<p>wes v. rice
can you help?</p>
<p>A ton of things to consider, including the fact that Rice’s sticker price is probably lower and will compete toe to toe for any student it really wants with a generous fin/aid package. Next consider the setting: Rice is just on the outskirts of Houston. It probably has one of the top two or three university Astrophysics programs in the country; the rest tof the student bdy is carved up between six different undergraduate divisions – quite a feat, considering there are only about 2,700 undergraduates in the whole place.</p>
<p>Wesleyan is a completely different animal; they once considered dividing Wesleyan undergraduates into three different “schools”: the College of Social Studies, the College of Letters something called the College of Quantitative Studies – and it just didn’t work; Wesleyan students don’t like being herded.</p>
<p>Also, going to school in Texas is a little like visiting a small country (about the size of South Africa) where there are only two centers of intellectual stimulation within 500 miles of each other (the other being UT/Austin.) Wesleyan OTOH, is surrounded by a dozen or more of some of the best known colleges and universities in the country; there is a sense that at any given moment something could start at Barnard or Columbia, work it’s way up the Atlantic Seaboard and catch on at Bowdoin at the tip of Maine; Facebook started that way. It is an intellectual and socio-political climate that simply can’t be duplicated anywhere else in the country.</p>
<p>Houston is hot and muggy; Middletown is cold and clammy for most of the winter. Spring and Autumn are pretty nice, though. Frosh housing is comparable at both places. After that it depends on who you talk to. I happen to think that Middletown is cozier and has more of an east coast neighborhood feel. The part of Houston in which Rice is located is much more isolated.</p>
<p>I would agree about the intellectual climate thing, but disagree about Rice’s location–there is a really nice residential neighborhood within walking distance of the campus (I know because my sister, a Rice prof, lives there and I’ve visited many times), and the city is also right there with museusms, a large park, and medical centers just a couple blocks away. Plus the train system is cheap/accessible. While I was turned off by the overall geographic location of Texas, the location in Houston is not at all isolated and yet doesn’t feel unsafe or urban in the traditional sense. Rice’s campus is very green, pretty, and well-maintained (well, Wesleyan’s is too!)</p>
<p>Gloaming, you’re right; I didn’t mean to imply that Rice was situated in the boondocks; there’s a mall, a zoo and some museums nearby. What I should have said, was that Houston is a big place and that to get around, especially to anything approaching a “downtown” club scene, the average Rice student would still need a car. In that same vein, a Wesleyan student would likewise need a car in order to visit downtown New Haven or Providence. The difference, which we’ve both mentioned, is that in almost every direction, Wesleyan students would bump up against an interesting and comparable college crowd.</p>
<p>I personally think Wes is better, a bit more “prestigious” since it’s part of the “Little Three” (Williams, Amherst, and Wes).</p>