brown vs. dartmouth

<p>pros and cons of each? i cant decide...</p>

<p>Visit them both. I'm in love with Dartmouth, but I didn't really like Brown when I visited. It has its own campus, but it's really in the middle of Providence, a major city, unlike Dartmouth/Hanover. It's bigger and seems more crowded than Dartmouth does. They attract similar types of students, and they have similar programs, but they both have a very different feel to them, and you can only see that by visiting.</p>

<p>The hardest choice I've ever had to make in my life. </p>

<p>I chose Dartmouth, loved it, but I am sure I would have loved Brown too. Good news is these two are, in my opinion, the best college experiences in America.</p>

<p>You might want to note that Brown is the poorest college in the Ivy League, with about a third of Dartmouth's endowment, and even poorer on a per-student basis, since Brown is bigger. Being strapped for cash limits a college's ability to provide competitive student services. While tricks like deferred maintenance can keep a college apparently competitive for quite a while, eventually reality catches up. A few years Brown had to go off need-blind admissions, i.e. admit a certain percentage of the class on a "need-aware" basis, to save on financial aid expenses. Later, they were able to improve their endowment, and have since returned to need-blind, like the rest of the Ivy League.</p>

<p>A related index is that Dartmouth shows a 49% alumni giving rate (ranked #2), compared to Brown's 38% (ranked #11), according to US News. You must wonder whether Brown's alumni are either unwilling or unable to donate at higher rates.</p>

<p>tbk6, do they really attract similar types of students? I've always thought of Dartmouth is abit more clean-cut?</p>

<p>dartmouth enjoys a high per student endowment and giving rate, but making brown out to be poor is a pretty gross misrepresenation. brown's per student endowment is higher than that of columbia, penn, cornell, and most institutions in the nation, and it's overall endowment is nearly $2 billion to dartmouth's $2.5. incidentally, dartmouth's endowment is spread across three profressional schools to brown's one.</p>

<p>the giving rate at brown is also quite high--princeton and dartmouth have traditionally had very high rates because of strong class identity and WASP-y roots. after these two schools, most other elite university's having giving rates similar to Browns--it has little to do with alumni dedication.</p>

<p>As of 2002 (the latest data I looked), Brown's endowment was $1,434,666,000, to Dartmouth's $2,423,762,690. Not quite 3:1 -- my mistake, but definitely some ways off for a college with 50% more undergrads. The corresponding figures for the other colleges you listed are: Columbia: $4,238,168,000, Penn: $3,393,297,284, Cornell: $3,034,769,000. Brown is the poorest in the Ivy League. (You can do the per-student math yourself, but when you get to Cornell, make sure you only include the A&S and Engineering schools, since the rest are state-funded, not privately endowed.)</p>

<p>Back to Brown: things have to be quite desperate for an Ivy League college to get off need-blind admissions for a couple of years, which Brown did not too many years ago. You can only imagine what other types of investment in the future -- building maintenance, new construction, young faculty hiring -- must have been put off at Brown as well.</p>

<p>The alumni giving rates speak for themselves, really. It's either unwillingness to give, or inability to give, for whatever reason. Doesn't leave much else of a choice.</p>

<p>Brown is a pretty good school, but if the OP is undecided between Dartmouth and Brown, he/she may want to consider factors such as each schools' financial well-being and ability to invest in the future.</p>

<p>1) your data is old. 3 years is a long time for endowments that grow 10-20% each year (or in Dartmouth's case, slip, as it did to 2.1 billion in 2003 causing major budget cuts)</p>

<p>2) brown never went off need-blind because of budget problems. it never happened. brown was later than the other ivies in instituting need-blind, but it never went off. today, which is really the most relevant, brown has much more competitive financial aid than dartmouth, as it is the only ivy besides HYP, to replace loans with grants for the lowest income students.</p>

<p>3) quite opposite to your claims, brown is in the process of hiring 100 new faculty (41 new professors came to brown just this fall), and in the midst of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of capital construction projects. hardly, the undertakings of an impoverished university.</p>

<p>there are lots of legitimate ways to compare dartmouth and brown. financial limitations really isn't one of them.</p>

<p>30 weathiest universities:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=99850%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=99850&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<h1>18 Dartmouth College, $2,450,000,000</h1>

<p>The investment return of 18.6 percent in fiscal 2004 increased the College's endowment to $2.45 billion. New endowment gifts and investment returns have restored the total endowment value to within 1.5 percent of its June 30, 2000 peak, even following distribution of $460 million for operating expenses during the past four fiscal years.
<a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Enews/features/budget/2004/endowment.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/features/budget/2004/endowment.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<h1>26 Brown University, $1,670,000,000</h1>

<p>The Brown University Investment Office, under the direction of the Brown University Investment Committee, manages the $1.8 billion Long-Term Pool (“LTP”), which includes endowed funds as well as current University funds. </p>

<p>Regardless of the reasons why the school went from need blind to need sensitive, it just recently went back to being need blind in the admissions process.</p>

<p>Need-Blind Admission
<a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/applyingtobrown/financialaid.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/applyingtobrown/financialaid.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Beginning with the Class of 2007, Brown implemented a need-blind admission policy for all US citizens and permanent residents.</p>

<p>I don't think this thread is about university endowments...</p>

<p>OK, I don't want to get into an all-out Dartmouth vs Brown argument.</p>

<p>The financial facts are available for people to see and verify.</p>

<p>We have the OP who cannot decide between two schools, both good. One factor to consider is endowment. It is a very important factor. A school that is tight on money will make choices about how to expend resources in a way that is very different from a school that is comfortable with its resources. Such choices will affect both the college experience of its current students and the staying power and identity of the institution over the lifetime of the degree-holder. That's all I need to say, really.</p>

<p>Edit:</p>

<p>Yes, Brown is currently need-blind. For several years, it was need-aware, setting aside 10% of its class to students who could pay fir their Brown education.</p>

<p>david, in answer to your question, from my experience (visits to both colleges before the application process), Dartmouth does in fact attract more of the 'clean cut' kids. Brown's whole philosophy is pretty different, i.e. you can take a lot of your classes pass/fail if you want to, which you can't do at Dartmouth. the only real way to decide between the two is to visit both, and hope that the situation solves itself.</p>

<p>I think that people are really happy at both univesities and they both give excellent educations. I think that if you want an urban campus then choose Brown but if you want a rural campus choose Darmouth. Brown also doesn't have a core curriculum which some people like. I would agree with the idea of visiting both the schools if you can but if you can't, talk to some students and see if they provide virtual tours online.</p>

<p>Off-topic,</p>

<p>The endowment is very important especially whent you consider how much is going back to cost per student. Schools with large endowments basically give each student a discount on the education they they receive when you look at the cost of attendance vs. the actual cost to educate a student. </p>

<p>You want to know that you are attending a school that is financially healthy because you want know that new math and engineering building along with new dorms are being built and the school can undertake capital improvement projects.</p>

<p>Ask any tulane parent or student especially given the large amount of money it is going to take to do the capital improvements needed to get the school up and running. It will definitely impact the amount of need based financial aid/merit money that will be offered to future applicants.</p>

<p>well-meaning though some of these folks are, there seems to be a pretty big misunderstanding of endowment, what it is used for, and how universities are financed in general. without stumbling through them, suffice it to say: </p>

<p>1) dartmouth has a bigger endowment than brown</p>

<p>2) the assertion that brown is "tight on money" any moreso than dartmouth or any ambitious school, is simply untrue.</p>