Brown vs Dartmouth

<p>I am having the worst time trying to decide between the two schools. I won’t list what I like about each school because a) there are too many and b) many of them overlap, because lets be honest, these two schools are on par in many ways. </p>

<p>I’m premed for sure (my mind will NOT change, so please don’t waste your breath telling me it will), but I am not exactly sure what I’ll major in (most likely psych or neuro) and I do want to explore other things. </p>

<p>Some things I’m concerned about: organic chemistry (one of the hardest at Brown and grade being very much dependent on tests at Dartmouth); research opportunities; drinking/smoking (I don’t do either); a bunch of others that have just slipped my mind :)</p>

<p>Advice/ opinions please!</p>

<p>If you accept the stereotypes, Dartmouth has more drinking and Brown has more drug use (though I’d imagine there’s a good amount of use of each at each college). There exist substance free floor you can live on and be with like-minded people, and you’ll find other not on such floor who don’t drink/smoke either. I will admit that the cigarette smoke on campus bothers me quite a bit (I’m very sensitive to it), and no one (police officers included) obeys the 50 ft. from a building rule, it seems.</p>

<p>In the end, I decided that Dartmouth wasn’t right for me, but I was looking at very different things than you were, and I sincerely doubt they’d influence your opinion. Have you visited each? Did you like one college’s feel over the other? How important is the Open Curriculum to you? After pre-med courses, you’ll still have quite a few spots to take courses. Do you prefer semesters or Dartmouth’s more-flexible quarter system? Brown has numerous research opportunities for undergrads in sciences, though I have no sense of how those opportunities are for Dartmouth.</p>

<p>Academically, I don’t think you can say one is better than the other. They are both excellent places with stellar reputations. Rumor is that there is a lot of drinking at Dartmouth – and typically schools in remote rural areas have much higher drinking rates than schools in urban areas. </p>

<p>I agree with Uroogla that your decision should be made based on more personal factors. Do you want to go hiking and skiing on weekends? Then go to Dartmouth. If you want to volunteer in an inner-city neighborhood or take a train to Boston, go to Brown. Also look at transportation – for most people, getting to Hanover, NH, is not as easy as getting to Providence, RI.</p>

<p>I went to both ADOCH and Dimensions, and I definitely liked the social scene at Dartmouth better. The drinking rep at dartmouth is the same as the smoking rep at brown…not a fan of either, but i’m sure they are overstating both. </p>

<p>I think now I’m mainly concerned about med school placement. I’ve heard that the chem department is ridiculously hard at both, but that at dartmouth, the grade is really based on 3 tests. Is it the same for Brown? Also, the avg GPA is higher at Brown, but do you think this means grades are inflated more, people just work harder than at Dartmouth, a combo of both, or none of the above?</p>

<p>To give you a sense of Chem at Brown, here’s what I can gleam about orgo 1 from various course documents. 3 hours of lectures, 5 of prelab/lab, and a optional problem session a week. Exams are primarily non-regurgitation, but application of the concepts. 2-3 exams outside the normal class time, plus labs and a final. At least in orgo 2, the distribution seems to be roughly: anyone 1 or more standard deviations above the mean gets an A, 1 or more standard deviations below the mean fails, and the mean is a low B, with some room for the professor to wiggle the boundaries somewhat. The 3 midterms and final combine for 83% of the course grade; the lab is the remaining 17%.</p>

<p>My views on GPA at Brown can be found in more detail on other threads, but…there’s definitely inflation at Brown. Substantially more than at Dartmouth? Maybe, maybe not. Physical science courses have the lowest average GPA, and as the distribution above shows, some courses have relatively tough curves. I do know that I have higher standards for myself (and, as a grader, for others) than some of the professors have, but that might be because I got used to the standards of my high school, which were much higher for the top grades (and that’s true of any college, it seems, so that’s just me).</p>

<p>I somehow doubt people work much harder at one institution or the other. Students at both are highly motivated. Brown’s lack of +/-'s and the ability to take anything S/NC affect the average GPA, for instance, making it less of a useful stat for saying much of anything. Any internal distinctions at Brown begin with a count of A’s rather than a GPA, for instance.</p>

<p>I spent a summer at Dartmouth and was very glad I was not accepted there. In the summer you can kayak for free and hike, but honestly it stays cold most of the school year. I found the drinking atmosphere and frattiness of the place very unappealing and most state school-like. Frats have gotten into trouble for hazing, etc. Hanover is actually incredibly boring, and mostly white wealthy folks. There are only a few places to eat and drink so if you walk by them as a student you probably see everyone you know. They thought their pizza place was amazing for some reason, and I thought any of the places on Thayer were better. It seems that isolation has harmed their taste buds. </p>

