<p>I was wondering (because I am a extremely curious person) what advantage Rice has over Duke and JHU and vice versa (especially pre-med and science).</p>
<p>Here are some of the advantages Rice has over Duke/JHU: </p>
<p>1) World’s largest medical campus next door (Texas Medical Center); Duke and Hopkins has a great medical center as well, but not as big as Texas Medical Center</p>
<p>2) More laid-back, less cutthroat competition than at Duke and JHU (although Duke and Rice both have laid-back, friendly student bodies, I would say Rice’s student body is less competitive than Duke’s by a margin)</p>
<p>3) Century Scholars Program (if you are selected): You are paired with a faculty mentor and get to work on his/her research project starting your freshman year (Here’s the link to the website: [Century</a> Scholars](<a href=“http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~centscho/]Century”>http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~centscho/))</p>
<p>4) Better weather</p>
<p>5) Ranked #2 in quality of life and #15 in happiest students according to 2009 Princeton
Review</p>
<p>6) Residential College System (think Harry Potter)</p>
<p>7) HOUSTON!!!</p>
<p>8) Smaller classes and more access to professors (3154 undergrads at Rice vs. 6496 undergrads at Duke vs. 4744 at JHU)</p>
<p>9) Baseball (Rice Owls won the College World Series in 2003, beating Stanford)</p>
<p>10) No frats/sororities = no social exclusion</p>
<p>11) Rice/Baylor Med School Dual Admission Program (this is very hard to be selected for and you need to apply separately: <a href=“Office of Admission | Rice University”>Office of Admission | Rice University; )</p>
<p>I was admitted to both Rice and Duke and visited both. I know a lot about both schools… I would say Rice, Duke, and Johns Hopkins are all on the same level academically. The difference is Rice students are more collaborative than Hopkins students and probably Duke students as well.</p>
<p>Advantages of Duke over Rice:</p>
<p>1) Better name-recognition with the common layperson. However, the prestige of Rice and Duke are about equal when it comes to applying for an internship, job, or graduate school (Duke students may have a slight advantage, especially in the finance/I-banking field). Almost everyone knows about Rice in the South.</p>
<p>2) Duke Basketball</p>
<p>3) Duke FOCUS/Duke ENGAGE Programs (although this is a very, very selective program anyway)</p>
<p>4) Slightly more resources because of its bigger size</p>
<p>5) Moderate climate (as opposed to the hot/humid weather in Houston)</p>
<p>That’s all I can think of really… Duke is overrated in my opinion.</p>
<p>I think Duke gets a bigger name because there are more students that go there which means bigger Alumni population which means more companies have Duke graduates when compared to Rice graduates.</p>
<p>Duke does have Duke ENGAGE and FOCUS which is pretty good (they aren’t really selective though to tell you the truth)</p>
<p>Duke has a bigger resource because it has a big endowment but Rice does have a bigger amount of money in endowment per student</p>
<p>Houston isn’t really humid (at least when I visited but that was during the spring)</p>
<p>Rice doesn’t have any frats/sororities because of their residential college, I think that’s why (i’m not totally sure</p>
<p>JHU I think is kinda overrated too. People think their pre-med program is the best in the world but their pre-med program in my opinion isn’t better than Dukes or Rice. Both can get you to top schools. And most of the professors probably focus with their Grad students more than undergrad (I’m not sure)</p>
<p>The 5:1 ratio of faculty to students just can’t be beat (you get more attention from professors –> better ability to learn –> better education –> better life and better value for your money)</p>
<p>Cut throat is more of a myth with JHU (but it is still hard). The truth is, Rice and Duke just has a better college life than JHU (as they say, at Rice and Duke, you can party a lot all night and still learn a lot during the day)</p>
<p>I hope Baylor and Rice would merge soon because that will just tell the world that Rice has just as good of an education as Duke and JHU but in a better friendlier environment. I think Rice doesn’t get the reputation from other parts of the country other than the south is because they don’t have a Med school and their grad program isn’t that well known/good.</p>
