<p>When I do some comparisons, the biggest difference of Rice vs other schools (WashU, Duke, Emory, JHU, Vandy, Brown, NU, etc.) is their in-state / out-of-state numbers. Why is that? Am I missing something? Is it just b/c Texas is so huge?</p>
<p>I believe the stats are primarily the result of two reasons: 1) Texas is a very large state, and 2) Rice is the only school of its caliber anywhere near Texas.</p>
<p>serenefire has it right. It’s similar to the in-state ratio at another university located in a big state – Stanford.</p>
<p>^Basically that. But Rice’s is trying to keep the same number of Texas students while increasing total undergrad population.</p>
<p>3) On the east coast everyone has heard of the schools (except vandy) you mentioned while much fewer have heard of rice (and so the majority of applicants are in-state). People are understandably reluctant to fly all the way to the south, so far from home, to attend school they don’t know very well.</p>
<p>Its a hidden ivy :)</p>
<p>a very well hidden one at that</p>
<p>yeah, my son mentioned it’s like Stanford, which has a lot in-state.</p>
<p>We get this question every year - often from people who live in states that take 2 hours to drive across. Our big and beautiful and well-populated state is the equivalent of a whole handful or two handfuls of those little states. So just shift your thinking…</p>