I've been accepted into both schools. I've already visited Rice and will visit UChicago soon.
I applied to rice for engineering, and to UChicago as a math major, but I'm hardly committed to either of these. I've narrowed down my career possibilities a little bit (something involving math and science), but I'm undecided beyond that. I'm not even sure if I want to go into academia or the professional world.
All that indecision would probably make it seem like UChicago would be a good place to go, but I'm concerned that, should I eventually discover that engineering is truly my thing, I'll be stuck. From what I've heard, it is much easier to go from engineering to another field than to go from another field to engineering.
But I'm similarly worried that, if I attend Rice, I'll lose the chance to be exposed to a variety of fields and inevitably end up at least doing something very close to engineering - something that UChicago might have been better for.
On the other hand, Rice is about $2k cheaper a year. I have family that live near Rice, which comforts my parents. And as far as I can tell, Rice is almost as good/as good as Chicago for most of the sciences.
(There was a similar thread posted a couple of years back but I wanted to see if the general consensus has changed^)
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