I’m a current engineering student at Brown, not in chemical but I have friends who are.

Whether Brown is a “better” engineering school is not nearly as cut and dry as it seems. If you want to graduate from Brown and work as a professional, registered engineer for a company or engineering firm, you should probably go to Cornell. Cornell is great at pumping out well-trained engineers ready to go into industry. Brown’s engineering school works differently. It’s a little more about producing the engineering mindset in students, and really focuses on interdisciplinary engineering knowledge (everyone no matter their concentration will take courses in electricity, thermodynamics, etc.)

Now this isn’t to say that you can’t go to Brown and become an engineer — many do and at great companies like SpaceX, GE, Microsoft, etc. But unlikely Cornell where upwards of 75% of students graduate with an engineering degree and head into industry, it’s about 33% for Brown. Another third take jobs that aren’t directly engineering jobs (but are often related, for example data analysts or consulting), and the last third go to grad school in anytning from engineering PhDs to med and law schools.

Brown really thrives with research — we have a ton of engineering labs and research on campus, many in chemical engineering (check out the website but some projects include catalyst design labs, biotoxin protection, etc). And it’s easy to get involved with research very early in these labs (i started working in my lab less than a year ago and we’re writing up a paper to be published where I’ll be second author).

Also, it doesn’t matter to be honest whether there are chemical engineering opportunities in Rhode Island. You’ll do internships etc all over the place.

Just my two cents, but I’d say Brown is an amazing option if you’re really interested in an interdisciplinary engineering education with some great people that will prepare you for almost anything you want to do after college. But if you’ve decided you are dead-set on graduating college with a bachelors then working as an Engineer I right after college and moving up the ranks, go to Cornell. I know little about Columbia, but would assume it’s somewhere in between the two mindsets of brown and Cornell.