Rice University

Date: Oct 01 2008
Major: Chemical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Rice is a good university with its own feel. It's not the best, but it's good. I remember somebody saying

Harvard is the Rice of the North

lol. Obviously, they were joking, but it's a good summary of what people here think about Rice. They think they're smart and in a top school that has a great reputation. In reality, it's top 20 with #1 reputation in Texas, and a pretty darn good reputation to employers. Otherwise it's not known.

The social scene is dominated by drinking, but there are a ton of clubs to join or you can start one of your own very easily. A lot of clubs were started by incoming freshmen who wanted a certain type of club actually, so all it takes is motivation. Houston really isn't that bad, it's just that it has really bad public transport so it's really inconvenient.

The people tend to be introverted and awkward. People often complain about parties being lame and NOB is just a bunch of people standing around in their underwear or throwing up around campus. But there are fun events like beerbike and the world's biggest water balloon fight. Doing jacks on other colleges are really fun too, although they aren't as grand as the pranks MIT does.

Science and Engineering courses at Rice are very difficult, and sometimes it's just professors being inflexible and making really inconvenient and penalizing rules. But they are approachable and will help you if you ask for help in person. The difficulty of study can vary greatly from subject to subject, I guess partly because you need majors for athletes to be able to graduate in. Basically, the stereotypes are premeds, musis, archis, engineering and science majors, and slacadems. Engineering and science majors tend to be introverted and have tons of work but play a lot of games. Premeds are in the library. I mean, they're premeds. Musis and Archis have a lot of work but they're wierd and artsy people. Slackadems are humanities majors who have to work. If you want to learn a lot in humanities subjects, you definitely can. It's just that most of the courses are so easy that there's a big temptation to slack off.

Concerning my major (Chemical Engineering), I am rather annoyed at the fact that 80% of the companies that come to Rice are energy/oil industry. However, it seems that if you want a job with a non-energy/oil company, it is possible, although it takes more effort (check out the employment information on the Rice website). But yes, the oil industry is booming so they tend to snatch up most of the graduates.

Oh and a qualifier for why I said I wouldn't go to Rice if I could choose again: I really want to go to MIT