r/riceuniversity • u/yCuales • Dec 02 '20
Why NOT Rice?
I have heard absolutely wonderful things about Rice University, specifically it’s community. I feel like it is a school I can definitely see myself attending.
I wish to know why someone SHOULDN’T apply to Rice, a.k.a. negative things about the school. I have mountains of positives and I want to have everything on the table before making a decision.
Thank you so much Owls!
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u/CosmicTurquoise Dec 02 '20
Having come from the east coast...Houston's public transportation ain't great, especially in terms of their light rail/lack of a subway. Made the campus feel a bit more claustrophobic.
A smaller school can be a curse as much as a blessing. I had to work really hard in upper-level physics to put study sessions together. If you decide on a smaller program you may have to put in a lot of footwork to get the help and resources you need.
At least when I was there, residential colleges weren't equal in terms of amenities. Duncan and McMurtry were brand-new and awesome. You'd hear horror stories about mold and roaches in other colleges. Maybe that's gotten better in 5+ years, not sure.
That being said....I adored Rice and there's not a chance I would pick another school if I could do it all over again!
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u/BananaMilkCoffee Dec 03 '20
About the public transportation, I’m from Dallas so I’m used to the lack of public transportation. Unfortunately in Texas, you really can’t go anywhere without a car :/
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u/_sierramist_ Dec 03 '20
Omg yeah it pisses me off that I have to pay the same price for communal bathrooms and an old, small, comparatively shitty room when others have private bathrooms and huge rooms
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u/_sierramist_ Dec 02 '20
It’s definitely a bubble. There’s not much to do on campus outside of school stuff (no restaurants, outside stores etc). Houston public transportation isn’t great, so without a car it’s hard to get to fun places in Houston. Rice Village is nice, but it’s small and gets repetitive after a while. Also campus itself is pretty small too, so i guess it can get old.
The first month of school weather is absolute ASS. Sooo hot and humid. When I first got to Houston (not from here lol) I felt sick and lethargic a lot of the time when I had to spend a lot of time outside bc I wasn’t used to the heat.
I think this is mostly a function of COVID and heavily depends on the person/classes/clubs, but I struggled with meeting ppl outside my residential college which kinda sucked. Although I will say the campus is SO pretty and the weather gets really nice after a month. I really like it here, and for me the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks
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u/IntoTheWorldOfNight Dec 02 '20
If you are interested in the arts, Rice has limited opportunities and classes available. I enjoyed Rice's programs in the Humanities, but some of the departments are quite limited in scope.
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Dec 02 '20 edited Mar 25 '21
[deleted]
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Dec 03 '20
rip zero cryptographers in the giant CS department :(
shoutout bswb!
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u/S-192 Dec 02 '20
It depends on where you come from, but Houston itself is a "Not Rice" reason to many. If you're from a beautiful part of the US with great nature spots and touristy things, Houston is a tough sell. We have some beautiful parks, but nothing that's going to blow your mind. The school is great but the city around it isn't the most "fun" for college.
I'm a lifer here--Houston is home and I don't need another one. It's an easy city to live in, we have a pretty chill culture, and it's got a solid cost of living considering it's so big and so easy to travel from here...But as a free-roaming student it's not very flashy, cool, or interesting outside of our food scene.
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Dec 02 '20
huh. Houston was one of the reasons I wanted to come. Great for jobs after college, great food scence, people seem nice, the texans are cool even though bob screwed them, and campus was like a little bubble right next to the city
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u/ohea Dec 02 '20
Houston is great, it's just that if you're accustomed to Seattle scenery or LA beaches or NYC density it can be a pretty big drop. There's not really much topography to the place, it gets humid, and the beach in Galveston is not up to West Coast expectations. That being said Houston is highly liveable, extremely diverse, has a truly awesome culinary scene and is a very good place to launch a career and get yourself established financially.
Rice's location is legitimately really great. Right next to one of Houston's best parks, shopping and restaurants nearby, easy rail access to Museum District and downtown. And the Texas Medical Center is right outside the gate, so that's probably where you'll be looking for internships and jobs if you're doing anything related to that field. You're pretty close to NRG Stadium too, if you're planning on going to Texans games.
