<p>I’m guessing the OP was referring to the process being more selective for students from Texas specifically, since some very qualified students are being rejected/waitlisted, possibly in favor of students from more geographically diverse regions.</p>
<p>It does seem like admissions this year for Texas students was a lot stricter and <em>perhaps</em> closely tied to rank. Although, as petaandpita pointed out, I obviously don’t know everything about the essays/teacher recs/interviews of the people at my school, I am capable of judging how well “qualified” my close friends are, just because I know them really well. The thing that made me upset enough to write this that Rice waitlisted a guy (ranked around #18 because of credit transfer issues) with multiple leadership positions, ~98 unweighted GPA out of 100 (4.0 unweighted GPA out of 4), who has won almost every award at our school, VS admitting a girl with NO leadership positions, only TWO extracurricular clubs, and who’s held onto a top 10 spot with flat 90’s and 91’s in most of her classes.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong though, I LOVE Rice and am definitely attending next year, but there were multiple decisions like these at my school that totally shocked me; in the end, the admissions process appeared very rank-based. But I’m hoping this was just a coincidence at my school…</p>