<p>It was actually sort of my fault. I had a chance of entering for a 5 person suite, most of which are in Grad-Center (a crazy looking building. The rumor on campus is that it was designed as fortress for the administration to retreat to in case of a hostile student take-over of campus...yeah, thats the 60s for you). Its pretty nice in that you get your own pretty spacious single in a suite with 4 of your friends (girls and guys if you want) with a common area, etc. Grad center also has a sateillite gym and a bar thats been ranked as one of the top ten college bars in the country (but is strict on IDs). Its also a great location. If sophomores go for a 5 person suite, I believe they can almost always get it. However, its not a sure thing. Anyway, I chose not to go for the suite for various reasons and instead went for a double with one of my best friends. We ended up getting crappy numbers, so we chose to go on the waitlist instead of live in one of the New Pembrokes (I was inside one once and actually didn't think it was that bad but would rather not live on Pembroke). Even if we end up having to live in one of the New Pembrokes, it wouldnt be too bad because they are almost entirely sophomore (well, 1 and 2 are for upperclassmen and tend to be all sophomores, 3 and 4 are freshmen housing) which would be kind of fun. So thats that. Any other questions from anyone?</p>
<p>I know you mentioned that the student body was fairly diverse, but how about economic background? A friend of mine visited Princeton and said that while the students were more or less diverse, the common denominator was that they were all extremely rich and knew it. Is that the case at Brown?</p>
<p>College is expensive, so in general at top Universities (which tend to be the most expensive), there are more rich people. However, I think that Brown at the very least is no worse than its peer schools. Brown pledges to match aid given by any other Ivy League School, MIT, Stanford, and U Chicago. My group of friends is incredibly diverse economically, ranging from people who have trouble affording plane tickets to fly home (one was invited by his professor to eat thanksgiving dinner at his house since he couldnt fly home. There's a tradition on campus that on thanksgiving day no one can be alone. professors take everyone in to their own homes so everyone gets to eat with a family) to people who could probably afford to fly home every weekend if they wanted to. just this year Sidney Frank, an alum who had to drop out of brown for financial reasons and went on to become extremely wealthy, donated 120 million dollars, 100 million of which is going to aid. One program they started with the donation is that for the neediest students financial aid will be paid with grants instead of loans, which should make brown even more attractive to needy students and even more economically diverse. they gave Sidney Frank an honorary degree this year at graduation, and he was in tears, it was pretty nice. Additionally, Brown is unique in that it suspends the first year work requirements for all work/study students, so everyone can have freshman year to focus on school and adjusting to college. this also makes brown attractive to economically disadvantaged students. With so many idealists on campus, people are usually too socially conscious to want to show off money if they have it, people tend to be incredibly modest and not arrogant or showy with money.</p>
<p>What about grants and aid? Are they possible to get or are they extremely competitive? Tuition of course is pretty expensive since its a ivy and all.. but how do most people pay for it espeically if you want to go to grad school or med school? Do you end up with huge amounts of debt?</p>
<p>Dependent solely on your economic situation.</p>
<p>I think, pretty much, that if you take out loans (which I would estimate, without any true statistical knowledge, that probably more than half of students do), you are going to end up with a lot of debt, and that's no matter what school you're at. I took out what is considered to be a very small loan for each of my four years, and my payment plan has me sending checks for fifteen years. That's just the nature of the beast.</p>
<p>The nice thing about financial aid at Brown, in my experience, is that the financial aid officers understand that financial situations are nuanced--much more so than any aid application can show. This sounds insignificant, but it's an appropriate example--there was no place on the aid form to document my brother's Bar Mitzvah...or, for that matter, the fact that my older sister is in grad school (undergrad aid packages do not take parents paying for grad school for a sibling into account because it is considered an expense they are not required to incur). When students appeal the packages they are offered, if they can explain the various elements of their situation in a way that clarifies why they need the aid they need, they are often able to get more help from Brown. I come from an upper middle class area and my parents do just fine but they are far from wealthy, and I got a lot more grant money than might be expected of someone in my situation. Brown does okay for its students, at least by me.</p>
<p>Do you know if you can appeal financial aid when you arrive at Brown? Either immediately, or a few years down the road.</p>
<p>Hi. I'm an incoming 1st year. Sorry, but I have 3 questions about academics. I'll make it short:
1) I was wondering what do you think are great classes/professors for 1st year students, i.e. "must take classes." I want to take classes in many different areas so I'm not really concentrating on one specific subject yet. Are there any good intro classes you recommend?
2) What is it like to be in an intro class with more than 100 students (it sounds like a majority of intro classes are fairly large). Do only like 5-10 students talk the whole time? Can you get a lot out of a class that large?
3) What do you think about double concentrating. I'm sorta thinking about double concentrating, not sure. Should I start freshman year (which seems like it will give me a headstart or should I dive into a variety of subjects and see what I like?
