<p>“February, March and April are usually glorious – low humidity, lots of sunshine, temps in the 60’s and 70’s.” </p>
<p>I think I just decided to go to Rice…</p>
<p>Seriously.</p>
<p>I feel so spoiled by Texas weather… even though it’s starting to get humid and the pollen allergies are bothersome, I freak out whenever the weather is 50’s or below. Haha.</p>
<p>thats my favorite weather. I like it in the 50’s and 60’s</p>
<p>ah well. but yes, Jan Feb and March are nice. April is already in the 80’s</p>
<p>
Check out North Carolina weather first. I was born and raised in NC, and the weather there is amazing. It’s usually quite warm by March, and even some odd days in January and February are shorts/sandals-appropriate.</p>
<p>I’m sure NC has great weather too! But I’m deciding between Rice, Wash U and NU. Rice is the obvious choice if I were to decide solely on the weather. Now this is slightly off topic, but someone was saying that Houston is in the 80’s by April. And even hotter come May. I can’t sleep very well when it is really hot inside, so are the air conditioners in the dorms effective? Do they keep it down to 70-75 degrees or so?</p>
<p>^ I’m pretty sure everyone controls the temperature in their room (own thermostats). Except for maybe the suites, where there might be 1 for 2 rooms or something like that…</p>
<p>We all control our own rooms. In my suite we have different controls for each of our bedrooms and our common room. I don’t know if this is how it is in all the suites though.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m pretty sure in the 6-man at Jones there are two controls, each controlling 3 rooms. Either…way…there is plenty of air conditioning to go around!</p>
<p>Nice. I love the feeling of walking into an air-conditioned room after some exercise in the hot outdoors! I’ve had plenty of friends warn me that Houston is super hot and muggy, but I don’t see any reason to be turned away, especially since the winters are pretty mild. And with AC, I don’t think I would have any problem at all!</p>
<p>Last day of finals this year is April 29th so May weather will be irrelevant.</p>
<p>I actually wear a sweatshirt in the room when it’s 80 outside. My roommates keep the AC at 68… and trust me, it definitely stays there if you want it to.</p>
<p>i had a roommate do that as well. He kept it at 60… <em>gaaaaaaaaa</em></p>
<p>To the OP, I think the Rice people here are unfairly stereotyping the Duke social life. Duke as a whole is very accepting and a generally inclusive place.</p>
<p>That being said, there are people who care about social status at Duke just like there is anywhere else. I’m sure places like Rice and Yale are more inclusive but they don’t prepare you well for the real world.</p>
<p>Whether you will accept it or not, there is a clearly established social ladder in the real world. There’s a reason Duke graduates perform on par with schools that are slightly more well-known like Columbia and Princeton. It’s because they are intelligent, extroverted, aggressive and strong-willed.</p>
<p>If you are a really shy person, then I would say you need a place like Duke much more than a regular person would. It will give you a world-class education and turn you into a more well-rounded person as well.</p>
<p>Challenge yourself and learn to embrace the true meaning of diversity. There is no better microcosm of the real world in my opinion than Duke. Come to Duke and you will leave a much better person as a whole. Trust me.</p>
<p>Weather: All of the buildings (including dorms) at Rice are air conditioned. Not the case at Duke.</p>
<p>ring<em>of</em>fire: So, basically what you’re saying is, “Life sucks, so does Duke, so you should come here.” Actually, I’m not going to set up a straw man like that. But your rhetoric bothers me. A lot. “The true meaning of diversity”? What the christ is that supposed to mean? I’ve seen some of your other posts where you rag on the idea of prestige, but the language of your post sounds like you’re all about prestige, status, etc.</p>
<p>awe ****, don’t fight! Both are great schools.
I am not shy so I don’t “need” Duke to see the real world.