<p>Oh I forgot to mention, JHU the curves are somewhat bad I heard (people become way more competitive to get a good score rather than helping others, I believe the same curve should apply to everyone–like if the class average is low, add 2 percent to everyone’s grade–it shouldn’t be a competition between the students to see who can score the highest because a student can get a 95 and others can get a 97 but then a grade deflating curve causes that 95 to become a 85, it’s just not a true sign of how knowledgeable a student is.</p>
<p>Any other opinions?</p>
<p>You already seem to be a Rice fan 
Are you going to Rice next year or are you planning on applying?</p>
<p>I’m planning on applying but the weird thing is, I can finish my undergrad at Rice the 120 credit in two years if I go though with my APs…but I probably will stick around, maybe do a masters…</p>
<p>^Finish in two years?? How is that even possible?</p>
<p>by the way, I second what Slik Nik said regarding comparisons between Rice, Duke and JHU. (I also considered those schools, I was really close to going to Duke) Good luck, I hope you end up at Rice</p>
<p>It’s possible because my school doesn’t limit how many APs you take so I scheduled 5 a year (I made sure I placed easier ones like Stats with a harder one like AP Euro together in one year so the course load isn’t that much but the teachers teaches them really well so its easy to understand the topic). I also self-studied some. Half of the credit hours come because of the fact that one AP test (score of 4 or 5) can get you out of 2 courses (like 6 credit hours for AP Calc and even 8 credit hours for chem–2 chem classes and 2 chem labs) so that’s why I can finish 2 years.
Thank TheFutureIsHere, I hope you have a great time at Rice University.</p>
<p>Oh and also best of luck to you slik nik</p>
<p>Having lots of AP credits doesn’t usually result in graduating early. You’ll have a bunch of extra credit hours coming in, which may mean that some of your introductory classes for your major and some of your distributions requirements are out of the way…but may not. You shouldn’t assume that having half the number of credit hours required to graduate means that you’ll graduate in 2 years. All of those AP credits will probably allow you more freedom in choosing the electives you take while you’re at Rice, but for most majors they won’t shorten the number of years you need to graduate.</p>
<p>Yeah
Most majors require more than 70 hours and so I would still have to fulfill them (especially with the bigger majors like engineering and bio and chem). I guess it does give me the benefit that once I finished my major requirements, I can choose to graduate. But most likely I will be graduating in 3-4 years, most likely 4 if I choose engineering.</p>
<p>yeah, most likely it will be three/four years. although you can do engineering in three years, if you have enough AP credits where you can basically be a sophomore starting off, since you wouldn’t have to take calc, physics, or chem</p>
<p>I see,however, I want to double major in Bio and Bioengineering, would that be too much? (I do want to do pre-med)</p>
<p>^^ its possible. but why??</p>
<p>unnecessary. there isnt any advantage</p>
<p>Antarius–do you really think it would be possible to do an engineering degree in three years? I think it would be pretty hard to get through any school with an engineering degree in fewer than 4 years, no matter how many APs you had. My daughter had sophomore standing coming into Rice, with most of her intro math and science courses out of the way, but because most classes for her major have pre-requisites and/or are only offered one semester per year, there’s no way she’ll graduate early. That doesn’t mean the AP classes weren’t worthwhile, though. She’ll get to take a somewhat lighter load than she might otherwise, or consider a double major, and she got to use some of her non-math/science APs toward distribution requirements, so she’s had more freedom in choosing electives than she might have otherwise.</p>
<p>well, i know for a fact it is possible.Ive seen it done. I do not in any way recommend it because you have no freedom to choose classes and you lose out on the whole college experience.</p>
<p>most of the people who do 3 years do it because of financial constraints or they are the overachievers who arent very social anyways</p>
<p>Basically, I think Bio and BioE are possible in 4 years as there is a lot of overlap. It is still a bad idea. Thats all</p>
<p>hence the possible but unnecessary</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s what I thought, graduating early isn’t really that important to me, but more so is that I want to have some freedom. I actually don’t know how much BioE would help in med school because most of med school is biology and chem based, not really engineering I believe, unless you go into gene therapy.</p>
<p>how about Biochemistry?</p>