Any advice would be great. Thanks a bunch!</p>
<ol>
<li> Well obviously I only took 8 classes this year. Intro to Econ is HUGE and offered both semesters, but when its taught by Roberto Serrano (I'm not sure if thats spring or fall semester) its INCREDIBLE. He's Spanish and blind and a little crazy and HILARIOUS. He has an assistant who puts up slides for him and he lectures from them having memorized all the data and math already, its really incredible. He's also one of the funniest teachers I've ever had (HS included). Its hard to get people to go to Intro to Econ since you can pretty much just read the book but when Serrano taught class was full every time. There's a Brown tradition to applaud when the professor finishes his last lecture, and Serrano got the longest standing ovation of any professor I saw last year. Intro to MCM is also a good class.</li>
<li>The majority of intro classes have more than 50 people, yes. Usually there isn't much discussion in them at all because with so many people its just best for the professors to lecture. However, they always pause for questions from the students. I believe you can get a lot out of it still because you can learn from the lecture, and then (this is the cool part) all classes with more than 40 people at Brown are required to break into small discussion sections of 10 to 15 people each, led by a professor or sometimes a TA (if its a really huge class). So you'll never be unable to discuss the subject with a small group of people and someone who really knows what they're talking about.</li>
<li>Double concentrating is something people talk about a lot but the University discourages it. For one it takes a lot of planning and you can't take as many classes just for interest, which is sort of the whole Brown philosophy. Secondly, only one major goes on your diploma after all, so you might as well only do one. The University would prefer you concentrate in one area and then have just taken the rest of your classes to supplement that or just because you were curious about them. I definately reccommend taking a variety of classes your freshman year (I took Intro to MCM (modern culture and media) which has NOTHING to do with what I want to do, just out of interest, and its a class I still think about almost every day). I think Lisa2005 handled the financial aid question pretty well already so I won't repeat anything there.</li>
</ol>
<p>what is the most social sophomore dorm?</p>
<p>Hard for me to say since I'm not technically a sophomore yet and have spent most of my time socializing in freshmen dorms. Having said that, I'd imagine that Caswell and all the dorms on Wriston are probably very social. (Frats at Brown have their own houses, but the top floors in all the Frats and Theme houses are reserved for Independants, so a lot of people who aren't actually involved in those houses still live in the buildings. It keeps the Frats/Theme Houses integrated into the Brown community and also makes them more widely social). Grad Center has a reputation for being anti-social since everyone is living in suites anyway, probably the same for Barbour, plus Barbour is a little far away. I'd guess that the New Pembrokes are actually pretty social too since its mostly sophomores there. I left out a bunch of other housing (like Hegemon and Slater) because its not mostly sophomores and you only asked about sophomore dorms. I mentioned Wriston because theres a bunch of sophomore only housing there.</p>
<p>Do people usually get their first choice in CAP courses, and roughly what fraction of students take a CAP course (did you)?</p>
<p>I took a CAP course and from what I've heard, most people usually get their first choice. I think its a good idea to try to get one if you can, its a great way to really get to know one of your professors early on, but its definately not something that you absolutely need. You can get to know your professors simply by introducing yourself to them and asking questions after class or during office hours, and you could even go to them for academic advice if you get to know them, even if they aren't technically your advisor, and then you could make them your advisor second semester or your sophomore year. Everyone gets assigned an academic advisor even if they don't take a CAP course, so its not a huge deal.</p>
<p>What ec's do you participate in @ Brown?</p>
<p>I do a lot of stuff at low-intensity, and just a few things at higher-intensities. While in HS I was the typical over achiever president of 1000 things but you really can't do that at college. Its best to just focus on a few things. Still, you can participate at low commitment levels or just for fun in many different activities. I'd like to keep this sort of anonymous so I won't say exactly what I do, but I'm sure that I can answer questions on almost all the ECs, since I know a lot of different people who do a lot of different things, and since I do a lot of different things myself. So if you have specific or general questions about different ECs I'd be glad to answer them, or questions about anything else of course.</p>
<p>Great Article on Providence, from a food perspective but still shows a lot of what makes the city special:</p>
<p>I don't know a ton about Brown's scheduling, though I know it's very open. Would it be easy for me to take, for example, a language class, music lessons, and then more in depth classes in english and history and then some random things?
Is there good transportation throughout the city since I won't have a car?
That's all the questions I can think of for now, but you're doing a really good job answering questions! Thanks!</p>
<p>Brown's scheduling is pretty open I guess (I couldn't compare to other schools since I've never had to schedule at another school), most classes either meet Monday, Wendesday, and Friday for 50 minutes each, or Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and 20 minutes each. Then again in typical Brown fashion of course there are classes that break those rules. The almost 200 year old bell on top of University Hall still rings to mark the beginning and end of classes every day. Another thing to remember is that discussion sections can change how the schedule works: Intro to Econ this spring met on Mondays and Wendesdays, and then there was a ton of different sections which you signed up for at the beginning of the semester, meeting on every diffferent day of the week, all at different times. So you could have ended up with Econ on Monday, Tuesday, Wendesday, for example. Being able to pick the days and times of your sections, which most professors usually are ok with students doing (so long as there are enough students who want to put the section then), makes it a lot easier to schedule classes as you want them. If you wanted to take a language class, an english class, a history class, a random class, and music lessons, I'm sure you could figure out a way to do it. And if you can't get the schedule you want to fit exactly one semester, you can always take the classes that wouldn't fit another time, since you don't have to worry about meeting distribution credits or anything (another bonus of the New Curriculum). </p>
<p>Car Question
I wouldn't worry about not having a car as its usually only insane Juniors and Seniors that have them (you'd have to be insane to want a car in Providence). Its pretty easy to get around Providence just walking, even going from Providence to nearby cities is walkable and usually very pleasant. I think a bunch of freshmen went on an adventure last year and walked to Massachusetts and back one nice Sunday, it took them I think 6 hours total-ish. Maybe I'm wrong about the time but I'm pretty sure they did it in a day. There's also a trolley service that runs throughout Providence if you don't feel like walking (especially up and down College Hill), a ton of buses that run between Providence and other cities in Rhode Island (in addition to other major cities like Boston and NYC), and taxis if you need to get to the train station up to campus late at night. Brown students get discounts on the Trolleys, which even if you don't take are nice to see since they are so much prettier than buses. Transportation in RI is handled by RIPTA, so you could google that if you were really interested. Hope that helped.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention in regards to transportation. We are the Ocean State after all, and ferries are actually a good way to get to Newport, Block Island, and I think even Nantucket.</p>
<p>moattomoat, in terms of size...</p>
<p>is the student body small enough to where you will know the majority of your class by graduation?</p>