Rice University
Houston, Texas | Admissions Phone: 713-348-7423
E-mail: admi@rice.edu | Website: www.rice.edu
ADMISSION
Admission Rate: 11%
Admission Rate - Men: 11%
Admission Rate - Women: 11%
EA Admission Rate: Not Offered
ED Admission Rate: 22%
Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): -6%
ED Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): -3%
% of Admits Attending (Yield): 41%
Transfer Admission Rate: 11%
# Offered Wait List: 3,296
# Accepted Wait List: 2,137
# Admitted Wait List: 31
SAT Reading/Writing (Middle 50%): 700-760
SAT Math (Middle 50%): 750-800
ACT Composite (Middle 50%): 33-35
Testing Policy: ACT/SAT Required
SAT Superscore: Yes
ACT Superscore: Yes
% Graduated in Top 10% of HS Class: 87%
% Graduated in Top 25% of HS Class: 96%
% Graduated in Top 50% of HS Class: 99%
ENROLLMENT
Total Undergraduate Enrollment: 3,992
% Part-Time: 2%
% Male: 52%
% Female: 48%
% Out-of-State: 53%
% Fraternity: Not Offered
% Sorority: Not Offered
% On-Campus (Freshman): 99%
% On-Campus (All Undergraduate): 71%
% African-American: 7%
% Asian: 26%
% Hispanic: 15%
% White: 33%
% Other: 4%
% Race or Ethnicity Unknown: 2%
% International: 12%
% Low-Income: 19%
ACADEMICS
Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 6:1
% of Classes Under 20: 72%
% of Classes Under 40: 87%
% Full-Time Faculty: 78%
% Full-Time Faculty w/ Terminal Degree: 97%
Top Programs
Architecture
Biochemistry
Biology
Cognitive Science
History
Engineering
Kinesiology
Music
Retention Rate: 97%
4-Year Graduation Rate: 86%
6-Year Graduation Rate: 95%
Curricular Flexibility: Somewhat Flexible
Academic Rating: 
FINANCIAL
Institutional Type: Private
In-State Tuition: $48,330
Out-of-State Tuition: $48,330
Room & Board: $14,140
Required Fees: $782
Books & Supplies: $1,200
Avg. Need-Based Aid: $44,044
Avg. % of Need Met: 100%
Avg. Merit-Based Aid: $21,740
% Receiving Merit-Based Aid: 11%
Avg. Cumulative Debt: $24,635
% of Students Borrowing: 24%
CAREER
Who Recruits
1. DMC, Inc.
2. INT Software
3. Quantlab
4. Oxy
5. Chevron
Notable Internships
1. The Blackstone Group
2. Jane Street
3. Houston Rockets
Top Industries
1. Business
2. Education
3. Engineering
4. Research
5. Operations
Top Employers
1. Google
2. Shell
3. ExxonMobil
4. Chevron
5. Microsoft
Where Alumni Work
1. Houston
2. San Francisco
3. Dallas
4. Austin
5. New York City
Median Earnings
College Scorecard (Early Career): $65,400
EOP (Early Career): $76,700
PayScale (Mid-Career): $129,500
RANKINGS
Forbes: 21
Money: 24
U.S. News: 17, National Universities
Wall Street Journal/THE: 16
Washington Monthly: 101, National Universities
Inside the Classroom
With just shy of 4,000 undergraduates, Rice is at once a powerhouse research institution and a place where world-class instruction is the norm. The university’s illustrious faculty includes multiple Nobel Prize and National Medal of Science winners as well as countless recipients of any prestigious fellowship or award that one can name. And the best news is that undergraduates have the chance to learn from that distinguished lot.
Rice offers more than fifty majors across six broad disciplines: engineering, architecture, music, social science, humanities, and natural science. Double majoring is more common at Rice than your average university; roughly 20 percent of students graduate with a double major. Speaking of majors, there is a greater diversity of majors than one might assume at a STEM-famous school. The most commonly conferred degrees are in engineering (19 percent), the social sciences (15 percent), parks and recreation (9 percent), computer science (7 percent), biology (7 percent), and mathematics (5 percent).
Boasting a student-to-faculty ratio of 5.6:1, Rice offers a spectacularly intimate learning experience. Class sizes are ideally small with 72 percent containing fewer than twenty students and a median class size of only fourteen. Undergraduate research opportunities abound with 62 percent of graduates participating in academic research during their four years. Those experiences are open to freshmen through the Century Scholars Program and to all underclassmen through the Rice Undergraduate Scholars Program. Study abroad options are available in seventy countries, including collaborative programs with some of the top schools in the world including The London School of Economics, Oxford, and Cambridge; approximately 30 percent of Rice students elect to spend a semester in another country.
Programs in biology, biochemistry, cognitive science, and music are incredibly strong, while the School of Architecture and the George R. Brown School of Engineering are among the highest ranking schools in their disciplines. It is also notable that Rice is doing its part to close the STEM gender gap; the school is among the national leaders in producing female engineers, and it also boasts a 32 percent clip of female computer science majors, almost twice the national average. When it comes to procuring scholarships and fellowships upon graduation, Owls fare well, regularly producing Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Watson Fellows, Hertz Fellows, and an occasional Rhodes Scholar (a dozen in its history).
