This is the official discussion thread for Rice Class of 2030 RD applicants. Ask your questions and connect with fellow applicants.
Definitely jinxing myself, but does anyone have a sense of when Owl Days for Admitted Students might be this year?
Word in the Facebook group of current parents is that it will be April 13th this year.
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Thank you!
any portal astrology?
This is a weird sign and im like 99% sure it means nothing, but I honestly found it really odd and wanted to share. I was just browsing the Rice website when I found a page to request additional information from the school (I think its just to join their mailing list or wtvr). It asked me who was filling out the form, and I clicked student, and then it autopopulated the rest of the form with my information. Now the weird thing is my major selection. On common app my major of choice was statistics, and for my 2nd and 3rd choice i said Mathmatical Economic Analysis and Data Science. For some reason on the form, it says Statistics as my top choice, but then “computational applied mathmatics and operations research” as my second choice, and just plain mathematics as the third. I never chose these two majors, and Im 99999% sure I have never filled out that form before, so IDK why its there. It doesn’t really sound like it could mean anything, its not even in the portal its just on this general page, but I found it odd.
I wanted to see if maybe I had put that information in the form previously (which doesnt make sense since there was some missing info and I never ever even knew about the CAAM major) so i used incognito. I filled out the form and submitted it using a random email, and then opened a new tab to that same form and clicked student, and none of my information populated. I’m not exactly sure if there is a way to verify that it’s getting my information from some Rice database, maybe a cs major could help. I know this probably doesn’t mean anything, honestly im desperate for a good acceptance, but I just wanted to share. Maybe I half-completed the form without filling in all the required sections, chose those two majors, and then forgot about them? On the other hand though, why would a change in the backup majors have anything to do with admission?
Edit: I also noticed that mathematics isnt even in the school I applied to. Statistics, data science, as well as CAAM are in George R brown engineering + computing, MEA is in social sciences, but mathematics is in wiess. None of this makes sense, but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with admission.
This is weird.
In the off chance that you actually end up getting accepted for this particular major, and want to know what it is, then feel free to ask. This is pretty much what I studied for my master’s degree (and there was quite a bit of probability and statistics and stochastic processes involved in it). I describe it as “great fun and there are jobs”. My bachelors was pretty much just plain applied mathematics.
NAH NAH NAH I THINK IM ONTO SOMETHING CUZ HOW COME IT DOESNT WORK AT ALL NOW?? THE FORM DOESN’T AUTOPOPULATE WITH MY INFO ANYMORE. WALLAHI IT WAS WORKING LAST NIGHT AND NOW ITS GONE.
I know the aos browse college confidential to patch portal astros, so it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable. Im surprised they fixed it so quickly though man. I swear on my life it was working yesterday, god I wish I recorded it or something.
Nvm its workin again, idk im honestly stressing myself out with ts. lets just wait it out
Good luck! It’s a tough wait! My S25 is majoring in CAAM at Rice, so if you get in and want to know more about that major at Rice, let me know.
is the form you’re referring to?riceadmission.rice.edu/register/?id=b589ece7-c214-49cf-911c-591359223269
Yup
It auto-fills the fields if you open the link whilst you are logged into the applicant portal. Otherwise, it won’t.
I see that makes a lot of sense. Do u think the differences in my major choices mean anything? Its just incredibly odd that it autofills with majors I didn’t choose, but are similar. Maybe I accidentally picked those majors somewhere else in my application and forgot about it, but I know for a fact that it wasn’t in the common app portion bc that clearly states stats, mea, and ds.
Idk its an absolute long shot (i sound stupid typing this out),but maybe a small part of rice admissions is to figure out what major a student is likely to chose at their university? Makes sense since rice doesn’t admit by major, so getting a good feel for what the student is going to choose is important. But honestly it would probably just be smarter to go with what the student put on their application instead of the university guessing. Maybe its a way to protect against students pretending to go into an “easy” major and then switching to something completely different? Idk im just trying to connect the dots 
Does anyone know what day they are going to release decisions on as of yet? Trying to make plans to see schools first week of April and they are about as tight lipped on decision notification days as duke and michigan.
My best guess is they’ll send an email tomorrow stating it will be Wednesday the 25th.
That, I am not sure. Seeing the portal astrology posts is not doing my mental any good 
Did you request information any time before or after applying to Rice? My auto-filled information says MSNE, ECE, and Engineering, respectively, but I feel like that was just what I put in when I filled out the request information specifically. However, in my Common App, I declared MSNE, ECE, and CAAM, respectively.
It would definitely be great if there is a positive correlation, but, at this point, I’d definitely rather do my best to keep my peace rather than make myself anxious beyond control
I currently have the 30th to 31st marked for Duke and Duke Kunshan. Duke seems to typically release decisions early the week after Ivy Day. With Duke Kunshan, I don’t even know what’s happening. Their decisions might be delayed because they received more applications this year. Typically, Duke Kunshan would have released the decisions around mid-March.
My Common App shows:
- Computer Science
- Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Data Science*
the form shows:
- Computer Science
- (blank)
- (blank)
Idk if this is a good or bad sign… 