I just came back from visiting both schools, and I liked Rice a lot better socially. I felt entirely at home there. I would def. go to Rice if i were an engineer; however, the disparity between their econ departments became painfully clear when I sat in on classes and looked at ratemyprofessor.com (ha, ha) So I’m basically deciding between strong academics and happiness. This is tough. Or I could just switch into engineering.</p>
<p>waesei: Go to rice!! I got into WashU and NU too, and quickly realized they weren’t nearly as awesome. Unless you want to do humanities. Someone at Rice told me that an English major = B.A. in building a tolerance for alcohol.</p>
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</p>
<p>This is a very legitimate concern… HOWEVER, I just want to point out the indisputable fact that the vast majority (~80-90%) of people change their majors at least once during college.</p>
<p>I went to Rice as a pre-med Mathematical Economic Analysis major, but the beginning of this semester didn’t think I was cut out for medical school (something about white lab coats and test tubes just makes me miserable, I’m definitely not a science person), and so I changed my major to History and Statistics and now will aim for law school, which I feel like is more in tune with my writing and communication abilities.</p>
<p>And even now I cannot guarantee you I will stay at these two majors (I’m actually considering going back to MTEC), but the fall semester taught me a lot about myself and what kind of profession I’d like to go into and really finding my passion (I love history!). College is all about exploring your interests to find out what you really want to do in life - other than very single-minded people determined to be doctors or engineers and so forth, a lot of people really don’t know what they want to do with their lives. College is the time for them to figure it out.</p>
<p>So don’t choose schools based on majors - in your case, if you felt more at home at Rice, go to Rice! If you go to Duke and then find out your heart really isn’t in economics, then that’s your loss of losing the chance to be happy at Rice where you “felt entirely at home.” Choose the place where you can easily envision yourself for the next four years.</p>
<p>It is very unusual for students to stick with the same major that they wrote down on their college application for all four years of college - taking interesting classes and being open-minded to new topics and engaging classes might pique your interest in 20th century presidents or social psychology (or insert another non-major related course/elective here), for example, even if you plan to major in economics. You really don’t know what will happen, so I’d really emphasize choosing schools based on ‘fit’ rather than on majors, as something tells me you most likely won’t be remain gung-ho about economics all four years.</p>
<p>Also, there are a lot of other factors that will influence your decision to major in one thing or another - what your friends are doing, the vast undergraduate research opportunities available, and inspirational and dynamic professors, for a start. :)</p>
<p>Duke and Rice are both great schools…</p>
<p>Visit both and see which is more suited for you</p>
<p>Main differences I can see are:</p>
<p>Social Life: Duke has a Greek system (Frats and Sororities) while Rice does not</p>
<p>Academics: Both are great academically… that should not be a prob</p>
<p>Reputation: Duke has more layman prestige as most don’t know about Rice (Because most don’t really like Texas) but for jobs and higher educated people there isn’t a big difference… both are well known academically</p>
<p>^I did. So I guess it’s Rice :]</p>
<p>TheFutureIsHere:</p>
<p>Firstly, I agree completely hotasice. Chances are you will indeed change your major.</p>
<p>Furthermore, know that Rice students rarely/never use ratemyprofessors.com because we have our own internal professor ratings system on ESTHER that is much more detailed and helpful.</p>
<p>Moving on to your econ “dilemma,” Alexandre, a CC Super Moderator, says, “I don’t think you can rank undergraduate Economics departments. In terms of overall quality, Rice’s Economics department is not quite among the very best (Columbia, Cornell, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn, UCLA etc…), but it is still excellent (on par with Georgetown, Vanderbilt and WUSTL).”</p>
<p>Rice econ is very good. It’s actually really tough, and the Mathematical Economic Analysis program is one of very few in the entire country. In fact, ECON 211 (the intro course) is probably one of the most infamous courses in the entire School of Social Sciences… I know many econ majors who were forced to drop out and retake it the following semester because it was that challenging. Sure, you may not want to go to Rice for a MA or PhD in Econ, but it’s very very very solid and well-respected for undergrad, as are any top universities. There’s a reason why non pre-professional undergraduate programs are ranked, and that’s because schools of similar caliber (like Rice and Duke) provide similar educations in these disciplines: the differences between them are too small to quantify into discrete “ranks.”</p>
<p>As a recent graduate of Rice’s Econ department, I’d like to offer a few words:</p>
<p>Classes and students within the econ department vary widely. If you’re really careful and choose the right professors and classes, it’s probably possible to slide by without too much work and achieve moderate grades. </p>
<p>There are some students who take this path - Econ is one of the most popular majors at Rice among athletes, some of whom aren’t quite as serious about academics as the average student at Rice (not to disparage all athletes at Rice, the majority are just as serious about their classes as the non-athletes and truly impress me with their ability to juggle their practice and travel schedules with a challenging academic schedule …but they tend to be dispersed over all of the departments at Rice, while the majority of the less academically-intense concentrate in Economics and Kinesiology.). There are also quite a few people who pick up Econ as a second major and try to seek out the easiest classes as a break from the classes in their other major. And some of the professors are known for being relatively easy graders.</p>
<p>So you aren’t required to do that much to get an economics major. If I remember correctly, only 30 hours are required for the major - and there are a few additional math classes that you need to take as prerequisites. That works out to 10 classes, or 1 per semester, doubling up with two classes for two semesters. There’s also a mathematical economic analysis major, which is a little bit more quantitatively based, has more classes required, and is considered more challenging.</p>
<p>That leaves a lot of room to play around. You can take your 10 classes and be done with it, or you can follow most of the econ students and do a bit more. I came close to doubling the number of required economics classes (I was at over 50 hours) because I loved them so much. You can also add in some great classes from other departments, such as computational and applied mathematics (I didn’t myself just because I didn’t know that much about it, but now really wish that I had) or statistics that will leave you with a great quantitative background that will put you in an excellent position for either grad school or a number of jobs. </p>
<p>So to sum it up - yes, you can slip through and have a mediocre education in economics, but you can also get an amazing one.</p>