People form opinions in silly ways. Others then get sucked into believing them. Be smarter than that.
If we said HYB often enough, posters might start asking about some social stigma re: Princeton and Stanford. Sheesh.
@oDikaiopolis Who is questioning your decision? Tell us about them. Why should you respect their opinion?
I don’t know what more any of us can say to convince you that you made the right decision. On this thread, and many others in this forum, are hundreds of reasons why Brown is a great school.
@lookingforward this is not quite true…there is a reason people say HYPSM instead of HYB or anything else. Yes Brown tends to be considered on the lower end of the ivies along with cornell, but that is like saying it is one of the shorter giants. It doesn’t make any practical difference. @collegebound87 you will have every opportunity imaginable at Brown and amazing academic quality. Many students would kill to be in your position. This is such a .0001% problem…
Brown does have a reputation for “anything goes” or “study what you want” scholarship as opposed to adherence to traditional fields. That can be a plus or a minus depending on your point of view. I know two Brown grads personally. One is now a tenured professor at Cornell. The other is on the partner track at a major LA firm after getting what was basically a free ride at UCLA law school.
@Penn95 actually from what I have learned, those who know about these schools know Brown has a better reputation then at least Dartmouth, Cornell, and Penn (and is more selective). I have a lot of family connected to different Ivy League schools, and this seems to be unanimous. What I was talking about is that people who know literally nothing about these schools tend ignorantly to rely solely on US News, and I am just worried that that second category of people is more prevalent than I would like.
Get off the internet.
If you wanted to try to split very fine hairs, there might be three Ivy tiers in terms of rep:
- Harvard, Princeton, Yale
- Columbia, Penn (Wharton bumps Penn up a bit, IMO)
- Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth
Or just two… with HYP and then the other five. Or, still three tiers, but with Columbia alone in the second tier.
But in terms of quality, I feel like you’re going to get outstanding teaching and support at all eight. (I attended none of them; this is based on years of reading posts on this site, compiling stats, etc.)
Students should, therefore, choose among them based on fit, not based on rep. The eight schools are all different – different environments, different academic curricular styles/strengths/programs offered, different social vibes, etc. If you really want to apply to an Ivy League school, be satisfied that all eight are very good, and choose based on how well the particular schools provide the things that you want out of your experience.
Splitting fine hairs can be silly. Maybe a person’s dept is better at one, maybe another has a specific program that would enhance your studies and future possibilities. Cornell selectivity is misinterpreted based on some of its schools. Dart is pretty remote, has a different issue attracting kids. That’s not enough to dismiss the actual high quality of the college. You want to make informed choices, not go on generalities based on others who think incompletely.
OP the people who will matter in your future will know your college. Don’t worry about the rest of them. And Brown isn’t “anything goes,” within the depts, for the majors.
^ Yep. Rep has its uses, but it doesn’t determine quality – overall quality should be determined based on what the student desires (fit variables).
I think when someone doesn’t know about Brown it tells you something about their status not yours.
One of the nice things (IMHO) is that the Ivies are NOT identical. They have different “personalities” and different strengths (and weaknesses) and appeal to different people. I think the folks that apply to all 8 are missing something, but that’s a different thread. D visited 6; applied to 3; got in at 2; and chose 1. She made the right choice for her. Trust your judgment OP and, as some have noted above, don’t let others make you think you made a wrong choice. Despite my own comments [reflecting D’s disinterest after visiting], Brown is a fantastic school, and you will make your time there your own. Bon voyage, ATS
@oDikaiopolis the widely accepted consensus is kind of what @prezbucky is saying, although I disagree with the fact that wharton is the only reason Penn is on the same tier with Columbia, there are many other reasons too. Penn is solidly on the middle tier along with Columbia. Brown is not more selective than Penn, acceptance rate does not equal selectivity.
In any case there is a perceived order and ranking but of course it is a bit like splitting hair. even within so called tiers there are differences. For example Harvard is thought to be quite ahead of Yale and Princeton in terms of name recognition and prestige and other more objective metrics like research output, number of all sorts of prestigious awards by faculty, students etc.
All these are rather small details though in the grander scheme of things for an undergrad. The opportunities presented to an undergrad at Brown vs Harvard are not gonna be meaningfully different. College is mostly what you make of it.
I was only referencing rep – Penn is strong in many areas, not just Business/Finance. Wharton augments Penn’s prestige/rep, but it’s hardly the only worthy school at Penn…
@Penn95 I would just like to point on that this is by no means the “widely accepted consensus,” but rather a matter of opinion, just like any other prestige ranking is (I wonder what your alma mater is lol). Look, I am sorry to be confrontational and really mean no hostility, but you’ve been selling this as a fact all across CC, and it’s more a matter of opinion. If you look at any of the subjective prestige threads across this site, and there are a lot, you’ll find that people place Brown above Penn (CAS) as many times as Penn above Brown. Its all a matter of opinion of what it is to be prestigious. If you think US News correlates exactly with prestige, then yes Penn is more prestigious. By some definitions UC Berkely is more prestigious than the whole
Ivy League, save Harvard. I (personally!!! In my opinion) think Brown is more prestigious not only from every subjective account I’ve encountered, but also by objective measures of undergraduate desirability, preference, and student outcomes, but this is my opinion on prestige, and I will not be going around asserting it on every random thread of the Penn forum I can find. I don’t care if you think Penn is more prestigious, but I just want you to realize that it is neither a fact nor a “widely accepted consensus.”
