@Philery : But are you sure that Rice at the departmental level is weaker? I can maybe go take a look. I think their “atmosphere” and clear bias towards STEM (in terms of campus events, etc) would weaken your experience as a humanities/social science major while on campus. However, that does not mean that individual departments are weaker. Go and see if they appear to be doing anything special with their social sciences/humanities curriculum, what opps are there for you within those departments? The individual departments could be as strong and strong academics and opps within them plus the residential system you like. I think Rice’s residential system is quite successful in creating a strong intellectual environment even if primarily because of its size. Emory has the “pre-professional intellectual” thing happening (so Emory students like hack-a-thons, business plan competitions, entrepreneurship events, case competitions, debate competitions…basically organized braininess/intellectualism and lesser so “random” I guess). and intellectualism outside of class most definitely exists perhaps more than some of our neer peers but isn’t as organized as Rice’s is. It more so occurs via various events or co-curriculars that students decide to attend or participate in and maybe lesser so in the dorm.