At this school, 52% of the students live in college-owned, -operated or -affiliated housing and 48% of students live off campus.
Cornell now has a two-year on campus residential policy:
Cornell has a 2-year residential requirement for our first-year and second-year students, including a required meal plan. Cornell implemented this requirement for all first-year students who began enrollment in the Summer of 2021 and beyond.
Studies indicate that students who live on-campus experience increased academic achievement, improved social-emotional adjustment, and develop a stronger ability to build cohesive community versus those who live off-campus during this transformative time in personal development.
This implies to me a lot of upperclass students are living off campus. As noted Ithaca is a relatively small town, though, so I suspect most are not far from campus.
Most kids move into Collegetown, which is no further away than the dorms to classes. There are a lot of new apartment buildings and houses, some restaurants ( but nothing like when I was there ) the best bagel stop anywhere, bars etc. I love Ithaca, and absolutely loved living in Collegetown about 100 years ago ;-).
For engineering I would also suggest Lehigh and UTK would be good as well, especially if your kid likes baseball.
UTC (Chattanooga) has a good engineering school too.
Not picky on size. He likes sports, and wants the typical on campus experience with lots of people around, etc. since he isn’t super extroverted, though, I have been looking for mid-sized options. We toured Rice and loved that campus. Lots of green spaces, trees, cozy feel, and also close to a big city, a plus for potential internships down the line. So something like that would be good for him.
WashU (St Louis) and Case (Cleveland) are good medium-sized “city” schools. Penn (Philly) gets varying reviews for its campus, but I personally like Philly. Northwestern has reasonable proximity to Chicago.
My son who had very similar stats didn’t apply to MIT, Caltech or CMU specifically for that reason. He wanted a “typical college experience” and didn’t feel like he would get that at those schools.
If he wants a reach that is more like that, Stanford would be a good option.
Another angle to consider: since he’s undecided about an engineering discipline and also considering business, he might want to check out the curricula for Industrial/Systems Engineering at some of the schools he’s looking at. This is still an ABET-accredited engineering degree, but it’s more business-y than other disciplines. Different departments vary in emphasis - some are more manufacturing oriented, while others lean more toward operations research (and some have multiple tracks). But it can be a great field for a student who wants an engineering foundation, but is interested in business applications. Georgia Tech has the tippy-top program in this field: Undergraduate | H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Purdue, UMich, Berkeley, Cornell, Stanford, TAMU, Clemson, USC,and Lehigh all have strong programs. (And more that I didn’t list.) Just another possibility for him to think about.
My daughter was a BioEnginnering major at Rice. Loved it and loved the BioE department. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have.
i agree with others that WashU is somewhat similar to Rice. Lots of kids apply to both. My daughter also really liked Vandervilt and Duke, though I think their cultures a bit different than Rice.
Agreed that there’s a lot of applicant-pool overlap between WashU and Rice. I think Rice also has a fair amount of overlap with schools that have “nerdier” reputations, like UChicago and Harvey Mudd. While WashU is obviously highly academic, I think it has a more mainstream social vibe, whereas Rice kind of straddles mainstream and nerdy, if that makes sense. That’s my impression, anyway.
Rice is also a great baseball school, although I’m still unclear as to whether there’s walk-on potential for this student at D1’s like Rice or only at the D3 schools. Sports fandom in general is relatively subdued for a D1 school, but baseball has historically been their strongest sport.
For what it is worth, this is also their relative reputation in our feederish HS. Not to overly trivialize, but some WashU kids might be more likely to go golfing, and some Rice kids might be more likely to play Quidditch, but they will all still happily join in a spirited Ultimate match.
That’s hilarious!! Love this description. Yes, when we visited Rice we did note the strong Harry Potter vibes, but not in a bad way. It’s kind of nerdy chic, seemed like anyhow. And their way of doing the dorms was really interesting and my son liked that aspect. So, my understanding is at Rice is somehow… sorting hat?!!.. everyone gets sorted into different dorms, each with their own unique vibes, different strengths/weaknesses, etc. and it’s kind of like a nerdy fun game. They have rivalries between different houses and field games/ days, etc. And, no Greek houses, because— why do you need that when they already have Hogwarts!!!
