NSCS Chapter School
UNIGO SUMMARY
Rice University is known for its intellectual atmosphere and eccentric student body. Students come to Rice knowing that they are bound for four years of intense academics, and some will even find themselves frequenting their professors’ houses for dinner. While there is no Greek life at Rice, incoming students are randomly assigned to one of the nine Residential Colleges, where they live, eat, and carve out a social circle.
The school is located in Houston, but few are satisfied with the city’s public transportation system, so most students prefer to spend their weekend nights hitting parties around their “wet” campus. The majority of the student population takes a liking to Rice’s quirky traditions, such as Baker-13 (a bi-monthly naked run around campus), Night of Decadence (a legendary Halloween party), and the Beer-Bike race. The athletic scene on campus is respectable for a school of its size: with less than 3,000 students, Rice is the second smallest school to have an NCAA Division I football program, and the Rice baseball team has received widespread recognition since the school won the 2003 College World Series.
UNIGO REVIEW
Rice University, a co-ed private institution located in Houston, is the kind of place that breeds eccentricity. In the words of one sophomore from California, “everything is unusual about Rice.” But for Rice undergrads, that doesn’t usually amount to a bad thing: they tend to like it that way.
The undergraduate experience at Rice is based on the school’s unique residential college system. Incoming students are assigned to one of nine colleges at random, which is usually where they end up living freshman year and two of following three years. With all of the traditions and rivalries involved, the system has been compared to Hogwarts (without the magic and located in Houston, of course). Each college has its own intramural sports teams, activities, and governing bodies, so it comes as no surprise that the most popular activities are tied to them. “The college system is great because it provides a community within the university that is diverse in terms of majors, ages, and everything else,” remarks a senior studying music. Because the colleges cultivate distinct social scenes and throw parties, there isn’t really even room for a Greek scene on campus, and there are no officially recognized fraternities or sororities to join. Not everyone finds the residential college social scene to be sufficient: “The school is much too closed off for me, and offers a really underwhelming social scene,” complains an alum. “The public parties are for the most part really lame and the college system invites all the awful bureaucracy of the frat system without any of the fun.”For those restless few, Houston provides an alternative social outlet away from campus. “Since Rice is in the heart of Houston, there is a ton of stuff to do: theater, museums, bars, clubs, ethnic locations... anything you can imagine,”raves another alum.
Rice is an academically elite university, so students are confident that they’re getting a superior education, with especially robust programs in economics, engineering, psychology, English, and political science. “Rice is hard. Plain and simple,” notes a sophomore studying engineering. While the academics are challenging, students aren’t necessarily cutthroat. “People are much more collaborative than competitive, probably because you get to be friends with your potential competition,” says a senior studying physics. Most of the courses have only about 20-30 students, so personal attention is pretty much a given.
While Rice was originally founded to educate locals from the greater Houston area, today 46% of undergrads hail from outside of the Lone Star State. It can be difficult to characterize Rice undergrads using broad strokes: “There is no single financial background or stereotype that all Rice students fit into,” remarks one freshman studying engineering. But unlike at many other universities that tout diversity, it seems that these assorted groups actually interact with one another. “The college system encourages people from all different backgrounds to interact and get to know each other, especially because all freshmen live on campus,” writes a senior from Baltimore. When it comes to politics, Rice is a relatively conscious and balanced place. “The campus is more conservative than the average college campus, I would say, but by no means are we Republicans; I would still say that the liberals are more prevalent, but the diversity makes discussions quite interesting,” remarks a sophomore.
With only 3,000 undergraduates, Rice is home to the second-smallest Division I athletic program in the country, but it still manages to put together one of the nation’s top baseball teams. While about one out of ten undergraduates are student athletes, attendance at sporting events isn’t as high as some would prefer (one soccer player reports that “there isn't too much school pride especially when it comes to athletics - except for baseball maybe”). This might be explained by the fact that there seems to be more residential college pride than university-wide spirit.