also have their differences too.
Good luck!!
@newjersey17 I said “a bit higher” not “much higher.” The OP is wanted to know specifically why Rice is a top tier school. The ranking information was to provide a general sense of comparable schools, of which Wash U is one.
Oh I misread it! Sorry. 
Once again, it looks like there is a tendency for the discussion to get lost in some kind of cardinal ranking (choice theory in economics would be helpful here).
What field of engineering do you want to study. If engineering did not exist, what would you do? Would it be physics, medicine, math, music or Broadway? If all of these were strong interests you might want to look at CMU (no, wait, I made a mistake, this school is only ranked by US News as number 25, clearly it would not be a good choice!?) :bz