We live less than an hour from Rice and my S refuses to consider it. I don’t think he minds that it’s so close to us (actually my H works in downtown Houston so he’s even closer to Rice during the workday), but it seems to be more of a “familiarity breeds contempt” situation. The students he personally knows who have gone to Rice are not kids he likes, plus he didn’t really enjoy his tour of the school. To him it seemed like any other Houston site he visited (museums, etc) and not someplace he could picture himself living for four years.