Outside the Classroom
Central to student life at Rice is the Oxford/Cambridge-style (or more familiarly, Yale-style) residential college system. Upon matriculation, students are assigned to one of eleven residential colleges that contain their own dorms, dining halls, common areas, and faculty sponsors. Each college has its own student-run government, unique traditions, and social events. Those seeking a strong Greek life will have to look elsewhere as Rice has always operated free of fraternities and sororities. Rice does not have a particularly fervent sports culture either despite seven men’s and seven women’s varsity teams competing in NCAA Division I competition. The most notable squad is the baseball team that is always competing for national titles. Opportunities for intramural and club team participation are vast and include sports like aikido, badminton, and water polo. Student-run clubs are plentiful as well with over 250 to select from. The Rice Thresher, the student newspaper, is widely read and regularly wins national awards. While campus life is abuzz with activity, many venture into the city of Houston to enjoy the nightlife and cultural events in such close proximity.
Career Services
The Rice Center for Career Development (CCD) is staffed by eleven full-time professional employees, which equals a student-to-advisor ratio of 363:1, better-than-average when compared with the other institutions included in this book. Additional peer career advisors, embedded in each residential college, offer services such as resume reviews or assistance with locating internship opportunities. Internships opportunities can also be discovered at the Career and Internship Expo, which is attended by more than one hundred employers, and through RICElink, which posts internships open exclusively to current Owls. The CCD also facilitates Owl Edge Externships, job-shadowing experiences that last from one day to a full week.
The university does a phenomenal job of facilitating on-campus interviews with roughly 150 employers conducting over 1,600 interviews each year. It also hosts one hundred+ events that connect students to potential employers from formal career fairs to casual events like the Chili Cook-Off. The CCD does a superb job with outreach as it attracts more than 3,500 non-grad student visits per year, close to one visit per undergraduate. It’s little surprise that 55 percent of graduates found their first job directly through the CCD office. In short, it is hard to imagine a career services office accomplishing more for its undergraduates than the CCD does for its students at Rice.
Professional Outcomes
Six months after graduation only 6 percent of Rice grads are still seeking employment. The overwhelming majority have found careers or a graduate school home. Companies that are known to pluck more than their fair share of employees each year from Rice’s senior class include Deloitte, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Google, and Microsoft. Over one hundred alumni are also current employees of companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Amazon, Accenture, and Facebook. Median starting salaries for Rice grads far exceed national averages. Across all majors the average starting salary is $69k. That encompasses engineering majors at the high end ($79k) and humanities majors at the low end ($52k). Texas is among the most common destinations for recent grads, but many also flock to California, New York, Wisconsin, and Washington State.
Over one-third of graduates move directly into graduate or professional school. That group fares well in gaining admission to elite graduate institutions; Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, and Berkeley are among the schools that absorb the highest number of Rice applicants. Rice is also known for producing a strong number of successful medical school applicants each year. A robust 38 percent of graduate school attendees are enrolled in medical school. Baylor College of Medicine and the med schools in the UT system are popular destinations for future doctors. Other recent grads are presently attending Harvard Medical School, Duke University School of Medicine, and Stanford Medical School.
Admission
Rice’s acceptance rate for the Class of 2022 plummeted to an all-time low of 11 percent. That flirtation with the single-digit club was a steep fall from the 15-17 percent acceptance rates of the last few years. The number of applications received by the university topped 20,000 for the first time, and that figure has more than doubled in the last decade. The ACT mid-50 percent range is 33-35. The 75th percentile score on the math section was a perfect 800, and the reading range was 700-760. More than 88 percent of students earned above a 700 in math, and 77 percent earned the same in reading. In 2014, “only” 64 percent of Rice’s freshman class scored above a 700 on the verbal section, and 75 percent reached that mark on the math portion. This is a clear indicator that Rice’s diminishing acceptance rate is, in fact, indicative of an increasingly selective student profile.
Early decision applicants, as would be expected, enjoy a better acceptance rate of 22 percent, but an applicant’s bona fides still need to meet the university’s sky-high standards. Rice lists more factors as being “very important” than most elite schools, granting this designation to rigor of courses, GPA, class rank, test scores, essays, recommendations, talent/ability, and character/personal qualities. An intimidating 89 percent of Rice students placed in the top 10 percent of their high school class, and 96 percent were in the top quartile. In 2018, Rice instituted an expedited system of reviewing applications; it now takes two admissions officers fewer than ten minutes to review each candidate and assign a numerical rating, a 5 being the highest. With that in mind, to have a realistic chance of getting in, the admissions staff shouldn’t have to dig very deep to find reasons to say “Yes.” A quality essay and glowing recommendations will help, but you’ll need a sparkling academic profile and in-range test scores to make it through the first wave.
Worth Your Money?
For the 39 percent of students who qualify for need-based financial aid, Rice delivers by meeting 100 percent of every individual’s demonstrated need. That equates to over $44k per year, which certainly helps make the $67,000 annual cost (already a reasonable list price relative to the marketplace) of attendance more affordable. Further, 11 percent of students qualify for merit-based aid that averages $21,740. Graduates not only encounter incredibly high starting salaries, they also have less debt, on average, than the average college graduate in the United States. Needless to say, Rice is worth the cost of admissions no matter who you are or how much you have to pay.