Some research universities take a scattershot approach: they take as many students as they can in order to have the resources to attack big scale research projects by sheer weight of numbers.
Rice University has taken the opposite approach. It only has 643 full-time, 136 part-time, and 147 adjunct faculty. This small faculty teaches a modest 3,920 undergraduate and 2,567 graduate students in just eight schools.
But despite being one of the smaller schools in the top 100, Rice is still an elite research university. Ninety-seven percent of the full-time faculty have a terminal degree in their field.
The students enjoy their instruction with an impressive 6:1 student-to-faculty ratio, with an average class size of just 14. Moreover, only one out of every 16 applicants is accepted.
Those who do find a place at Rice enjoy an endowment of $772,147 per full-time student. The university spends $94 million each year on research.
Unlike many schools, Rice opens research opportunities to undergraduates, 67 percent of whom participate in research before graduating.
