<p>hey cosine45
I heard that a new building for Electrical and System Engineering is about to be finished at WashU, right? How’s it? and do you know anyone majoring in EE+buzi? What do they say?</p>
<p>The new electrical engineering building (Green Hall) isn’t finished yet but I think it’ll be done by the fall and it’s supposed to be state-of-the-art, of course.</p>
<p>minus points for you each time you call business “buzi”
unless I’m missing something, you sound like a 10 year old</p>
<p>haha agreed^</p>
<p>hahahaha no way!!! i’m also debating between Rice and WashU, and I’m also looking to potentially double-major in engineering and business… crazy (im looking for civil engineering tho, so a slight difference there).
Anyway, I’m from Virginia so I’ve visited both schools, and done a ton of research on both… here’s what I thought (anyway, only my opinion), bear with me, it’s kinda long…</p>
<p>1) academics
I’d say Rice’s engineering is typically considered to be better, but from everything i’ve heard, WashU’s engineering department is on the rise (like flashmountain said, they just opened a brand-new engineering building last year).
The business thing may make your decision for you, depending on how much you want to double-major. Rice does have a minor in business, but thats obviously nothin really like the Olin Business School.
Another note: WashU has a superb MBA program if youre looking to go to grad school down the road, so attending WashU undergrad would likely help your chances if you wanted to go there, as would majoring in business at WashU as opposed to just a minor at Rice. However, it ends up being pretty easy for a lot of people to switch over and get MBA’s after doing only engineering for undergrad.</p>
<p>2) location
Rice and WashU are both in nice areas, both bordering parks and nice residential neighborhoods for the most part (Forest Park at WashU is nicer/way bigger than the park next to Rice). then, both campuses have shopping areas maybe half a mile from campus (WashU’s “Loop” is supposedly nicer than Rice’s “Village”, but i only saw the Rice Village and it’s reasonably nice). Rice is across the street from the Texas Medical Center, a huge benefit to biomed students, while WashU is a mile away from Clayton, a pretty sizeable business district where supposedly quite a few business students get internships.
WashU is 6 or 8 miles from downtown St. Louis, while Rice is, i believe, 3 miles from downtown Houston. It’s pretty easy to get around in both cities though, as both have metro stops close to campus. overall, i’d think Houston typically is viewed as having “more to do” in it than STL, but they both have good collections of museums/shopping/food close to campus.
Both St. Louis and Houston have sort of high crime rates, if that’s something that bothers you… St. Louis actually has the highest violent-crime rate in the entire country. However, both campuses are very safe. Rice is in the very nice Medical Center district, whereas WashU is west of St. Louis, while the really bad areas in STL are East St. Louis. so anyway, there’s some safety facts for you.
Another note on campuses: despite the fact that Rice is barely half the size of WashU in terms of students, the campus is actually bigger. Maybe I was just tired from walking all over Stanford’s campus the day before my Rice visit, but the campus felt huuuuuge, with tons of open spaces, whereas WashU’s is more compact but still certainly spacious.</p>
<p>3) people
WUSTL has a pretty long-standing reputation of being a school for people from the east coast, although the majority is midwesterners. Rice has always been a very Texan school, with about half the students being in-state. People from the east coast tend to get a bad rap as being too cutthroat and ambitious (classic Ivy League stereotype), but I felt like everyone on the WashU campus was really really nice… great students there. Sadly, Rice’s students were on spring break so I didnt meet any of them.</p>
<p>4) campus life
WashU consistently is ranked top 10 by Princeton Review in both campus food and dorms. I ate at the dining halls and saw the rooms, and I totally agree. both are excellent. Rice’s food is decent from what I hear, but some of the residential colleges (buildings where the dorms are) are older and could use some renovation. Related to Residential Colleges, that is perhaps one of the biggest draws at Rice. You probably already know this, but in their system you live in the same building with the same group of people for all 4 years. </p>
<p>If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, or check out this site College P r o w l e r (interesting… CC won’t let me type this site’s name in regular form), and just look up WUSTL and Rice (it grades colleges in like 25 different categories, from academics to food to sports)… I’ve included links but CC has bizarrely censored part of the URL.
http://<strong><em>.com/washington-university-in-st.-louis/
http://</em></strong>.com/rice-university/</p>
<p>Sorry about the length of that, anyway i hope it was helpful!</p>
<p>That’s a pretty accurate summary, jgorman. One thing I’d like to say is that WashU’s Loop is not nicer than Rice Village. “Nice” is not the first word that pops into my mind when I think of the Loop. I would describe it more as eclectic, interesting, and slightly dangerous (don’t want to be walking around that area around 2am). </p>
<p>One thing that personally turned me off from Rice was the strict residential college system. To live with the same people for 4 years seems a bit restrictive to me. WashU also has a residential college system but it’s more chill (no real rivalries) and you’re not obligated to stay in it after one year.</p>
<p>I agree with nearly everything jgorman said in his very well-informed reviews of Wash U. One minor comment: Most people at Wash U are not from the midwest. I don’t remember the exact stat, but it was something like 2/3 of freshman are NOT from the midwest. They said it at convocation or some speech to freshman. I’ll try to find the exact number. But, yeah, the geographic diversity at Wash U is really impressive to me. I didn’t find this to be the case at any other school I visited. I didn’t know that 1/2 of Rice students were from Texas. Interesting.<br>
EDIT: found data! 65% of Wash U students are from more than 500 miles away (<a href=“http://www.wustl.edu/about/facts/students/[/url]”>http://www.wustl.edu/about/facts/students/</a>)</p>
<p>I’m not in the Engineering school here, but a brief search into Rice shows that Systems Science is not a field in their engineering school. I don’t really know what Systems Science even is, but if it’s something that does interest you, Wash U probably has the upper hand there.</p>
<p>Since the original poster and someone else on this thread is interested in both Engineering and Business, I would think the logical answer is to go to a school where you can fully take advantage of both areas… especially when other qualities about the school are similar in so many ways.</p>
<p>Thanks to everybody here! I really appreciate your help.
I have just paid my deposit to Rice.
But still very concerned about my WL at Pomona… sigh</p>
<p>Congrats, cyhjdg! You’ll love being an Owl. Rice beats Pomona anyway, so don’t be concerned.</p>