<p>So I just discovered that I really like Brown and think that I could be a good fit for me. Problem is, I only realized this recently and so I haven’t visited, interviewed, done anything to show interest (I also obviously missed ED). </p>
<p>What can I do to fix this?</p>
<p>none of that stuff actually matters.</p>
<p>Assuming you can afford to, you should visit Brown because otherwise you don’t really know if you like it. But I say this more for your own benefit than because it will help you get in.</p>
<p>You can only interview if you apply.</p>
<p>But I heard that Brown places an emphasis on demonstrated interest… on the Common Data Set it is one of the few things that is listed as very important.</p>
<p>It does say that, but think about it – if that were true, the percentage of students who get deferred from ED would be a lot lower.</p>
<p>Yes, they do take the time to email you, and to survey you about your experiences, but the valuable ones are through the Bruin Club anyway, and not the admissions office. Relax. Call our email them though, if it makes you feel better - they are super-nice at both places. :)</p>
<p>I am curious, what are the deferral rates for Brown’s ED?</p>
<p>^Go and google “Brown ED rate class of 2016”</p>
<p>I know Brown accepts twice as many ED…</p>
<p>Not really. They accept about 4% more if the regular (non-athlete) applicants in ED than they do in RD, but the pool is more qualified.</p>
<p>Sakacar,</p>
<p>What are you relying on to say Brown’s ED pool is more qualified than the RD one. That seems unlikely given the SCEA programs at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. A lot of close calls who did not quite make it SCEA at those schools will subsequently apply to Brown, making RD more competitive.</p>
<p>muckdogs07,</p>
<p>Since the senior year grades are not available and there is less time to retake the SAT, it is pretty widely accepted that the ED pool is considered to be more competitive than the RD pool for every school.</p>
<p>Getting back to the OP though, my understanding of demonstrated interest means that your application (and then subsequently your interview) demonstrates that you have sufficiently researched Brown and identified why Brown (as opposed to one of the other top schools) is a good fit for you. </p>
<p>For example, when I interviewed someone a couple years ago, I asked them what sorts of clubs and things at Brown they were interested in joining and they couldn’t tell me a single one. I took that as a sign that this person wasn’t that interested in Brown. The fact that they visited the school with their parents didn’t mean anything to me.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, there are some students who could get into HYP who don’t apply, and don’t want to go for one reason or another. 
I was one; my D is another.</p>
<p>I applied to Brown back in the dark ages, got in, and attended. My other options were not other Ivys, though. They were highly competitive LACs.</p>
<p>I liked the vibe at Brown and loved the setting and open curriculum. I had taken courses at MIT prior to enrollment, and had friends at Harvard, but it didn’t do anything for me. I hated Princeton, and while I really liked Yale, New Haven sucks IMHO.</p>
<p>Clearly, I’m biased, but Brown isn’t looking for HYP rejects. They go to Tufts. jk</p>
<p>This isn’t my opinion solely, though - it is backed up by a survey of data
This I isn’t</p>
<p>I don’t think Brown really cares all that much about demonstrated interest; it cares about fit. To the extent that you have “demonstrated interest,” you have shown that you have made yourself aware of the unique features of Brown and are still extremely interested. </p>
<p>But there are other ways to show this fit – through your essays and your choices in high school. My son ironically didn’t know all that much about Brown when he first applied – he was finishing high school in 3 years and was swapped with work or other obligations 7 days a week. He knew that Brown had very smart peers, a top-20 computer science program and a highly respected applied math program. </p>
<p>Yet his essays and his high school record absolutely screamed “Brown!” He worked closely with his counselor to bypass official prerequisites and to get approval for outside college and online classes to graduate early. He designed his own community service project from scratch. He wrote about the “prestige” #1 ranked high school he didn’t attend, in lieu of the top-10 alternative that was willing to work with him to customize his curriculum. Absolutely everything said “I don’t need or want my hand held, and I don’t give two hoots about prestige, I care about flexibility” – and what could have been a better fit for him than Brown?</p>
<p>He did visit Brown in the weeks after his acceptance and before making his final decision. His mind was pretty much made up in the first 15 minutes of the presentation, when Brown opened with a set of movie and TV clips that mocked the school. He hates pompousness and loves quirky humor, so this was clearly a place for him. Later, he wandered off from the official presentation with a couple other students to view the science or engineering building. Quickly, they ran into a couple of professors, and he figured he’d get told to get back to his presentation group. But no! Instead these professors unlocked doors so the trio could look around at all the "cool stuff’ hidden away. That sealed the deal. Absolutely. This was home.</p>
<p>Same situation here. Really love Brown, but did not ED. So it seems the short answers in Brown Supplements will be break or make…</p>
<p>There are plenty of students who absolutely love Brown (wish I could like your post LoremIpsum!) and don’t apply ED. It may because they have to compare financial aid packages, don’t figure out the fit until later in senior year due to hearing more,( or in my student’s case revisiting Harvard and Brown a second time and figuring out that Brown was much preferable), or they are just procrastinators! In any event, Brown is looking for that fit in both ways, interest and will you fit well. Applying ED counts less than other indications of that fit.