This is a silly conversation, and I never thought I would stoop so low to have it, but here I am lol
Prestigiosity used to be a matter of opinion, prior to 2015.
Since then, fortunately, it has been scientifically and conclusively determined.
For lazy people, below are the most recent prestigiosity ratings (in milliHarvards)-
Harvard: 1000 mH
Yale/Princeton: 998 mH
MIT (or Caltech): 997.365782322119 mH
Stanford: 995 mH (998 west of the Mississippi)
Penn (Wharton): 992
Duke: 990 mH (995 south of the Mason Dixon line)
Columbia: 990 mH
Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore: 988 mH
Brown: 987 mH
Penn (other than Wharton), Dartmouth: 985 mH
Cornell (CAS and engineering): 980 mH
Chicago: 980 mH
Northwestern, WUSTL, Rice: 975 mH
Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Emory: 950 mH
Tufts, Georgetown, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Bowdoin: 925 mH
University of Virginia: 900 mH (950 in Virginia; 990 in Virginia excluding Northern Virginia)
UC Berkeley: 900 mH
Michigan 890 mH
UCLA, CMU, Notre Dame: 880
CC Darlings (in alphabetical order):
Alabama (for merit scholarships)
Carleton
Claremont Colleges
Deep Springs
Grinnell
Harvey Mudd
Kenyon
Macalester
Oberlin
Reed
Smith
St. Johns
There doesn’t exist a person on this planet who, in 4 years, can exhaust themselves with the offerings available to a Brown undergrad. Brown (and many peer and not so peer schools) simply have tremendous resources.
This is akin to telling someone who got drafted onto an NFL team that they’re not really that good because they aren’t on the Broncos or Panthers.
Like someone else said, someone denigrating Brown says more about THEM than Brown.
Many years ago, I was in the enviable position to decline Brown. I also turned down UMich. But rarely people commented on Brown – but when I said UM, they were like “wow!”. But that’s simply provincialism. No ill intent nor judgments.
You’ll learn to shrug it off negative replies quickly. Brown’s worth it.-- you’ll simply smile and nod and say to yourself “You don’t know what you’re missing! I love it!”
Yes, weed out the provincial thinking. You can’t control for those who really only know the big sports names or the names of the states. But you can control your own responses. That would be smart.
@8bagels who in the world believes that the change in “prestigiosity” from Williams, Amherst, and Swarthmore to Middlebury and Bowdoin is greater than the change from Harvard to Emory?!! (Or, for that matter, where, outside of Atlanta, is Emory more prestigious than Middlebury or Bowdoin, let alone by that degree?) This example points out the utter ludicrousness of prestigiosity.
Emory is apparently a really good private U, but comparing relative reputation placement, it is not a top-10 U, while Midd and Bowdoin are widely recognized as top-10 LACs.
Midd and Bowdoin are probably equivalent – though totally different schools, of course – to Columbia/UChicago/Penn in the University world, in terms of rep. That’s based on the idea that WASP are the HYPSM of the LAC world. Looking at overall quality, though, I’m not even sure you could say definitively that Williams/Amherst/Swat/Pomona are better than Midd and Bowdoin (or a handful of others…). In the U world, the same could probably be said for Chicago/Columbia and maybe Penn, and some others, in comparison to HYPSM. Caltech is almost its own category – outstanding, but not as rounded as the other elites.
These things – rep and prestige, namely – can be fun to talk about, but really, if a kid is a better fit for Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Northwestern, JHU or Duke than they are for HYPSM… and that kid is (miracles happen) accepted by all or multiple of those fine schools… the kid should be confident in the quality of BCDDN/JH and choose one of them based on fit, over HYPSM. In my opinion, anyway.
So that might be like choosing Haverford, Carleton, CMC, or Wes over WASP in the LAC world. To me, that’s a good decision if the kid fits better at the “lower ranked/rep” schools.
Heck, Emory I think is good enough that, if a kid were a great fit for it, he or she would be wisely advised to choose it over HYPSM, or Chicago/Penn/Columbia, or the other Ivies, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, Vandy, JHU, etc. Emory is just not as selective as its academic rep would probably support.
I think the main takeaways from this type of discussion should be the following:
- There are a great many outstanding schools in the United States. We pay a lot, but we have, by some margin, the deepest selection of quality U's and colleges of any nation in the world.
- Rep/prestige should take a back seat to fit -- including cost, of course -- in deciding among them.
- Quality is hard to quantify adequately -- look at how many rankings there are and how we argue over them! Which means that reputation -- which should be based on quality -- should not be relied upon when making acceptance decisions. If a kid is accepted by three schools, and all satisfy the kid's "quality" needs, the kid should definitely decide based on fit. That means we shouldn't freak out if someone chooses Texas over Stanford... much less Brown over Yale or Bowdoin over Williams.
I really hope that (some of) that made sense. hehe