<p>Hey, I’m class of '08, probably an IR major though I’m still considering pre-med. I know a lot a lot a lot about Brown, and many other schools. The decision to go to Brown was a very difficult one for me and I was torn for quite awhile (I applied ED but the decision to do so over other schools was quite difficult), but I’ve never regretted it. I lived in Keeney as a freshman and so I can tell you a little bit about that too. So go ahead and ask away. Hope I can help.</p>
<p>Hello,
What is the social life like? How is the city and how often is it used?</p>
<p>Social life:
The social life at Brown is anything you want it to be, thats one of the reasons I love it. I'll start with the frats. There are definately frats on campus, and their presence is definately felt. About 10% of students chose to join a frat or sorority. They are all in one quad, which is always very lively at night. This makes it very easy to go from party to party, but also allows people who aren't into the frat scene to avoid it. All frats at brown are required to admit all students into their parties, so you never won't be able to get in just because you don't know people in the fraternity. Every weekend the frats usually parties in their houses, and every weekend there's usually a bigger, "official" theme party sponsored by one of the frats, such as Body Chemistry or a Toga Party or a Playboy Party. The frats at Brown tend to be very laid back and friendly, from what I hear pledging isn't too bad and they all want members. If you want a more intense frat scene, most of the sports teams own houses off campus that throw parties that are more like the frat parties you'd find at Southern schools (many kegs, drinking to oblivion, more difficult to get into). Not really my style but good if you like that. I should also mention that kegs are officially banned on campus (though students are fighting to get them back) so frat parties usually have bottles or cups. If neither of those things are your partying style, the University is EXTREMELY lax about having parties in dorms, even freshman dorms. I attended some parties in freshman dorms with at least 150 people, packing the hallways, and they were only broken up when people started to spill outside, and even then everyone just had to leave (and find another party!). So its very easy to find parties anywhere and of any style. The one thing I've noticed is that parties at Brown tend to have dancing far more than parties at other schools (except for maybe the ones at the sports teams houses), people drink a bit and dance a lot, there's places to mingle too of course. At other schools I've noticed people just sort of get wasted and stumble around. Brown is a lot more lax about drinking, so people tend to moderate themselves (usualy...Spring Weeekend is a different story). If parties aren't your thing at all, there's always theater (probably at least one production every weekend), other performance art (The bangara dance show this year completely sold out our largest auditorium), meetings, movies, exhibitions, and the city. What's great is that Brown studnets really WANT to see what their classmates have done, such as theater or exhibitions or anything. Students see signs and advertisements for things and actually GO, which was really impressive to me (coming from a school where that was not the case). Thayer street is also always busy. Further, there's a ton of other schools close by so always a lot of students around. I was never bored one weekend or sick of doing "the same old thing".</p>
<p>The City:
Providence, I think, is actually a pretty awesome city. As a freshman I didn't explore it much, but I can tell you what I know. Its the second biggest city in New England (after Boston) and is known as America's (or at least New England's) Renaissance City for the incredible revitilzation it underwent in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I think its beautiful for the strange reason that it underwent a depression from the 1830s to the 1950s pretty much, and so though its recently been developed, its retained many of its old architecture and structure (which makes it a pain to park unfortunately). For instance, when Tom Hayden did his senior movie project (which was supposed to take place in 19th century Paris), he used Providence. Additionally, there are many little unique, interesting neighborhoods around Brown, from the area around RISD, to Wickendon Street, to the Waterfront (which is still being revitalized), to Federal Hill, to (eventually) the Jewelry District. We also have a HUGE ridiculous Mall. Waterfire, a weekend event in the spring, summer, and fall is attended by 500,000 people a year. During Waterfire, these 100 huge statues in the Providence River are lit on fire, and vendors line the pedestrian streets, music is played, resturants put tables outside, and its an incredibly peaceful and pleasant atmosphere to walk around with a ton of other people. There are a ton of great concert venues in Providence too, including the famous Lupo's. Plus any concert that doesnt come to Providence will surely go to Boston, which is a 40 minute train ride away. Speaking of Boston, the T runs into Providence during the week (6 dollars for a one way ticket), and Amtrack runs on the weekends (for 12 dollars). So its incredibly easy to get there if you ever want to. Theres also Newport, Nantucket, and Mystic Seaport right near by. Finally, most of Rhode Island government is somehow connected to Brown whether through politicians or staffers so its very easy to get internships and make connections.</p>