Overall, we liked that part. Looking for other places that have that aspect, too.
Rice for my money has one of the two best residential college systems in the country (that is the usual name for that sort of system), the other being Yale’s. It is all based on the constituent college system of places like Oxford or Cambridge, and I think the only other real rival for those two in the US is actually the Claremont Colleges.
That said, once again WashU does have a version of that–their “South 40” dorms for first years are paired up into what they call Residential Communities, or in fact sometimes Residential Colleges, and they have events and IMs and such. But it is definitely not the lifelong association thing like at Yale, Rice, Oxbridge, or so on.
There are lots of others with some elements like that. Like I know Vanderbilt has something, and while I don’t really know the details, I gather it is a milder form similar to WashU’s.
FYI, Chicago does not offer classical engineering at all, only molecular engineering which is really a subset of biology. HMC only offers general engineering, although students do have opportunities to round out that degree with some specialization.
I feel that Rice is the perfect fit for my daughter for all the reasons already cited, but she thinks it is too nerdy ( she doesn’t see herself too clearly ;-). So while I was searching for similar residential systems we looked at wash u, Vanderbilt, but also Notre Dame. Notre Dame was so much more charming than I ever expected ( as a Jew) and their residential system seemed great
Chicago has a residential college system too, although my impression is that students don’t necessarily stay as connected to the colleges after the first two years, whereas Rice students typically live off campus junior year and return as seniors, and remain actively involved in their college throughout.
And to @eyemgh’s point, yes, I wasn’t trying to say that Chicago was a comparable engineering school, just that it overlaps in terms of vibe and applicant pool. They diverge in that Chicago doesn’t have enough engineering for many students who are so inclined, whereas Rice has been accused of building its reputation primarily on engineering (and perhaps premed), more so than on humanities and social sciences, even though many of those departments are excellent.
Mudd is interesting in that it’s so STEM-focused and yet does not offer multiple disciplines of engineering except as emphases within the general engineering degree. But its grads do very well, and it could be a reasonable choice for a student who’s undecided about discipline anyway. Not much that’s “business-y” here, though, and while they definitely have varsity athletes who are able to balance sports and the extremely demanding core curriculum, it requires very good time-management to be an athlete at HMC, and a majority of teammates will be non-engineers from Claremont McKenna (and for the women’s teams, Scripps). There’s a lot of fun, Hogwart-ish dorm culture, though.
To be fair, Chicago doesn’t really have any engineering in practice, just in words. Molecular engineering is a term that applies to techniques used in multiple disciplines, rather than an engineering specialty per se. Granted, as someone who did some of this as an undergrad, I find the program to be quite interesting. I don’t think it’s what the OP is searching for.
Mudd is closer, but certainly not the typical college experience with athletics, other majors, etc, save the adjacent consortium. It’s a grind too. One of my son’s best friends is an alum, and he certainly attested to the work hard/play hard reputation.
Right, I was bringing up Chicago just as a vibe comparison, not as a suggestion to add to the list.
And I initially brought up Mudd before the OP refined her description of the “typical on campus experience” being preferred. A student with her son’s profile, on paper, could be someone who would love HMC. Seems like perhaps not in this case, though. Again, I was mostly trying to illustrate how the Rice vibe tilts in that direction.
As an overall trend, it seems as if the schools that have both strong engineering and D3 sports tend to be more “nerdy” than “mainstream.” (e.g. Mudd, Caltech, MIT, Hopkins, RPI/WPI/RIT, RHIT, UChicago, CMU, UTD…) The more “mainstream” options are more likely to be D1. So if D3+mainstream+engineering is desired, WashU seems like it’s, if not a “unicorn,” at least a little bit lonely in that sector of the Venn diagram!
