Popularity of Rice

breeze
Wed, 19 Jan 2005 03:22:52 +0000

In time, and I’m talking 15 to 50 years, I believe that Rice will be more selective in terms of acceptance rate than any school. The “Ivy League” craze of today will go on to a period when people apply to all the top schools and are aware of more top schools than just the catchphrase of the 00s. In the 10s and 20s, aided by this here Internet growing ever larger and information becoming more readily available, high school geniuses will have heard of Rice before they get to college instead of after.

Since Rice is smaller than Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, etc. eventually the acceptance rate will be miniscule. Adding in the constant population shift away from the northeast and towards the southwest, I can see Rice having a 4-5% or lower acceptance rate eventually (today it is around 23% I believe, still not easy to get into but higher than Yale’s 10%).

I also think the residential college system is cool. I lived in one at my undergrad school, but only Rice and Yale have every undergrad in one.