Based in Houston, Texas, Rice University has carved out an enviable niche as a prestigious mid-sized research university. The campus is 300 acres, yet urban, also known as the best of both worlds. Students flock to Rice for research opportunities, business, and a legacy with Nasa that sets it apart. The acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was 7.8%. This was a higher acceptance rate than in recent years, but only by a few fractions of a percentage point. The small increase is attributable to the fact that the Class of 2029 marked the end of a multi-year plan to increase the student body by 20%, and should not be expected to be an ongoing trend.
Rice believes in standardized tests, but they don’t require them. To use their own words, “Rice recommends first-year and transfer student applicants to undergraduate degree-seeking programs to submit SAT or ACT test scores, if available.” However, “students who are unable to submit test scores or prefer not to submit test scores will be given full consideration in the admission selection process.” To sum it up, the admissions team at Rice sees standardized tests as a useful measure of an applicant’s readiness for college and nearly 70% of recently accepted and enrolled first years submitted scores. This is why we encourage students to submit a score to Rice unless they fall well under the middle 50% scores for recently accepted students (SAT: 1540, ACT: 35). They do not consider the writing section for either the SAT or ACT. They do superscore, taking the highest score from each section.
In this post, we’ll be focused on the unquantifiable aspects of your application, though. The Rice supplement offers an opportunity to show who you are beyond the numbers, immersing the reader in what truly makes you special.
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The Rice supplement isn’t onerously long, but it is in-depth. With three questions and the famous “Box,” the Rice supplement asks for a fair bit of your time but also offers ample opportunity to spotlight different sides of yourself. Now, let’s dig into it.
The Rice supplement offers you the opportunity to share more about yourself. This is your chance to tell us why you are interested in Rice and what you would like to pursue as a student here. We also want you to elaborate on your experiences and achievements to share what you would bring to our community.
PROMPT 1: Please explain why you wish to study in the academic areas you selected. 150 word limit.
This supplement (like the next, for the record) is short — very short. You only have 150 words, or about one fleshed out paragraph. That means that this supplement is all about efficiency, but you don’t want to be so efficient that your answer loses soul. They don’t just want to know the what, but also the why.
To do this, start with a story. This story should introduce the reader to the what through the why. We coach our students through developing a short vignette or scene that makes the reader feel connected to them as a student of the subject you want to study, and ideally not only in the classroom. We love stories that pull you out of the structure of school and show you engaging with the subject you want to pursue in the real world, or through an extracurricular.
Once you’ve set up the supplement, you need to go into some detail. What exactly do you want to study? And where do you see it taking you in the future? Slip in at least one detail about the program at Rice so that the application readers can tell that you’ve taken the time to make sure that what Rice offers is exactly what you are looking for.
Close by reframing the opening story and envisioning yourself at Rice.
PROMPT 2: Based upon your exploration of Rice University, what elements of the Rice experience appeal to you? 150 word limit.
This prompt isn’t only academic, but you are also applying to college to go to school. So, while you might love a particular aspect of the social life or residential communities, we don’t love that as a focus for this response. We also aren’t fans of listing a bunch of things you like and cramming them into this 150-word supplement.
When you work on answering this prompt, we recommend picking one academic aspect and one community aspect to focus in on. Each of these could have multiple avenues for exploration and experience within them, but they don’t have to. Being focused allows you to go into detail about why these things are important to you, going beyond a surface-level rundown that doesn’t tell them anything meaningful about you.
PROMPT 3: Please respond to one of the following prompts to explore how you will contribute to the Rice community:
For the third prompt, you have two options. The word count for each is 500 words, and consider each one — even if one of them immediately jumps out at you. Sometimes, your best option isn’t the one you’re most excited about on first read.
Option 1: The Residential College System is at the heart of Rice student life and is heavily influenced by the particular cultural traditions and unique life experiences each student brings. What life experiences and/or unique perspectives are you looking forward to sharing with fellow Owls in the residential college system? 500 word limit.
We love this prompt because it allows you to focus on something small and meaningful. This is not the place to try to mention awards or recognitions, or even to focus on leadership (most of the time). Instead, we encourage our students to commit to a supplement that is much more personal, without overlapping at all with your main college essay.
But what do we mean when we say small and meaningful? We love when students answer this prompt with a story that focuses on culture and community, whether that’s celebrating a meaningful holiday that you could share with your peers or giving back to those around you in a small, daily way that makes a big difference in people’s day.
Say you have mowed your elderly neighbors’ lawns since freshman year of high school, and now are looking for someone to take up the job as you move away for college. You could write about how small things can have big impacts, and envision what that might look like at Rice.
Remember that you have 500 words to work with, so you have the space to tell a fully-fleshed out story with a strong narrative. Use them all.
Option 2: Rice is strengthened by its diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders and change agents across the spectrum of human endeavor. What perspectives shaped by your background, experiences, upbringing, and/or cultural identity inspire you to join our community of change agents at Rice? 500 word limit.
Your other option for this supplement prompt is also focused on community, and the only notable difference is that instead of focusing on the residential system you are invited to focus on service, advocacy, or leadership. Really, they aren’t that different, though — especially in approach. What you need to do is to tell a story. A focused story, a detailed story, and a story that connects with the application readers on a deeper level than, say, a transcript can.
The ’trap’ in this prompt, though, is that some students read it as a hardship test. It is not, for the record, a hardship test. Being the person who has faced the most does not get you into Rice. Being someone who contributes, however, does. We encourage students who want to write in response to this prompt to focus on an aspect of their life as the ‘frame’ for the essay, but to center the essay on a way that they’ve taken control and supported others in doing the same. You need to the be the protagonist of the essay, so put yourself in the driver’s seat.
Rice Box
One of Rice's long-standing traditions is “The Box,” a question on our application where we ask all of our applicants to share an image of something that appeals to them. The Box gives you the opportunity to present us with an image that shares something about yourself, your interests or what is meaningful to you. This image is not used for evaluative purposes in the application, but allows you to put your stamp on the application about who you are aside from what you have achieved. Be sure to choose an image that speaks for itself and does not need an explanation. The Box must be a two-dimensional image that is uploaded in the Common Application or uploaded in the Rice Admission Student Portal.
The Box can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. The secret to is to not be too clever. Instead, use this space to give visual to something you’ve written about elsewhere. Don’t overthink it, and a simple, clean vibe is best. If you happen to shoot film, go with that and scan it in to upload. We don’t mean a video, though. They only want one, single image in two-dimensional format.
The Rice supplement is exciting to us because it gives you room to be yourself. Lean into that opportunity and have fun with it while telling your story.
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