UPitt Honors College or Rice University?

Question by ahc365: UPitt honors college or Rice University?
I’m planning on entering as a pre-med student majoring in chem. I’m not a huge party person but I’m still looking for a fun and friendly environment. Both schools are offering similar financial aid packages.
Which school would you recommend?
Also, how is the diversity for each school like in terms of activities and demographics (I’m an asian from new jersey)?

any available insight would be greatly appreciated.

Best answer:

Answer by SMUBoy14
Hi, I’m hear to help you decide which college to choose: UPitt honors or Rice University.

First, let me talk about Rice because it’s the school I know the most information about. Rice is located in Houston, Texas. The weather is therefore hot, humid, and the rains are sometimes rather heavy–flooding is not uncommon on campus. However, its a top notch school with superior caliber when it comes to academics. Rice is quickly being recognized as an emerging global leader for innovation and talent. Any field you choose from Rice will be taught very well, from distinguished educators, and a loving environment to thrive. The school’s size is small at only 300 acres and about 3,400 undergraduates. Still, the residential college system Rice has eliminates the Greek system altogether and focuses on “colleges” instead that students live for most, if not all, of their time at Rice. This system builds the necessary friendship that can sometimes isolate those in other colleges between those in fraternities/sororities and those who aren’t. The pre-med program is a broad and general program for everybody that is interested in the medical field. Instead of focusing on technical programs, Rice encourages students who follow the pre-med track to fulfill the basic requirements and then broaden their interests to a major not necessarily connected to medicine. For example, you might want to become a pediatrician and therefore will follow the pre-med track. However, Rice strongly encourages you to major in something outside of the medical field such as philosophy or economics, provided you fulfill the basic pre-med requirements as well. Thus, Rice discourages you from majoring in the commonly sought after biology, chemistry, biochemistry, etc majors where competition is extremely fierce when it comes to acceptance for medical school.

The Rice campus is gorgeous with many renovations and new buildings being added to the campus. Mostly everything you could desire is inside campus: recreation center to workout, wide variety of food choices, excellent music program where you can hear concerts from music majors, and much more. I highly encourage you to consider Rice for your undergraduate degree especially if you are already accepted. This is because it’s not easy to get accepted to Rice and if you did get accepted, its because you are an excellent student that Rice would really like to have. The only potential downside to Rice is that you are not accustomed to the environment of Texas. I’m not sure how you would react to the weather or other perks of the great Lone Star State. If you haven’t already, take a weekend stay at Rice and have a feel for it. If you like it, then by all means go to Rice!!

UPitt I know very little about. I’m not going to lie. All I know is that it is closer to where you live and therefore wouldn’t be that big of a jump for you as opposed to going to Texas. It’s a respected university as well and has excellent academic programs. The undergraduate population is just over 18,000 so I’m not sure if you would mind the giant class size. At Rice, few classes are packed with 50+ students but UPitt might be another story. Would you like more personal attention or just another student? Lastly, I don’t know the the party atmosphere for UPitt but I know that Rice is known for having parties just about every weekend starting as early as Thursday. Rice also has a very lenient drinking policy so alcohol is abundant. This fact, however, doesn’t mean that Rice is full of drunken idiots but rather that it’s not as close-minded as other colleges because in the end, you know college students drink one way or another. Rice just takes it into their own hands.

I hope the information I provided helped you. Best of luck deciding!!

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