<p>The campus architecture is also homogenous, unlike Brown’s. I think if you want a shot at getting into Tuck, or want to be recruited for business then Dmouth is a good place for that. I ran into a transfer from Brown while there but didn’t ask why she left. </p>

<p>Long story short:</p>

<p>1) There is no way I would want to live in Hanover, and I am from a place even more rural.
2) The keystone drinking beer pong culture is gross. AD the Animal House frat was disgusting (people urinating and puking next to each onto a wall in a basement). They also put some sort of energy powder into pills and put them into drinks. Looks a little sketchy? It’s like Brown’s football frat but everywhere. </p>

<p>3) Go to Brown.</p>

<p>If you don’t plan on pledging, you can avoid that factor of the Greek system, because despite what BS people may try to tell you, it SUCKS at schools that don’t monitor hazing. The closest to “hazing” pledging I’ve seen at Brown was with my friend pledging DPhi and Thete, but you should know ahead of time that those frats are suspended anyway, so anyone joining is doing it at their own discretion. I’ve had my friend at D call me crying about the things she’s forced to do to join a “sisterhood.”</p>

<p>That being said, every school’s varying Greek houses have different vibes. Although you’re not super into drinking, you will definitely find friends (and <em>gasp</em> maybe even a few people in frats/sororities) that don’t drink either. Just keep in mind that you’ll have to have an open mind about these things in college.</p>

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<p>LOL it’s one thing for Brown avg GPA to be higher, but trust me, premed will be no cakewalk wherever you go. It’ll be tough regardless. Orgo is tough, but it won’t kill you.</p>

<p>Brown’s greek system isn’t like Dartmouth’s because at Dartmouth they all have a fascination with beer pong and cheap beer. In every basement you’ll find custom made pong tables with a layer of spilled beer and cans on the floor. So the smell is of must and beer puddles, among other things. The problem at Dartmouth is that most of the socializing revolves around the greek system, it’s a huge part of campus life. </p>

<p>It’s also common for people to abstain from drinking in high school and then be okay with it a little while later in college. Just a life stage process.</p>

<p>I have no statistics to back this up, but I find it hard to believe that the med school placement at Dartmouth and Brown are much different. I mean, you are talking about Brown and Dartmouth. I am sure the vast majority of students are accepted into med school at both places.</p>

<p>And you shouldn’t pick a school based on how one course is graded. Especially orgo. You can always take orgo at your state school over the summer if you have to.</p>

<p>I would pick Brown over Dartmouth for several reasons:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Location: Dartmouth is in a rural environment, while Brown is located in a vibrant city.</p></li>
<li><p>Social life: I can’t say anything for Dartmouth on this, but I do know that Brown has often been rated as the most liberal Ivy League and the student body’s friendliness is often at least 4 stars out of 5.</p></li>
<li><p>Open curriculum - You know all about this.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>From what I gather from a admittedly small sample of recent and current premeds at both schools, there are a few things different:
Orgo at Brown is notoriously hard. So much so, that some Brown premeds choose to take it in the summer at Cornell or Standford if they live there because it is easier there!! BUT, counteracting that is that with the open curriculum you can take it “early” starting second semester of freshman year and see how you do. Apparently many of the class drops the course if they are not doing well, even up to the point of just walking out of the final, so then they fail and it doesn’t show up on their transcript! (and then take again the next year when they have already learned 3/4 or the material.) Okay, it is a quirk that the grading system perpetuates, but part of why the final etc is so hard. (selecting out the most prepared students.)
At Dartmouth my recent premed grad contact says a lot of students also take orgo study before they actually take the class, but there isn’t “second chance” retaking.
Also my impression is that at Brown there is much more of a camaraderie of Orgo students forming study groups etc. IE premed at Brown seems to be a bit more “Us against the hard classes, pulling together” than the premed competition you hear so much about elsewhere. </p>

<p>Another difference: to my knowledge, most Dartmouth premeds have one science related major. At Brown, many premeds have a science related “concentration”=major, and often a second major in something different (econ, int relations, classics, etc.) </p>

<p>I think both schools have plenty of opportunities for undergrad research from the students I know, but I would ask more Dartmouth ppl as my contact there is less.
Hope this helps!</p>

<p>OOPS!
Just realized from other posts that you are already at Brown by now Chousha! Good choice! PM me if you need contact with some nice upper class premeds who will be happy to give you advice! (and maybe have some texts to sell cheap too?)</p>