Best school ever!

Introduction
If you're not the sort of person who likes working hard, don't bother applying to Rice. You won't get in, anyway. Rice students work. They have plenty of fun, too, just like anyone else, but work always comes first.

Classes won't be easy at Rice, even if they were easy in high school. No matter how great you think you are, remember that everyone at Rice kicked butt in high school, and many people have to get used to being in the middle of the (extremely talented) pack. You get to feel smart again after you leave, especially since you'll have gotten one of the best undergraduate educations available, but you really have to earn your degree. There is no skating by, especially in any class populated by premeds. (*Everything* you have ever heard about premeds is true in spades. This is a warning.) When you finish at Rice, you will feel that you accomplished something. Your degree will have meaning. You will be proud, and with good reason.

Rice is for serious people, and I love it.

Campus Life and Social Life
You don't even have to know how to play to find a nice campus sports team, even though a few of them get taken pretty seriously. The most famous example of this is the women's intramural flag football, called Powderpuff. Everyone loves it. More people care about it than care about the varsity men's football team.

There are plenty of parties, most of which have themes. The best part of the year is Archi Arts, a spring costume ball, but there is something for everyone. This is doubly true if you like drinking, because alcohol is allowed on campus.

Weekends are great, but you'll need to set aside enough time for homework if you want to make the grade. At Rice, you compete against the best, so you have to act like you're competing against the best. Advertisement
Academics
The workload is heavy. Expect to study hard and still end up with a C from time to time. Expect your talents not to go to waste. You'll go through many sleepless nights, many soul-crunching exams, and many nervous presentations, and in the end, you'll have a degree into which you'll have invested yourself. Rice is not for the faint of heart, but that means you'll feel that much better about finishing here.

The professors don't want to see you fail. Most of them will talk to you whenever you want. A few look mildly intimidating, but those are often the nicest. Usually, you can chat up a professor any time you want. If you ask really nicely, you might even get to help that professor with his or her research. Undergraduate research is the rule, not the exception, at Rice, at least in the sciences

You'll hardly see any TAs in the classrooms. When you do see them, they're just there to lead study sessions or help with laboratory sections. (Or, alas, grade homework. Poor grad students.) Most of them speak good English, but you don't need to listen to them anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Student Body
There is no typical Rice demographic. About the only things students at Rice have in common are talent, intelligence, and work ethic. Houston is already a very diverse city (for which it does not receive nearly enough credit), and Rice is even moreso than the surrounding city. Expect to meet all sorts of interesting people from all over the country and the world.

In Closing...
Going to Rice for my undergraduate work was the best thing I ever did. I recommend it, but only for the serious student.

Rigor is good, people. You're applying to a university, not a clown college.

Also, there is no "Greek Life" at Rice, per se. There are no exclusive fraternities, but everyone gets sorted (randomly) into a sort of British Residential College system, which works like a combination of a dorm and a frat and a family and a bunch of other good things all rolled into one.