<p>Whew I'm tired from all that. Hope I was thorough.</p>
<p>Thank you so much. Your amazing description gives a great overall feel. Not to overload you with questions, but, and I know this is a hard one, what would you say is the "typical Brown student", meaning, in general, what is the overall attitude/behavior of the student body. Also, do drugs and alcohol (two things I avoid) play a large part in the social scene?</p>
<p>Yeah no problem, I'm at work now anyway and am insanely bored. Hmmm....typical Brown student. Well, everyone says that there is no typical Brown student, and of course thats very true. Brown is sort of in the middle of many things, city/rural, big/small, stuffy/laid-back, humanities/sciences, classic education/modern so you really get all types of people. But in regards to attitude/behavior maybe I can generalize a little. People tend to be liberal, but thats not universally true at all, I've met plenty of conservatives, more than I expected for sure. Even the conservatives, however, tend to be liberal in the sense that they are very open minded and not idealogues. You find very few of those types at Brown (for example, many left wingers still support free trade). People work hard for sure, but there is a great deal of co-operation and not much competition between students, probably partly due to the fact that there aren't pluses or minuses and thus if you have the A you don't have to worry about whether or not its an A-. Back to the liberal/conservative thing, I've noticed that nearly all Brown students are idealists, regardless of their political alignment. So you find a lot of people who want to go out and change the world. A lot more future doctors/lawyers than businessmen, though of course there are always exceptions. most brown students have at least one part of their personality/lifestyle/worldview that is a LITTLE bit "hippie." that sort of goes along with our arty reputation. still, brown can accomodate anyone. one of my best friends was probably the least stereotypical brown student you can imagine, and he loved brown more than almost anyone i knew. I think Brown has a reputation of being 6000 extroverts, I'm not sure if thats true, but everyone is certainly friendly and REALLY wants to have a good time. I feel like this description was somehow inadequate, everyone is just very friendly to new people and tend to be close-knit within their units, which gives a nice community atmosphere. </p>
<p>As far as drugs or alcohol goes, the University (and even the local Police, in my experience) is very lax on enforcing rules and generally treats students as adults, and in return students are expected to (and usually do, though there's always a time for going crazy) act like adults. The EMS service is completely confidential so if a student gets sick from drugs or alcohol there is no parental notification, and as a result there has never been a drug or alcohol related death on brown's campus. No matter where you go to college you are going to encounter alcohol, no doubt about it. I have plenty of friends at Brown who chose not to drink at all, or drink very rarely, and they still have a great time. They either go to parties where there is alcohol (all frat parties, most dorm parties) and chose not to drink, or just avoid places that there would be drinking. There is definately no pressure to get drunk to excess, or even to drink at all. Drugs are much easier to avoid. You'd probably see weed once or twice even if you tried to avoid it completely, but of course theres never pressure to participate and just seeing it once or knowing that it exists shouldnt be too scarring. Again, no matter where you go (except for maybe very southern schools) you will see weed no matter what. Still, its a lot less common than alcohol and definately very easy to avoid 99% of the time. I've never even heard of harder drugs than weed on brown's campus and so I doubt you would ever encounter them. The big difference I've noticed about substances at brown is that since the university is so permissive, students tend not to over induldge. My friends at schools where they are very strict tell me that they must, they almost feel obligated