Brown
Students: Motivated, but are more relaxed about it. For ex. throughout the day, there were kids just laying and relaxing on the green with no agenda. Brown’s community was especially supportive. Also students were very interesting, with big personalities. Majority of students are extroverted (I’m an introvert, and this kind of got overwhelming after a couple of days). Also definitely “quirky”
Campus: Brick buildings, small and compact. Had “cute little town” vibe.
Location: I didn’t really get to explore Providence, but it seemed like a nice, standard college town. No complaints.
Comments: Brown is great for students who really want to learn for the sake of learning. This attitude makes learning environment chill (I sat in lectures, students seemed to enjoy class, not intimidated). I think it would be the ideal place for people with many interests, especially for Humanities majors. While Brown is trying to push for its STEM program, it is still growing. That being said, the Engineering program is tiny. Which makes is personalized, however there aren’t as many lab facilities and resources available compared to Northwestern and Cornell.
Northwestern
Students: Motivated, in between “type- A” and relaxed. Students try to have fun, but Quarter system’s fast pace keeps students busy.
Campus: Mix of old pretty buildings and modern buildings. There is a north and south divide, both socially and academically but I think if you make an effort to meet people from both sides, it is definitely doable. Small size as everything is in walking distance (at most 20 min walk)
Location: Evanston is in a nice suburban neighborhood (I even saw a people riding horses out on streets). Downtown evanston has many mall shops, grocery, restaraunts. Also if Evanston is boring, Chicago is a train ride away.
Comments: Students and Staff are very friendly. It definitely has that friendly Midwestern vibe. NU is very pre- professionally focused. Students are “doers” rather than “intellectual thinkers”.
These are all just general feelings I got after getting a glimpse of each school for a period of 2-3 days each. As a result, my observations are not as comprehensive as actual current students, but I figured I would leave my comments here, as it may help out others 
I think you picked the right school. My daughter’s friend had similar choices but picked Cornell because “higher ranking”, I think she was miserable the first two years, didn’t graduate with high GPA, had lousy internships, but she did turned her luck around and after her first job at a startup, she left the startup and is now at Google.
Interestingly enough, her mom graduated from Northwestern is now VP of a large company in Silicon Valley.
For those that kept saying Cornell has “better engineering program”, let me repeat this again: Northwestern has higher-ranked industrial engineering, material sciences, nanotech, and economics programs than Cornell! These are the programs the OP is interested in. Please do your 5-minute research before commenting.
Post #23, the student told my daughter it has higher ranking that’s why she picked the school. I think she based it on US news maybe?
There are close to ten disciplines under the “engineering” umbrella. Cornell is ranked higher in the majority but not all of them.
Northwestern is outstanding for materials science and nanotech, and also features more research parks and related industry within close proximity of its respective campus than the other two. All three schools are generally outstanding, with respective strengths and atmospheres, and will all provide excellent educations. It probably comes down to a question of fit and individual goals.
Post #25, she was not comparing engineering schools, just the overall ranking. To be honest, a lot of kids on CC do that.
@DrGoogle, overall, Northwestern is (slightly) above Cornell in the USNews ranking.
Post #28, maybe because it’s an Ivy. What about acceptance rate? Is it lower or higher than Northwestern?
@DrGoogle, Cornell has a (slightly) less selective (higher) admit rate than NU as well. So unless your daughter’s friend was speaking about a specific field (ie CS), she sounds ignorant. Playing football against HYP every year doesn’t automatically make an Ivy “higher-ranked” or better than a non-Ivy.
Time frame was 2007-2008. Do you have the data back then? She didn’t start out as CS, she started out as Civil engineering, her dad lost his job during the tech burst and scared her about CS so she didn’t initially pick that major but I think she changed her major afterwards.
@DrGoogle, I don’t have the data from back then, but this just shows that picking a school based off of tiny differences in ranking or selectivity is ignorant (and they would be tiny because NU has been ranked where it is now for roughly 2-3 decades now while Cornell has never broken in to the top 5) because they obviously do change, and nobody remembers whether a school was 2 places above or below another school a decade ago.
I can always count on CC for US news rankings in 2008. I’ll post the link when I get home.
Cornell was 12 and Northwestern was 14
@DrGoogle, no need to. I believe you. Using rankings as a criteria for picking a school when they are so close is still very stupid, though.
Post #34, I agree with you, I did post that in previous post. But I think some teenagers at this age 17-18 made this exact decision base on US news rankings.
@DrGoogle My parents were far more worried about the USNews rankings than I was 
Post #38, I wrote some, not all. But I do read here on CC how some students worry about prestige and ranking of some colleges without digging down to real substance.
@Sugoi15 pls can we talk. Am a worried parent and my son chose NW over Brown for BME but worried now. He is QuestBrigbe finalist too. Can we chat directly or speak? You are still in school I believe but other schools are on break
IyaYard, do you mind sharing why you and/or your son are worried?