<p>I’d say, as a Rice student from Maryland, that Rice generally does not get the respect it deserves from people outside of Texas, at least on the east coast. When I first applied to the university, a lot of my friends were like, “Oh Rice…cool…where’s that? Is it a good school?” The summer after I got in and enrolled, I worked in a lab at the U.S. Department of Agriculture where many of the scientists also did not know Rice, surprisingly. Actually, when one of my co-workers and I discussed the costs of private versus public universities, he assumed Rice was an standard public school and said that he would “send his kid to somewhere like University of Maryland, Clemson, or Rice” and that it’s not worth the money unless “the school is prestigious like Johns Hopkins.” I kept to myself, but I found it amusing that a university like Hopkins, though similar in calibur at the academic level, garners a different level of respect from the average person. </p>
<p>I think it depends on the field of research and location though, since the dad of a friend of mine who works in a high position at a large company told me after I matriculated that he knows and works with several Rice grads and that employers value a degree from Rice highly. Also, when asked at the doctor office where I was headed to school, my doctor easily recognized the name of Rice and engaged in a nice conversation with me about the biomedical research that the university.</p>
<p>I think Rice’s lack of “prestige” mostly is due to three aspects, its regional demographics (roughly half of students are from Texas), its lack of an extensive and internationally respected graduate program, and its relatively young age compared to universities, say, in the Ivy League. I think all of that will change in the coming years. If we current students cannot see ostensible changes by the time we graduate and enter the workforce, at least our children will. President Leebron is the proponent of a plan to increase Rice University’s international eminence, part of which includes discussion of a merger between Rice and Baylor College of Medicine, one of the most respected medical institutions in the world.</p>