<p>I’m not saying that you didn’t have a wonderful education at UT, just that there is 1 professor for every 5 students at Rice and 1 professor to every 19 students at UT (per wikipedia - not a completely vetted source, I know). While UT (with 37,389 students) may have more NAE member on faculty in total (you say 20, but I saw 30 active ones on this list -<a href=“Custom 404 page”>Custom 404 page), Rice (with only 3000 undergrads) has 15 NAE member in their engineering school. So Rice has SUBSTANTIALLY more NAE members per student than UT!
As for facilities - we live in Austin; believe me, we have been on campus many, many times. Rice has wonderful resources and facilities (including a new design “kitchen” for students to use to work on their projects), and I believe it has a much better all-around undergraduate experience. YMMV.</p>