The Party School for Nerds

Introduction
First off - on the Rice application, don't put rice in the box where it directs you to fill it in with something that appeals to you. Its not that original, and it gets the admissions office all messy. Anyway, on whether or not to apply to Rice: don't think that you won't get in because you don't have perfect grades or test scores. Rice admits alot of students that aren't necessarily straight A students, they look for all different kinds of intelligence.
I chose Rice because it was the best school that I got into, and I knew that going to such a high caliber school would challenge me. Unlike high school where I was relatively high in my class, I'd be surrounded by kids just like me.
Students that should stay away are kids that just can't be bothered about academics. Although there is more to Rice than just studying, students here are definitely passionate about what they are pursuing, and are all intelligent in their own way.

Campus Life and Social Life
There's not a whole lot during the week. There's study breaks with free food during the week, and a lot of random lectures and speakers. Weekends start on Thursday with pub nights at Willy's Pub. On the weekends there's usually one or two big public parties at different colleges, and more kids end up going to the private parties in the rooms than the actual public party. There's some cool themes - Night of Decadence, Casino Night, Hell Night, Carnival Night, Pirate Booty, Bacchanalia, etc. Every college has a few traditional parties that they throw every year. There's a lot of sports games, and they usually give away free stuff like shirts and food to get kids to come, and the big games are pretty fun and social.
There's a ton of clubs on campus, but almost no members.

So weekends can either be tame or can really be crazy. There's not a whole lot to do off campus if you're under 21, although there's a clubbing district a few stops away on the metrorail, and of course the zoo, the park, and museums nearby. Advertisement
Academics
Rice is an academically challenging school, and it shows in the courseload students are expected to take. Most colleges expect students to take a max of 12 hours per semester, but at Rice the max is 20, and you'll have to take either 15 or 18 hours several semesters to graduate in 4 years. There are easy classes which you can take for distribution (known as the athlete classes) but once you get into your major you're going to be challenged. If you need help from a professor, you have to seek it out yourself, they aren't going to come to you or baby you, even if you're a freshmen. TA's vary from class to class. The amount of homework depends alot on what kind of student you are (do you do all the recommended homework, or only the required? Do you do it on time, or at the last minute?) and if you just want to pass the class, or ace it. If I stay on top of my work and do about an hour or two a day, it doesnt pile up very badly and I can stay on top of things. Also, there's a difference between the work for Academs and S/Es. Academs are humanities majors - English, history, languages, philosophy, etc. S/Es are science & engineering majors, and they generally have more work like problem sets and labs, whereas Academs have a ton of reading and lots of papers. Depending on what comes easier to you, your workload can be really manageable or awful and time consuming.

Student Body
There are a lot of students from Texas, and a lot of science/math type people. They try to sell Rice as being well rounded in all academic areas, but the academs at least feel like a minority. It's a very white, lower/middle/upper middle class student body. The typical student is probably a slightly nerdy engineering major from somewhere in the south, who works non stop during the week and plays beer pong during the weekends. Drinking is a major social activity at Rice that almost everyone participates in, to some degree.

In Closing...
Rice is a really awesome school for kids that like to either work hard/party harder or party hard/work harder. I think that if you like to be academically challenged and want a degree from a really respected institution, but you don't want to sacrifice fun and a social life, Rice is the place. It's not a stuffy formal university, there are a ton of quirky traditions that really attracted me to college. There's our marching band - the MOB - that doesn't march, Willy Week where we celebrate the founder's birthday with chugging/biking races, the residential college system, and of course the belief that Harvard is the Rice of the Northeast.