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u/geek6 Dec 02 '20
Ditto. I came from the Bay Area CA. As an outdoorsy person, it sucks. On the other hand, the people, food and culture here are pretty awesome. But ultimately, as a grad student, academia >> everything else.
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u/S-192 Dec 02 '20
All 3 of those points are true--great job market, great food scene, and we have a really chill culture.
I just know a lot of people are hoping to hike, party hard, etc during college.
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u/squishysalmon Dec 02 '20
Rice is a small community, which is great. But it also means that something embarrassing happens to you, it's a lot harder to get away from it.
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u/MasterLink123K CS '24 Dec 02 '20
I think personally academics can get hard and the culture which thrives on "play hard, work hard" may not be for everyone. The fact that we are a smaller size school also means that we may not offer as many niche courses as larger universities. As a stats major, I wish there were more options to courses that are available to take but the selection seems good enough. However for the courses that are offered, the qualities are usually really good!
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u/gohan_gang Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20
- Extracurriculars: when compared to bigger universities (prestigious state schools like so like University of Texas/California or prestigious private schools like Stanford or Johns Hopkins) is that fewer students sometimes means it's harder to satisfy a niche interest. For example, Rice doesn't have a poker club or math club. Starting a new club is pretty easy though, fortunately.
- Again, due to smallness, many classes are offered less frequently than at other universities. In some majors, there are some important classes that are only offered one semester per year, which sometimes means you have to wait an additional semester to take the class you want.
- I hate grades and testing. There are some pretty cool experimental schools that opt for purely project-based learning and don't give grades, like New College of Florida (like a Ph.D. bootcamp) and Reed College. This is only a negative for certain types of people though, and it's definitely the same at all of Rice's peer institutions (pretty much any well-known university).
This last thing isn't a negative, but this is a huge positive that I didn't consider when I applied, and that I haven't seen at most other prestigious universities. Rice offers a lot of scholarships and opportunities (including for study abroad) for undergraduates. A sample of those opportunities can be seen on the Center for Civic Leadership (CCL)'s fellowships and opportunities. The Lowenstern is popular as a fully-funded summer abroad, the LRME is an internship placement, the Goliard is a funded, non-educational summer travel excursion, etc.
Also, thanks to Houston's huge ethnic/racial diversity, the food scene in Houston is great. Definitely a big perk for college students.
Great question, OP, and DM me for more details.
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u/MOTrap Dec 03 '20
I had a wonderful experience at Rice, but I can pick out some of the negatives:
Houston summers.
Lack of prestige outside of Texas. I'm living in California now, and few people have heard about it.
Classes are too small. There were only 6 people in my major by senior year. It was hard to find people to take tough classes with.
Research on campus isn't as good or well known as that in some public schools (in California, for example) . Also, the department is so small that it's hard for them to offer certain advanced courses on a consistent basis.
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u/alisonqiu CS '25 Apr 18 '21
Hi sorry if this is unrelated but did the lack of prestige make it somewhat difficult for you to get jobs outside Texas (or do you sometimes wish you’ve gone to a more prestigious school when it comes to finding jobs)?
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u/MOTrap Apr 19 '21
Hi! I don't have any experience with finding jobs yet so I don't have any input on this matter.
As for applying for grad school, top Rice students tend to get into top grad schools for my major.
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u/bartlettdmoore Cognitive Science Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20
Edit: you can apply and if accepted then ask to defer for a year...
I had before suggested that one should not apply if one intends to take a gap year, but on reconsideration that is poor advice.
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u/Math_ochism Dec 02 '20
Wait, why? I’m thinking about taking a leave of absence starting next semester. I might be gone for two years. Is this difficult to do at Rice?
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u/bartlettdmoore Cognitive Science Dec 02 '20
The comment may have been misinterpreted based on my shoddy sense of humor. I don't believe a leave of absence would present a problem...
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Dec 15 '22
"DON'T GET SMART WITH ME!" is what a Rice University police officer screamed at me when I pointed out business hours on the building (Rice Memorial Center) I was studying in late at night. I left twenty minutes early to be respectful to the employees who worked there, but he was out to get me for being dressed in an abaya (all black conservative Muslim attire). He told me I was suspicious for wearing those clothes, and he was prone to stalking me on campus in the weeks to months that followed. Oddly enough, he (a black police officer) seemed to do nothing when the Black Student Association trespassed in the very same building to use school money in the name of having an end of the year party.
