@TheOldTimer In all fairness having strong grad schools can also affect the undergraduate experience in many ways if the school allows undergrads to access these resources, which all ivies and other elite peers do. Having top grad schools means you can attract tippy top professors and researchers who can really add to the undergrad experience if they actually teach undergrad courses. In most ivies they do. Also the quality of the TAs is bound to be better since they are the top students in their field. Same goes for research opportunities and infrastructure. Still, there is something valuable about a school like Brown that combines amazing undergrad focus and the infrastructure of a research university.
Re endowment I think a lot has to do with the grad schools as you say. Dartmouth which is smaller than and just as undergrad focused as Brown, has a top business school and a long legacy on WS which is probably how it manages to have a larger endowment than Brown. To be fair though, you cannot know if Brown doesn’t have admits who used similar ritzy admissions consultant services as you say. Schools have no control over that. If anything Brown has a reputation for being a prime destination for kids of VIPs and celebrities. According to the popular economic diversity study published on NYT last year, Brown is the ivy with the highest median parent income and the second-highest percentage of students in the top 1%. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/brown-university
Still, the wealth of some parents isn’t the way an OP on a forum should be evaluating. And when talking about the influences of a B school or law school on undergrads, most kids are making their way through their own tracks. I personally found that influence more significant in grad school.
So, Brown has higher parent income? 204k vs #4 Yale’s 194.6? Sure, there’s a lot of money out there. I have to wonder about the “millions of anonymous tax records” accessed to produce that study. And more.
@Penn95: We graduated from a top school in this list (https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate) and have a PhD, two master degrees in our family, all from three different majors. So we know research a bit. The one school which talks about undergrad research the most is JHU. So we also went there to study how it works there. In the end, we believe quality research can only be done at graduate level. For those undergrads who have not even taken those necessary courses, it is probably hard to ask them to do much meaningful works. And if those schools are full of top grad students, why do they need undergrads to mess around in the labs? In reality, top professors in our school do not teach undergrad courses. Top researches do not want undergrad to mess around. Undergrad research should be at undergrad level (Princeton senior thesis is a good example). Yes, these days students need to put something on their resume saying they are doing “research”. I would say it is more like they have exposure to the research labs but not necessarily do any meaningful works. (just like those applicants to college, they have their name on the papers probably because their parents have a saying in the whole process) We are pre-med and we specifically study Brown Neuroscience department before we choose. In this link (https://www.brown.edu/academics/neuroscience/undergraduate/independent-study), you will find undergrad Independent Neuroscience Research. We feel this is the format undergrad research is supposed to be. UPenn has two tracks for students who are interested in Neurosciences and JHU has a Neurosciences department which graduated 392 students two years ago. We would be thrilled to go to UPenn or JHU for med school but we feel the environments there are just not ideal for undergrads.
Brown is acutely aware of the polar nature of students body in terms of family wealth in the past and works hard to attract more middle class students. We have being joking that without the extra 3% of students admitted from public school from class of 2020 to 2021, we wouldn’t be here today.
@midwestahm: When I saw the title of this thread, I have a feeling you care about the appeal of a school in terms of prestige more than anything else. Using this mindset, it is unlikely your son will find the “right” school. If you care about the medium individual income of Brown graduates seems a bit low when compared with its peer schools, I have an explanation for you. Brown graduated more women than men and its applicant pool tends to have 5~6 thousands more women than men to start with. Women tend to have lower income at workplaces for the same type of work as a fact when compared with men. Also, they might have married to a family which the majority of income comes from investment, so it looks like they have no income or due to tax avoidance it is not showing on the book. I don’t believe Brown graduates earn any less than its peers. You really have to look at the story behind the number.
Any theory behind why Brown matriculate so many more women than men? Engineering schools, which traditionally attract more men than women, are working hard to admit more women. Is Brown trying to balance the gender blend?
And the dichotomy of parental wealth in Ivy schools is really by design as well. They gave generous financial aid to poor families and the truly rich families can pay the $70+K per year after-tax without breaking a sweat. The middle to upper middle income family get almost nothing in aid. A family with $250K income may be labeled as “rich”, but if they live in silicone valley, they can barely buy a house, let alone having $70k free cash to spend on their kid’s college.
Agree with @bogeyorpar. I was heavily involved with recruiting/hiring for a “Wall Street” law firm and a bulge bracket investment bank (overseas and West Coast offices). Brown was definitely “known” and a plus factor. For associate positions (law firm and IB) the grad program (and how well you did) and experience were much more important than undergrad school. For analyst and paralegal positions, the undergrad degree (major and record) were of course critical. At all times though, the name at the top of the degree was much less important than what the applicant accomplished during their time in college when talking about well known flagships vs. Ivies and other highly selective schools. So if you have the financial resources, the question is where your son is most likely to thrive. Going to a state flagship (unless we are talking about a well defined honors program) is a much different experience than Brown.
As far as social groups, Brown is large and diverse enough that your son would find his “tribe”. Based on D’s (selective LAC) and S’s (Ivy) experience, groups form more often based on shared interests (academic, EC) and personalities than family wealth or which boarding school they went to.
Some big “ifs” in there (not to mention that you forgot “if they can actually teach well”) that are typically less true than people think.
I also have a very strong question mark with regard to “higher quality TAs.” My only PhD experience is in the basic sciences, and I can say that those students are admitted to perform research in the labs. Many PIs actively work to limit the involvement of their students in outside endeavors (e.g. being a TA for undergrad courses). An undergrad TA who actually took the course might be a better resource than an overburdned graduate student from another undergrad institution.
