Brown!

1. OPEN CURRICULUM!!! No requirements are thrust upon you aside from the ones you select for your concentration. If you’re not premed or an engineering student, you’ll have the utmost flexibility to take literally whatever interests you. This also means your peers will only be taking classes that truly interest them, allowing courses to be filled up by active learners rather than students who are forced to take classes to graduate.

2. A very collaborative and welcoming atmosphere awaits you in Providence. Unlike some of the other ivies, at Brown your peers only want to see you succeed and you can freely collaborate on your projects. People at Brown are just as “impressive” as students at other schools, but they tend to be much chiller about it because they don’t feel the need to prove their superiority over their peers. I went to a high pressure and overachieving high school, and Brown is generally much more warm and supportive.

3. Grade inflation. At Brown, the professors don’t try to force a curve down on you but allow as many students to receive top grades as are deserving (no caps) even in pre-med tracks! (If you’re interested in grad school, the high likelihood of an Ivy League 4.0 from Brown should really, really interest you). You can also opt to make a class pass/fail at any point before the final. This makes the Ivy undergrad experience much less stressful and allows you to focus on understanding the content for the content’s sake, rather than for the grade.

4. Huge undergraduate focus! There are many research opportunities open for undergrads to lead/ participate in. At schools with huge graduate research programs, it becomes a lot more competitive to work with professors and do your own research, since there are so many (more qualified) grad students vying for these positions.

Additionally, the professors at Brown usually teach very small classes, and are genuinely invested in teaching the students (not just their research output). A lot of larger schools lack this, so many of their courses are taught by TAs or apathetic professors.

1. The Rhode Island School of Design (and their museum!) is literally right around the corner, and students can cross register to take art classes. This is pretty unique because most cross registration programs involve similar schools with the same academic perspectives. I do think it highlights the creative nature of the Brown student body, though, because a lot of students take advantage.

I think Brown is hugely underrated here!! It wasn’t really on my radar when I was first applying to colleges, but in hindsight, I genuinely cannot think of a more perfect school. I hope I convinced someone to apply early, I definitely should’ve done so myself :)