Rice or Princeton?

BrianGeistwhite
Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:25:26 +0000

OK, so I’ll be making a much more extensive post later on this, but for now I’ll do this short one.

I’m going to be majoring in Physics probably, but I have a wide range of interests, scattered throughout the liberal arts.

I’ve visited both Rice and Princeton, and focused on talking to as many groups of people as possible, which turned out to be about 30-50 students at each school, mostly freshmen/sophmores.

A couple things stuck out to me in particular.

At Princeton, academics looked absolutely amazing. Not only did they have world leaders in all subjects, but they require all underclassmen to do research in a Physics major. In Rice, academics were certainly strong, but the resources were lacking in comparison, and I was basically told that it is more or less impossible for a undergraduate to do research beyond scrubbing flasks in the lab. Also, it seems that Princeton is stronger across the board, and that it would probably be much easier to pursue my other interests there then at Rice – not only does Pton facilitate late major changes, but they only require about 1/3 of your classes be in your major – as opposed to about 2/3 at Rice. Academics are especially important to me; I don’t just want to go to college to get that piece of paper – I really want to learn as much about as many things as I can, and above all learn to “think” clearer, more objectively, better.

However, you know how people talk about that feeling that you get when you’re on the right campus, it just feels right and perfect, that elusive gut feeling? I got that feeling at Rice, but not at Princeton. I felt the difference pretty much from the time I set foot on both the campuses, until the moment I left. Also, at Rice, I meshed with the people much better, I think. It felt very warm and very inviting socially, and I the people just seemed like my kin. Also, people talk about Rice being nerdy, but I felt that was somewhat unfounded – yes, nerdier than my high school, but less so, but not nearly as much as Harvey Mudd or U. of Chicago. Further, I like nerdiness to some extent. At Princeton, there seemed to be just as much nerdiness as at Rice, but on the whole, people seemed like average teenagers, which is a bad thing for me – I meshed with people there about as well as I would expect to mesh with a random selection of college kids – not really the connection that I felt at Rice. A theory that I have on this is that the pool of kids who apply to Rice is self-selecting, whereas everyone and their grandma applies to Princeton.

I think that I perhaps may be exagering both of these things. Academics are naturally going to feel superior at Princeton, because it’s got the big name and the big name people. Also, I think I may have been naturally initially close-minded to Princeton students: I was all hyped up on Rice, and wanted it to be better than Princeton (I naturally try to go against what people generally believe to be true, smug that I’m smarter than all those fools who go with the masses).

Anyway, I’ve got the two end-all decision makers going against each other on this one: the academics and opportunities seem better at one, whereas the other had a better “feel” and “atmosphere”.

So, what do you think?

Well, I guess it wasn’t so short after all – I’ll still make a much longer post later.