It is unfortunately true that undergrads in the lab are a burden. PIs only take undergrads if they have an active desire to do so as they usually provide little immediate value and at great expense of both time and resources. The “House of God” quote about med students applies to undergrads in the lab as well “Show me a med student who only triples my work and I will kiss their feet.” At some schools the graduate program may not even be in close proximity to the undergraduate campus (Cornell being a laughable outlier in this regard but even a 30 minute commute to/from lab for an undergrad student can even further hinder their ability to be productive)
@bogeyorpar : I have heard the joke that an officer from the College of William and Mary said along the lines that the school must be careful not becoming the College of Mary and Mary. Not sure exactly the reasons why Brown attracts so many women applicants, but “artsy” is definitely among the top reasons. Brown is completing a New Engineering Research Building (https://www.brown.edu/academics/engineering/new-building). This can help balance the gender gap a bit. Men should be aware of the fact that the admissions rate for men is much higher than women at Brown … there is no marketing campaign to spread out the words.
My child’s experience is same as @BKSquared 's children. Child’s large group of friends are based on academic and ECs. No one talks about family financial situations. Brown’s culture is humble and down-to-earth. There is no eating clubs to brag about. Also agree with @BKSquared on the point of state flagship. We could have chosen our state flagship for a full ride. But the Brown experience is so much different that state honors program is not even a true option for my child.
@TheOldTimer Is that $88m engineering building a big deal for Brown? Is that the most recent and most significant construction there? I ask because a local commuter college just spent about that on their engineering center and it didn’t seem to be that big of a deal.
@midwestsahm: someone already said your criteria for choosing a college are warped. So let’s talk about why you should not be so proud of your state “flagship is in the news constantly for $100m here $200m there sort of new construction and remodels”.
@midwestsahm: Just in case your son happens to apply to Northeastern University as a backup, Northeastern University has 10,559 foreign students as of 2014-2015 school year (ranked number 6 Most Popular U.S. Universities for International Students), mostly from China too. How do they manage to attract so many foreign students? — Eliminate the requirement for SAT or ACT (https://www.northeastern.edu/admissions/application-information/). Their new policy is "High Schools outside of the US: SAT or ACT scores are not required and will not be considered for admission if submitted. " You might have heard that SAT cheating is a serious problem outside US. Now even cheating is not necessary. No wonder its ranking is going up fast.
@midwestsahm: I forgot to mention that according to Brown’s website “Approximately 6,580 students are enrolled in the undergraduate College, 2,255 in the Graduate School,”. You got a lot more foreign students in your state flagship than the total number of students in Brown. So if your son is interested in meeting foreign students, your state flagship would be a better choice.
OP is no longer talking about prestige and instead, OP is focusing on new buildings. I believe it is the most appropriate time to let OP know the truth about where the money is coming from. OP is worrying that his son won’t fit into Brown. With so many foreign students in state flagship, OP has to consider how his son fits in there too.
In case OP is from Illinois , UIUC has 26934 students from Illinois (http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/abstracts/SP18_ten.htm). Instead, UIUC has 12,085 foreign students as of 2015-16 (http://illinois.edu/about/facts.html). The international number is climbing 7.7% in just one year. It is a justifiable consideration if OP is worrying about fit-in. Brown only has 31% students from private school. UIUC has 33,467 students from 50 states. You can see about 1/4 of UIUC students are internationals. I think OP is not aware of this fact.
@midwestsahm: As I stated before, no one has a good chance of getting into Brown. Just in case, your son really got in, I just really hope he would be able to find a way to contribute to the Brown community. In the most likely case that he would not get in, you could at least blame foreign students.
There is a link within the Washington Post article I put on #50, which talks about surge in foreign students may be crowding Americans out of elite colleges. In case you missed it, here is the fact:
… That tension is particularly evident in the eight Ivy League schools: Federal data shows that their freshman classes grew slightly from 2004 to 2014 — 5 percent — while the number of incoming foreign students rose 46 percent. At the same time, applications to the schools shot up 88 percent… As Yale’s undergraduate enrollment has edged upward since 2004, foreigners have accounted for almost all of the growth, …
For Brown, federal data on “nonresident aliens” shows the international share of freshman doubled from 6% in 2004 to 12% in 2014. For the most recent class of 2021, the news release (https://news.brown.edu/articles/2017/09/firstyear#Class%20Profile) states “16 percent of students were educated abroad”… However, it is still more than 10% less than your state flagship !!
@iwannabe_Brown I think the ifs you mention are a big concern for most schools but not the ivies, which try to balance undergrad focus with grad power. I went to Penn not too long ago and never had a class that was not taught by a professor. A few were not that great at teaching but most ranged from good to amazing. Most of them also held regular office hours and were very approachable even though many were renewed researchers and scholars in their field. As for research, most actively sought to include undergrads in their research and advertised positions in class. Also there was a centalized office called CURF that matched undergrad students with reseated positions within Penn.
Of course Penn, Columbia, Harvard etc are not as undergrad-focused as Brown and Dartmouth, not at all, but they do actually provide a ton of resources for undergrads and do get out of their way to give access to their amazing resources and infrastrucure to undergrads. The stereotype of the neglected undergrad that you find at a research powerhouse state school for example is not true at the research and grad school-powerhosue ivies.
In the end it just comes down to what kind of undergraduate experience one wants I think.This is why I roll my eyes when i see people applying blindly to a bunch of ivies thinking they are all the same. They definitely are not.
While at Brown (and maybe Penn) all undergrad courses are taught by profs, I can say with 100% certainty that my friend who finished his PhD very recently in the humanities at one of the other 6 ivies was teaching multiple courses each semester. My PI did his post doc at Harvard and his PI is still there and while not the norm, the attitude of the worthless undergrad is alive and well.