PS hint for current applicants: If you want to go to Brown, please do some research before your interview! It gets discouraging to spend a lot of the interview educating the applicant re simple things about the school. (Like there is no undergraduate “business major”. Okay maybe that is just semantics, and I tell them they might like to look at the econ concentration, but you get the idea.) I give a lot allowance for the poor quality of some HS guidance counseling, but there is the internet!</p>
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<p>That makes it sound like you hate my post, but wish you didn’t. ;)</p>
<p>On a more serious note, do you, as an interviewer, make special note of those students who don’t know much of anything about Brown at the time they are interviewed? I would think that Brown, with its special niche, would be eager to weed out candidates who think they are really HYP material and are only only applying to Brown as a “safety school.”</p>
<p>I don’t think that it functions to “weed out” students, and there are certainly some students who think they want one thing (HY or P for the name, for example) but realize later that they got into Brown instead because the fit was there all along and they didn’t even know there was a school that could fit them.</p>
<p>A lot of times, it takes knowing a student from a school to put it on your radar in a meaningful way. It does consistently surprise me how little students research colleges, given all of the information that is readily available.</p>
<p>When I was at Brown back in the dark ages, I was on the debate team and we regularly debated against kids from HYP and others. There were many students at other schools who would have been great at Brown, who didn’t apply/go because they saw the school as a sort of New England Reed or older Hampshire. In truth, it can be either, but can be far from both, depending on your path.</p>
<p>There were also many students at Brown who probably would have been happier elsewhere, because they didn’t realize that freedom equals choices, and living with the consequences of those choices, and they would have been more comfortable on a set path.</p>
<p>You really don’t always know at 17 or 18 what you want or what you need. I think that the admissions committee is pretty good at sussing that out for prospective students.</p>
<p>While Brown has a confidentiality agreement with the interviewers that we are not to disclose the content and questions we are answering about applicants, I do feel I can answer this in the general sense. (Although I do think others may have actually posted those questions elsewhere on CC).
Brown does say that the interviews are extremely rarely a make or break part of the application. And I agree with Sakacar that there are students who are a great fit for Brown even though they haven’t put Brown on their radar except as a “back up” to HYP, and often haven’t found out much about Brown even by the time they have their interview. I think that is particularly true outside of NewEngland/NY and CA, where there is less exposure to broad out of state college selection. So, it’s pretty common that a lot of my interviews will be about educating the student about Brown, and also why I give students a lot of slack for how little college counseling advice they have, particularly from most public schools around here. Brown does want to get a sense, if we can give them that, about how much a student knows about and is interested in Brown, and from other questions we answer about what sort of fit the student is for Brown. We give them more personal opinions, info, but that is just added to the “distillation” they get from other parts of the application, and obviously is based on a short session. Admissions also knows the value of that report will vary widely from one interviewer to another and has to take that into account too, along with the tendency of alumni to “root for”, and gush positive over most of the students they will interview just by the nature of being alumni volunteers and the wonderful quality, of course, of all these applying students these days. :)</p>
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<p>Yes, as an interviewer I make special note of students who know little about Brown. For example, I’ve interviewed students who live within an easy drive of Brown yet never visited. And there have been applicants who had no idea what the open curriculum was (I kid you not). </p>
<p>However, admissions does NOT want us interviewers to figure out which kids would rather go to HYP than Brown (although many interviewers haven’t gotten that message). The admissions office feels (very strongly) that if you’ve filled out an application and paid the fee, you really want to go to Brown. It could not care less if an applicant’s first choice is Harvard or Stanford. I’m very serious about this – admissions has accepted students who have made it clear that Harvard is their first choice. </p>
<p>Why? Here’s one good reason – when Harvard’s admission rate is 6%, there is a really high possibility that Harvard will reject that kid. </p>
<p>And Brown is not a safety school for anyone (well, maybe for the .1% and celebrities).</p>
<p>As for the OP – there are many ways to show that Brown is a good fit for you and your first choice, and applying ED is not necessary. In fact, Brown does not favor those deferred ED applicants in the RD round. Before writing your essays, spend a lot of time on the Brown website. Read deep into this forum, because in the last few years there have been dozens of threads that would give you valuable information to use in your application.</p>
<p>I’ve interviewed several applicants and have always noted when an applicant couldn’t explain at all why they were interested in Brown apart from saying that it was a good school. I especially noted when an applicant didn’t know anything about the “new” (open) curriculum, since that’s a clear distinguishing feature of Brown.</p>
<p>I’ve interviewed for another Ivy for 20+ years in the Midwest. I’ve come across applicants who may have not known a critical feature of my school – rare but not fully uncommon. Sometimes, despite this deficiency, I can still say “this kid would be a great match”.</p>
<p>That coinicidence can occur – and I’ve reported that on a few occasions.</p>