Rice University announces tuition for fall 2017

Undergraduate tuition at Rice University for the 2017-18 school year will be $44,900, an increase of $1,680 from the current year. The total cost, which includes $13,850 for room and board and $708 in mandatory fees, will rise 3.1 percent to $59,458.

The university will enhance the financial aid budget by more than 4 percent to help meet the increased cost of attendance, including additional resources for other costs, such as books, personal expenses and travel.

Rice values economic diversity and seeks out qualified applicants from low-income families. About 55 percent of all undergraduate students at Rice receive some form of financial aid through a combination of scholarships, loans and work-study programs. Undergraduates who receive federal Pell Grants — currently about 14 percent of the population — tend to have more than 85 percent of their tuition, fees, room and board covered by their financial aid packages.

Rice is often cited as one of the country’s “best value” private schools because its tuition tends to be lower than at peer research universities and its financial aid policy is reviewed annually to keep its high-quality education affordable to students from a variety of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. For example, Rice replaces federal loan requirements with scholarship grants for students who qualify for need-based aid and whose annual family income is no more than $80,000. Other students who have demonstrated financial need are not required to take out more than a total of $10,000 in federal loans for their four undergraduate years at Rice.

“Rice is committed to investing in the faculty, programs and facilities that distinguish it as one of the country’s premier research universities, but we are equally committed to ensuring that its educational experience is accessible to students from all walks of life,” President David Leebron said. “We are proud to be one of the most diverse institutions of its kind in the country across a wide array of factors, including racial, socio-economic, geographic and cultural. That in itself contributes to the depth of the student experience.”

Money magazine ranks Rice No. 4 on its current list of best colleges. Rice is ranked No. 6 on Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine’s 2017 list of best values among private universities and has placed among Kiplinger’s top 10 best values for private schools since the rankings began in 1999. The 2017 edition of the Princeton Review’s “Colleges That Pay You Back” guidebook ranks Rice No. 13 on the basis of academic quality, college cost and alumni’s salaries. Niche.com ranks Rice No. 14 on its list of the Best Value Colleges in America.

“Rice’s appearance on multiple best-value lists, its No. 15 ranking among national universities by U.S. News and World Report and its No. 1 ranking for happiest students and lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review are strong indicators that students who come to Rice are not just getting a great deal financially but also in terms of the quality of education and experience,” said Chris Muñoz, vice president for enrollment.

Last year Rice became one of the 30 founding members of the American Talent Initiative, an organization devoted to expanding access to higher education among talented students from lower-income families.

Graduate education costs for 2017-18 vary for different programs. Tuition for most doctoral students will increase 3.9 percent to $44,900. Tuition for graduate students in architecture will be $31,100. Tuition for graduate students in music will be $28,000. Tuition for students entering the professional master’s programs will be $33,000 for global affairs, $38,000 for natural sciences, $44,000 for engineering and $54,000 for energy economics. Tuition will be $55,500 for students in the full-time MBA program at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Tuition for other Jones School programs will be $105,500 for the Weekend MBA for Professionals, $101,500 for the Evening MBA for Professionals, $120,000 for the Executive MBA and $51,500 for the Master of Accounting.

More than 400 returning Rice students will have financial aid packages available to them online the afternoon of March 1, due to the earlier availability of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and College Scholarship Service (CSS) Profile. “Normally, returning students would not have packages ready until June,” said Anne Walker, director of the Office of Financial Aid. “We notified students that if they completed their paperwork by Feb. 1, we would have packages for them in March. We know that some students might have questions, and we will respond to questions about packages after we finish processing the new freshman class. We will begin answering emailed questions starting May 1.”

For more information on Rice, visit www.rice.edu. For information about financial aid programs and to apply, see www.futureowls.rice.edu.