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<p>Don’t worry about being limited at Rice. Your freshman year will mostly consist of you taking basic classes like calculus and chemistry (unless you AP’ed out) and distribution courses, so you can take classes in any area of study you want to get a feel for it. I know a few people who came in wanting to be engineers who are now in the social sciences, and some aspiring doctors who switched from biochemistry to bioengineering. It’s definitely not uncommon for people to explore and change their majors accordingly.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you do find out exactly what you like early on, you can jump right in to those higher level classes. I came in intending to do civil engineering and nothing else, but realized how much I love math. I decided I wanted to take an upper level math class each semester, which will put me one class away from a math major, so as of now I’m planning a double major.</p>
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<p>That will obviously vary from student to student, but I can recall several instances where my friends and I have turned to each other and remarked on how nerdy or dorky the conversation is. People are ultimately here to learn and we all have a lot of work, so maybe a big reason you got that vibe from your visit is because we like to relax and not think about school for a while.</p>
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<p>20k a year is a lot. And yes, Chicago and Rice and both pretty damn good. But I don’t think Chicago is 20k/yr better.</p>