Vantaggi
Funding was not an issue for graduate school, 100% of graduate students in my department received funding and tuition coverage. The classes were intimate and the faculty seemed to care immensely about the students. I was happy about my graduate experience overall. The culture at Rice was unique and very welcoming.
Svantaggi
As a graduate student, I can say there was a great divide be undergraduates and graduates. The undergrads tended to have a privileged attitude that I did not appreciate. Additionally, the honor code system is ridiculous and makes it very easy for the undergrads to cheat and not be held accountable. As an individual who would like to uphold academic integrity, I have had experiences that makes me doubt the integrity of the system. For example, issues like plagiarism and cheating are not handled in a way acceptable by most university standards (i.e., students can write notes on hands prior to test, and that is deemed OK by honor code standards... very strange and disturbing).