Rice University

Date: Nov 28 2008
Major: Mechanical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Don't expect to see any of the 50G's that you fork up each year go toward anything student life related (clubs, food etc). As far as I can tell, they spend it on building stuff on every last green spot on campus and hyping up a sub-par athletics program.

The quality of (the majority of) dorms on campus is horrible and so is the quality of the food, which is due to the food budget continuously getting cut (see above). When you put in work orders to have faulty equipment in the dorm fixed, sometimes it gets done and other times Housing and Dining just ignores the request completely. There is no way to get food past 11pm unless you have a car (the closest food is about a 25 minute walk from the dorms, and while being on campus is plenty safe, not many people want to walk 25 minutes through dimly lit streets at midnight). The car idea goes for any planned social outing as well, it is generally tough to get anywhere worth it without a car, unless you want to take your date on a bus.

The students are generally social misfits from high school desperately trying to recreate themselves and generally become arrogant/obnoxious in doing so. Don't expect to do anything fun on campus unless you want to get drunk out of your mind, as almost every social event on campus (one of the few wet campuses) involves alcohol and loud music, which can be fun, but not on a weeknight at 2am when you are trying to sleep/get work done.

One good aspect of the university is the academics. The faculty are generally nice and approachable, and the majors present enough of a challenge to be interesting while not being unbearable. Only thing is, if you're thinking about mechanical engineering and don't necessarily want to work for an oil company, don't come here. It's not easy to get jobs with companies such as Boeing, Ford, Honda, GM etc that don't know that Rice exists.