"high school never ends"

I've noticed UT feels a lot like high school. Not academically, but in the social environment. To put it a little differently, take Rice: it's been described as being a school for all the kids who weren't cool in high school. All the nerds and geeks and such suddenly congregate together in this safe haven, and voila! a new social order is born. Suddenly, it's alright to suck at sports, to really enjoy learning, to have weird random hobbies, to be different.

Admittedly, this wasn't perfect. Rice would probably be perfect for someone who is really enthusiastic, outgoing, a little geeky/nerdy/quirky/etc. However, though these kids fit in at Rice, others often didn't - for example, I know that a lot of athletes felt out of place because they were different from most of the Rice population. Different senses of humor. Different goals in life. Different worldviews and senses of fun. However, in my opinion, the people at Rice tried to reach out to everyone, and even if the athletes didn't fit in, I've seen students trying to reach out and befriend them, talk to them. The atmosphere at Rice felt, for the first time for me, welcoming.

UT is not Rice. If Rice is welcoming, open-minded idealism, UT seems more like efficient, result-driven pragmatism. Example: Rice has no business major and emphasizes research heavily. Even its engineering program is criticized for not exposing students to "real-world" materials by focusing too much on a theory-heavy curriculum. I get the impression that some Rice students would balk at the idea of "schmoozing", resume-padding, and getting a job through connections as opposed to merit. (For the nerdy reader) I get the impression that at Rice, it was OK to write code in Matlab, because it was for *research* and didn't have to have a specific industry application. None of these impressions strike me as being true for UT.

The reason I think this is a problem goes back to the types of people who are at Rice. You didn't often find mean or cold people; you didn't often get the impression that people would step all over each other for. I'm not saying I find that here at UT, but unlike Rice, I hear premed stories where students are so cutthroat towards each other that I'd fear any of them becoming doctors. And most unlike Rice, I don't see a welcoming hand extended from people towards others below them. I'm sure this happened at Rice too, but I feel like it's much more common at UT for an IM basketball team to make fun of their opponents if they're winning. There's a lot less good sportsmanship, and in general respect for others than I'd like here.

Perhaps I'm just glamorizing Rice too much. I loved it there, and felt like I was really a part of Rice. I feel kind of like I'm just at UT; it hasn't especially welcomed or taken me in, and I haven't really invested myself in it. Maybe UT is just a large school and I haven't found the right sorts of people yet. Perhaps it's just a matter of examining how I perceived things at Rice psychologically. Whichever it is, though I'm glad to be at UT, I miss Rice.

Footnote: "High School Never Ends" is a song by Bowling for Soup. It's pretty funny.