Rice University announces tuition for fall 2015

Undergraduate tuition at Rice University for the 2015-16 school year will be $41,560, up from $39,880 for the current year. The total cost will be $55,903, an increase of 3.59 percent over the current year, and includes $13,650 for room and board and $693 in mandatory fees.

Rice’s tuition tends to be about $5,000 less than rates at peer research universities, and freshmen entering Rice who qualify for need-based aid and whose annual family income is $80,000 or less are not required to take out loans to pay for their education. In addition,  other freshmen who have demonstrated financial need are not required to take out more than a total of $10,000 in loans for their four undergraduate years at Rice.

Rice’s need-blind admission policy ensures that students’ academic qualifications for admission are reviewed without any consideration of their financial situation. Nearly 60 percent of all undergraduate students at Rice receive some form of financial aid through a combination of scholarship grants, loans and work-study programs, and more than 15 percent of undergraduates receive federal Pell Grants.

Rice President David Leebron said the university has launched a fundraising effort called the “Initiative for Students” that, among other goals, aims to bring in an additional $100 million for student financial assistance. “This initiative will allow us to continue our need-blind admissions policy and the generous financial aid packages that make that possible long into the future,” he said. “The goal is to keep the opportunity of a Rice education available and accessible to qualified students from a wide variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds and to make their education here even more fulfilling with additional experiential programs, internships and mentorships.”

A new guidebook published by the Princeton Review ranks Rice University No. 12 among the top 50 “Colleges That Pay You Back” on the basis of academic quality, college cost and postcollege income potential. Rice is ranked No. 4 on Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine’s 2015 list of best values among private universities and has placed among Kiplinger’s top five private best values since the rankings began in 1999, when Rice was No. 1.

“Rice consistently ranks highly as a best value because of the high quality of education and the generous financial aid the university offers.”

“Rice consistently ranks highly as a best value because of the high quality of education and the generous financial aid the university offers,” said Chris Muñoz, vice president for enrollment. “Student surveys by the Princeton Review also consistently rank Rice highly for quality of life and happiest students, so a Rice education is a wise investment for multiple reasons.”

Tuition for most doctoral students will increase 4.21 percent to $41,560. Tuition for graduate students in music and architecture will be $26,950 and $30,200, respectively. Tuition for students entering the professional master’s programs will be $30,000 for natural sciences, $35,000 for engineering, $32,000 for global affairs and $50,000 for energy economics. For students in the full-time MBA program at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, tuition will be $51,400. Tuition for other Jones School programs will be $99,000 for the MBA for Professionals, $95,500 for the Evening MBA for Professionals and $111,000 for the Executive MBA.

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