whenever they have the chance, to drink huge amounts of alcohol very quickly to get incredibly trashed, while at brown people prefer (usually) classier drinks, and drink less so they are able to have a coherent good time, rather than just getting bombed. Still, theres a time and place for everything. The same attitude goes for weed. people at brown indulge in substances in order to facilitate their partying, rather than having it BE their party. To sum up, I'd say the administration AND the students have a very relaxed attitude towards alcohol and drugs. most of the people i know who started the year not wanting to do drugs or alcohol ended up keeping that policy very easily without any outside pressures. hope that all helped. ssorry if it was disorganized.</p>
<p>I don't want to derail the OP here, but if you haven't checked it out, go and buy **************.com's book on Brown. It's written by students, and covers just about everything you could imagine. </p>
<p>Edit: Wow. It's censored. It's college p-rowler (one word, no dash) .com.</p>
<p>hey man i'm SO bored, let me answer them!</p>
<p>I've got two: Since you're considering the pre-med track, could you tell me a little about it? Have you taken any pre-med classes so far? Also, how are the dorms?</p>
<p>There is no pre-med major at Brown, so pre-meds usually major in a science field, though as you know you can major in almost anything and still get into med school so long as you fulfill the basic requirements. Brown is building (and will complete in the spring of '06) a new Life Sciences building which will increase lab space for the life sciences by 75%, and of course all the state of the art lab space is being reserved for undergraduates. Bio is the most popular major at brown, and is also popular among premeds. I've taken a few pre-med classes, notably the first (of two) semesters of Organic Chemistry. All the horror stories you've heard about Orgo are true, however, the professor for Orgo at brown, Matthew Zimmt, is considered one of the best professors at brown. this year I believe he won some lecture award which was based on student voting, he's incredibly funny, energetic, and helpful. a very popular teacher of a very unpopular class.</p>
<p>the dorms vary a lot. upperclassmen can get VERY nice housing, if you want a single you are pretty much guaranteed one sophomore year on up so long as you're willing to live in a suite (it would be five singles with a common area) and even in non-suite arrangements. appartment style housing is also available for lucky sophomores and for juniors and seniors. brown also recently bought a converted hotel right on campus (Minden) which is nice upperclassmen housing. freshman housing varies a lot. keeney quandrangle (where I lived) has about 1/3 of the freshman class, and with that many students there is constantly things going on throughout the building. it also has a brand new sateillite gym in the basement. most other freshmen live on the pembroke side of campus, with dorms which range from incredibly nice (sink in each room), to decent (private bathrooms shared between two rooms), to just plain bizarre (The new pembrokes which are supposedly riot proof). I hear that living on pembroke is nice because it has its own sateillite gym, a very nice cafeteria (the VDub), a great university cafe (the gate) is closer to the main gym (the OMAC), and feels sort of like its own freshman campus. also, since the dorms on pembroke tend to be smaller its easier to get to know people in your unit. (for those who dont know, pembroke is brown's old sister college, right next door, which when brown went co-ed became part of brown university, since then the campuses have grown teogether and now its like one big unified campus, but still it has its old seal and entrance). other freshman dorms are hope (great location, don't know much else), wayland (on the frat quad, close to the other main cafeteria), and perkins (farthest from everything, but known to be very close knit and to have very good parties. supposedly 80% of brown marriages originate from perkins, but i think (hope) thats just a myth, since thats where my girlfriend lived). bathroom situations range from several toilets and showers together in one room (like public restrooms sort of) to private bathrooms with a toilet and a shower in each one. i've stayed in many other college dorms since going to brown, visiting friends, and i think brown has in the top quarter of the biggest dorm rooms i've seen. we usually don't have lobbies or any of that since securtiy is less of a concern, but there is always a kitchen, common areas, study spaces, lounges, and laundry facilities. the lounges in keeney are especially nice with couches and fireplaces and portraits of old important people. there are custodians (who studnets usually become pretty friendly with) who clean the hallways, lounge areas, and bathrooms during the week.</p>