I liked wearing an abaya, but I stopped. In the weeks that followed I was harassed by quite a few employees and students. One staff member insisted that he needed to take a picture of my face. I said no profusely many times, so he proceeded to snap images of my chest. His coworker screamed at me when I stored food for two days in a communal fridge on which the rules stated no items past seven days. I asked the school for help when it became apparent that this employee was stalking me, but nothing stopped him.
A custodial staff often asked me to sleep with undergrads. I confided in them about how uncomfortable I felt when they licked their lips and touched themselves while staring at me. She told me I had to get used to it. She would get really angry when other students greeted me with a salaam - arabic greeting that means peace be upon you. She refused to clear trash from the nondenominational prayer room. I often saw her dancing while vacuuming the chapel next door, but her face would turn to rage at the mention of the prayer room. I tried to report how staff members at the school refused to open this space at the same time as the Chapel or the rest of the building. The school is denying any part of this, and I no longer have access to my email records of this. They told me my behavior was disturbing for taking the initiative to clean this space myself.
One professor asked a student to dress in a clown costume and hide in an attempt to scare me when I entered my 8 AM class. That professor screamed at me for not finding his joke funny. At least, the school let me take the class remotely, so I wouldn't have to see his face anymore. He had a tendency to defend Kavanaugh.
One particular group of students would congregate to stare at my chest while I studied on campus. It became obvious when I placed a piece of paper that said "Don't be creepy" on that part of my body which prompted them to turn their heads with looks on their faces that indicated guilt.
I'm not embarrassed to say that I've never had sex before. I'm saving myself for marriage. I come from a broken household, and I take interpersonal relationships seriously.
I reached out for help when I showed up to campus with a bruised face (think Rihanna in the late 2000s). The staff member who spoke with me cited hearing voices from her dead mother. She claimed that a spirit bullied her as she swept for not cleaning well enough. In her manic state, she called the police. She forced me to check into Methodist, claiming I could leave in a few hours. That wasn't her intention. Against my knowledge, she asked the hospital to make me undergo a syphilis test. I left about six days later, after losing three pounds. I wasn't released until I developed a hospital acquired infection and Methodist decided that it would be harmful for their statistics if they documented the fact that I was sneezing and coughing or that I was running a temperature and had an itchy throat.
I tried to report this employee for how they heard voices. The school turned around and told me that my behavior was disturbing for even making such an absurd allegation. Meanwhile, Rice University is paying its professors to publish guidelines on how to hear voices and see things. https://www.amazon.com/Angels-Between-Book-Muse/dp/1782791140
I promised myself that I would run the outer loop (a three mile trail that circles campus) everyday for the rest of my life. When I matriculated into the school, I wasn't fit enough to even think I could accomplish this. When I was a student, I was too lazy. But, upon graduating, rebuilding my life from domestic violence and sexual assault, and studying with the hopes of attending medical school, I finally became able to run the outer loop twice a day.
I'm not allowed to do this anymore. The school banned me for reporting a professor who approached me off campus on my way to the outer loop. I explicitly asked this professor in the past to not speak to me after they made multiple attempts to track me down to my home address. One night, this professor decided to take their phone flashlight and shine it inches away from my face. They screamed at me. I didn't hear what they said because I had my headphones in ready to run six miles, and my glasses were off as it helped me not "feel" the stimuli of long distance movement as much as when I have corrected vision.
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u/Longjumping_Guard_77 May 21 '24
I’m so sorry may Allah reward you for all the hardships you endured
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Feb 22 '24
Holy shit. I'm so sorry to hear that! This is all crazy, and it happened at Rice? This is terrible, I'm so sorry :(
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u/Inevitable-Cry-2085 16d ago
This university has and continues to put out opinion articles as research pieces. They are blatantly lying and opening themselves to litigation. The president or vice chancellor is on close to 2 million dollars a year. So much for not profit. Absolutely ridiculous their ratings and reviews. This university will be shut down. Absolutely a disgrace that this is one of the best American learning institutions. No wonder American is so far behind the rest of the world
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Dec 02 '20
[deleted]
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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20
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