<p>Nuff said. Accepted as a spring transfer to Brown and also accepted to Wesleyan. I’m coming out of Cornell and wanted something different and more undergraduate focused. Applied as an econ major with hopes of grad school. Obviously Brown is more prestigious, but honestly, coming out of Cornell I’m kind of over the idea of the Ivy League. Can anyone speak to the advantages of attending Brown vs. a similar, smaller liberal arts college?</p>
<p>Wesleyan is not exactly small. It is about twice the size of Amherst, for example. So I don’t know that you really get the small LAC feel that you would at truly small LAC.</p>
<p>The advantages of attending Brown over Wesleyan are severalfold: smarter students, more intellectual environment, better opportunities to graduate school, easier job placement, etc. Moving from Cornell to Brown would still be moving to a “smaller” school, since Brown is much smaller than Cornell.</p>
<p>I think Brown and Wesleyan are similar, and you’ll get an excellent education at both places. I would ask yourself these questions:</p>
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<li><p>You don’t say what you want to study. If you are interested in the sciences, compare class sizes, and research opportunities. Intro classes at Brown may be larger than at Wesleyan (although as a transfer you may not be taking intro classes). I know research opportunities are really good at Brown, I don’t know what they are like at Wesleyan. </p></li>
<li><p>Do you care about the surrounding community? Wesleyan is in a small quiet town, miles from a big city. Internship and volunteer opportunities will be limited. I’ve been to both Middletown and Ithaca, and Middletown is very quiet compared to Ithaca. Thayer St. in Providence is a lot more like Ithaca. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>If you care about name recognition, Brown is probably better known outside of New England than Wesleyan. The alumni network might be more extensive at Brown, which helps with the job search. Brown has very enthusiastic alums – Wesleyan might too, I just don’t know.</p>
<p>I disagree with anon, however – your opportunities to get into grad school are the same for Brown and Wesleyan, the students will be equally smart at both schools, and the intellectual environment will be equally stimulating. There might be better job opportunities at Brown, but that depends on your field.</p>
<p>Brown has an more intimate feeling of a smaller school since class size is relatively small, especially in each department (my daughter had 45 in her CS graduating class, and that included 4 subspecialties.) Also since the grad school is very small there are ample opportunities to work with profs and grad students on research projects where they want you and depend on your participation. You can also take grad classes. Both these will look good for your grad school resume. My daughter was accepted to some top schools for funded PhD, likely based on her many research projects, especially one lasting 1-1/2 years. This is KEY. The LOR’s from close relationships follow from this too. DWIC is not as powerful as Did Well At Research, for PhD’s at least.</p>
<p>As for Econ, it is one of the more popular majors and has a good reputation. Her boyfriend had a summer grant from an investment to do an infant death rate study applying Econ analysis. He was Phi Beta Kappa and entered a funded PhD top international program for Econ/Financial Engineering or something close to that.</p>
<p>So there is some food for thought, I hope. I hear Wes is great too, but I don’t have the knowledge about it that I got for my daughter about Brown.</p>
<p>I would think Wesleyan is more suitable for you. I have friends both at Brown and Wesleyan and I visited both campus before. I love both of them, but Wesleyan is just more suitable in your case. Brown is liberal with smart students and amazon professors, but so does Wesleyan. Most importantly, both of my friends from Brown and Wesleyan agreed that Wesleyan is better at Econ major. Plus, if you decided to transfer out of Cornell, which is a very prestigious ivy league school, then you probably really dislike the idea/culture of an ivy league school. Then why do you want to get yourself into another similar situation again???</p>