<p>What other schools interested you, and what other schools do you think are most similar to Brown?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Your comments are soooo helpful! I have one question. How would you rate the teachers at Brown?</p>
<p>What other schools interested you, and what other schools do you think are most similar to Brown?</p>
<p>My other top choice was Yale, I very nearly applied EA there but ultimately decided on ED to Brown. I also really liked Stanford and Georgetown. I think Stanford is similiar to Brown in its "laid-backness" but is less intellectual. I think that Yale also has some things in common with Brown, but I'd put it way more on the Harvard side of the spectrum for many reasons. Schools similiar to Brown? I guess that depends on what factors you're looking at. Curriculum-wise, we have a lot in common with Amherst or Hampshire College. Undergrad focus-wise, we're like most LACs, Dartmouth, or even Princeton. Stereotypical student-wise (though I talked about stereotypical students in an earlier post), people say we're like Vassar, Oberlin, or Wesylen, though I'd tend to disagree. Location-wise, I think we're nearly perfect and I can't think of any college's we're similiar to. In the suburban area of a nice city thats also a college town with a major city not too far away, I'd say we're like Georgetown or Harvard if you moved Georgetown or Cambridge farther away from DC or Boston and made them a little bigger? That probably didn't help much. Do you have any specifics?</p>
<p>How would you rate the teachers at Brown?
I obviously haven't had every professor at Brown, but overall I am incredibly pleased with what I've seen. Brown of course has some extremely famous faculty (Paula Vogel, Gordon Wood, Xu Wen-li, the Former Brazilian President, and the late Robert Creeley all jump to mind). However, Brown professors come to brown because they want to teach undergrads. There is some amazing research going on on campus, but brown is primarily for undergrads (all professors are required to teach undergraduates), and thus professors are usually less distracted by research and grad students and are focused on teaching undergraduates. Unfortunately, its not teaching undergrads that makes you world-famous usually, its doing research. A saying at Brown is that the first advisor to the president works at Harvard and the students get taught by a TA, and the second advisor works at Brown and he teaches personally. I don't know if thats quite fair to Harvard, but it does sort of sum up Brown's philosophy. You can always google your profs and find a ton of amazing research and papers that they've written, but they arent always going to be the top world famous expert in their field (though I'd bet that they're all almost always in the top 10). Instead, you get incredibly dedicated, energetic, empathetic professors who care about you and want to teach undergrads. Also, Brown has a reputation for promoting professors based more on teaching skills and less on research or publications, which fits into what I just discussed. Its also usually easy to get professors to come to Brown since Providence is such a pleasant area to live. Brown is in the midst of a drive to expand the faculty by over 100 positions (part of Ruth Simmons' Initiative for Academic Enrichment), which I think is partly also to try to get more famous faculty. I've heard that we might try to snatch the faculty who are leaving Harvard because of the whole scandal with their president (which is an issue I'm not even going to touch). While I think its pretty cool that we almost got Judith Butler to come teach (she ended up turning it down for personal reasons, wanted to stay in California), some students are worried that we'll loose our undergrad focus. Nevertheless, I'm pretty confident that the undergrad student body will keep the administration in line. I can tell you that when I looked at schools undergrad focus wasnt a big concern, but after hearing horror stories from my friends at other schools about ubiquitous TAs, and from the few interactions I've had with TAs at Brown (though most weren't too bad), I'm very thankful for Brown's dedication to undergrad education. But honestly, you're going to get good teachers at almost any college you go to.</p>
<p>What's a satellite gym?</p>
<p>MoatToMoat, are there versions of you for the other colleges I'm looking at? ;) Thanks for the inside scoop. First, what made you decide against Harvard, and second, how is the symphony orchestra at Brown? (people are going to get really sick of my asking this any chance I get) ...</p>
<p>MoatToMoat, are there versions of you for the other colleges I'm looking at? ;) Thanks for the inside scoop. First, what made you decide against Yale? That's one of my top picks because of the great Harvard-esque reputation for intellectual environment and prestige. And second, how is the symphony orchestra at Brown? (people are going to get really sick of my asking this any chance I get) ...</p>
