I am so excited to see how the decision goes today! Everyone stay encouraged, enthusiastic, and excited and that will rub off on the kids to help them thrive during these next few decision days! Stay positive!
I should add that he was accepted Out of State to UVA which we are pretty excited about but the OOS tuition makes it pretty expensive.
Rice has been a stretch school for a long time in terms of their admissions rate but the new financial aid just makes it more difficult- and their admissions process is different too with a more holistic view. My son has applied RD but he has 3 other schools where he will get all tuition paid and can attend and graduate debt free- we were pretty honest with him about Rice being a long shot - not based on his achievements - but based on their number of applications and admissions process. Hopefully all of these applicants will bloom where they end up getting planted and experience collegiate and life successes!
@awesomepolyglot Many thanks. Do we need to sign up for owl days? Thanks
@jin11 Your student will get a link to sign up for Owl Days in the official invite
@DadofBoys, it felt a little odd explaining to my daughter that there were schools she should probably let go because she didn’t have a “hook” ? This has really been a steep learning curve with my first. Hopefully my next two children will benefit from what we have learned in this process and try to steer clear of the insanity that accompanies applying to these top-tier schools!
good luck to everyone today!!! less than three hours to go
I thought my son was a sure bet for several schools. AA male, GPA 4.0 UW, 4.7 W, great ECs and LORs. Waitlisted at Hamilton, rejected at WUSTL and Northeastern. Not sure what to tell him, I’m afraid this week will be BRUTAL for him
It is happening to ALL kids, my son has been rejected and waitlisted over and over again, with hooks. AA, single parent household, perfect GPA, 9 APs (all 5s). Not sure what’s happening this admissions cycle. But I’m hopeful annoy
@DadofBoys, I know what you are getting at, our family is somewhat in same boat, though my daughter was a QuestBridge finalist so we are on the lower end of income scale, but still with two college-educated parents, non-URM, etc. it’s tough. There’s so many great kids and great parents on these forums, all these kids have worked hard and deserve a shot, but there’s just so little room. My D was rejected NW and JHU, but also got in UVA OOS, which was great, however, they have STILL not awarded her the financial aid package and we are trying to play it cool and I did make a few calls to FA office just to make sure this was normal but I feel like there’s some secret conspiracy, LOL 
Oh, this is so so stressful, God Bless us all! I’ll actually be out with girlfriends tonight having dinner (and probably drinks lol) when the Rice decision comes out, I need a beer for sure.
If all else fail, say “I am alive and I have a beautiful dog (or cats or friends or family or bunny)”
Did lots of you folks get your application fee waived? People say it’s just a way to get applicant numbers up and then reject them ?
@snowy2010 i hadn’t heard that but yea they sent me an email before I applied saying they waived my fee
Not us. Daughter has high stats, but we’re in state. I had heard that they send waivers to OOS kids more often, so they can draw interest nationally. Not sure if that’s true, but it made sense to me. Or maybe because we showed interest early in junior year and they knew we wouldn’t need to be enticed with a waiver?
Ours got an application into some demographic blind schools and has a spot in a top ten school in his field, a good backup and some backup backups. Probably the only school left on his list that he would consider is NYU. I’m daring Rice to prove me a fibber…d8)
Good luck.
I’m OOS so maybe that’s the case… I like that theory better than the one to just raise applicant numbers
Just a quick question before the results come out… How many of you guys actually visited Rice? Does demonstrated interest really matter that much?
I didn’t visit-simply wasn’t able to- so I hope demonstrated interest doesn’t matter all too much… I don’t think they could make it matter too much
According to their CDS, it does matter. And they talked about it at the tours. We toured it twice (once with an interview there on campus) and also attended a traveling Rice info session night that came to our town. There was also some kind of live webinar that she participated in but it was mainly just questions and answers, basic stuff. On the app, they asked her to list all contacts with the university and she listed all these.
That said, there are lots of ways to demonstrate interest, and it’s unlikely that they expect visit from people OOS to the same degree that they would look for them from someone just a few hours away like us. Any kind of emails to them or speaking to a rep at an event… that’s all demonstrated interest.
I think demonstrated interest carries a decent amount of weight. There are ways to show demonstrated interest other than visits, e.g. attending Rice presentations if/when they come to your town, opening and reading emails, connecting with your regional admissions officer.