<p>A satellite gym is just what Brown calls the extra gyms they've built in the past few years to supplement the main gym at the OMAC. They are incredibly nice and modern, are usually not too crowded, and are open until 2 am every day.</p>
<p>MidwestViola, lets see. Symphony orchestra I think is pretty good, I've seen them a couple times since I have friends in it. They usually fill up Sayles Hall, which is a pretty big auditorium, and theres plans to build them their own performance space. They've even done some American debuts and of course many Rhode Island debuts (its a small state). There's also a ton of other music groups to join (jazz bands, etc). If you visit, I suggest going to the Music Library, the name escapes me right now, but its a beautiful building (an old mansion) and is across from Perkins. It also houses the music department.</p>
<p>In regards to your other questions about Harvard and Yale, I wouldn't want to trash-talk any schools. It absolutely drives me crazy when people from other schools talk about Brown since they really can't know much about it (since they don't go here). But I'll tell you what I was thinking when I made my decisions. However, I'll remind you of course that they're both great schools and if I hadn't gotten into brown ED I would have been applying to both of them. I decided against Harvard for a couple reasons. I loved the location and it has a great reputation, but I was a bit turned off by the seeming graduate student focus (although it wasnt my main concern). At the time I was applying, Harvard was also not big on study abroad, it was difficult to do it or to get credit for it (though they are loosening up on that now I think) which was very important to me. I had heard horror stories about it being incredibly nerdy, competitive, and snobby, and I was a little too naiive to dismiss them or check that out myself (my only contact at Harvard was incredibly nerdy, competitve, and snobby, which didn't help). Since then, I've heard conflicting reports as to whether or not that stereotype is true. My final reason was that I knew that I'd like to go to Harvard for grad school, so why spend 7 to 8 years on the same campus? Really, there just wasn't anything that drew me to Harvard (besides Cambridge), there was some things that I was unsure about, and there was so much drawing me to Brown it was hard to resist. Yale was much tougher for me. Ultimately, I found the campus pretty dreary (though some people find it beautiful), New Haven not at all what I wanted as far as location, the International Relations department lacking (you can't major in IR, you can only have it as an additional major to another department. Again difficult to study abroad at the time that I was applying.), and the Residential Colleges seemed a bit over-rated. Yale had a better undergrad focus than Harvard I thought, but still a lot of grad students. Also, New Haven was really only accessible by train for me, which was inconvenient instead of being able to fly in and out of Providence. Yale had a flavor of Brown it seemed, but not enough. In the end it was the same deal, though there was more things drawing me to Yale than to Harvard, but still not enough to make it worth giving up Brown. Ultimately, comparing endowments/reputations/etc isn't going to make a difference. It really comes down to following your gut. One thing I will say, however, is that having talked to a lot of my friends at Brown and other colleges since, I think the most important thing to think about is location. Most things you can adjust to, but if you're unhappy about the location (rural,urban, northern, southern, east, west, etc) thats hard to change. Hope I helped. Again, sorry if my posts are confusing or disorganized, I sort of just type as I think.</p>
<p>If you're really interested in understanding the studnet life at Brown/Harvard/Yale, or really any schools, I'd DEFINATELY recommend checking out their student newspapers online and looking for editorials or articles by current students about student life. Harvard recently had a good editorial on different Ivy League spring celebrations and which schools had the best ones (cough, Brown definately, cough). The way students talk about their own schools, what they complain about, and what they want to keep, is far more valuable than anything people on this board can tell you about a school they don't go to.</p>
<p>This has all been so helpful...
Would you, by chance, have any links to a Brown Student Newspaper? I'd love to read a few articles.
Also, my best friend is applying to the RISD and I know that it is somehow affiliated with Brown, but I'm not sure how, so I was wondering if you knew anything about that.
Thank you very much.</p>