Mt son is deciding between Brown And U. Chicago. He is thinking chemistry and or Math/CS. He also loves ancient languages. He is torn because he never got to see U. Chicago. We have heard that Chicago is great academically but can be a brutal workload and little spirit. We have Heard Brown is less stressful but not in the same league for chemistry. Finally, we have read that doing well in either school would bode well for grad. schools, which for his major, is the most likely goal. Any last minute thoughts?
Wow, these are very different schools. Neither my kids or me went to either but we have visited both. Maybe you will get better first hand views on the Brown and UChic forums from students and families with first hand experience.
Thanks for the reply. My first foray onto the discussion board. The two schools are so different that my son is having a hard time deciding. H absolutely loves learning, but is driven by competition.
Does he want fewer general education requirements at Brown to allow more schedule space to explore math, CS, chemistry, and ancient languages, or does he like the idea of Chicago’s general education requirements to give him more structure?
Does he prefer the usual semester system (two 15-week semesters per academic year) at Brown or the quarter system (three 10-week quarters per academic year) at Chicago? The quarter system allows taking a larger number of “smaller” courses; it also starts and ends the academic year about a month later.
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Here let me tag some posters who are knowledgeable about UofC @JBStillFlying , @Cue7 , @marlowe1 and Brown @iwannabe_Brown , @fireandrain. Maybe they can help.
Chicago has a clear, maybe overwhelming advantage in math and ancient languages.
Among the liberal arts universities, I don’t think there’s much question that Chicago is the mathiest. Last spring, out of about 4,700 students with majors, about 750 had a first or second major in straight math, applied math, or statistics, and another 80 with minors in those fields (although there may be some overlap there). Plus the 1,300 economics majors (definitely some overlap there), and many other social science majors and physics and computational neuroscience majors, all of whom are expected to know a lot of math. And that’s just the undergraduates; there are hordes of graduate students, too. People talk math everywhere, all the time. It’s one of the places where really gifted math students go to realize their potential and find peers. I don’t think that’s true of Brown.
Ancient languages: Brown seems to have pretty good course offerings in Akkadian and Middle Egyptian, but it doesn’t seem to have any undergraduates majoring in related fields. Chicago doesn’t have that many, but it has them. And, at least when my kids were there, the Akkadian class was really popular. Chicago has its un-PC-named Oriental Institute, and is a real center for archaeology and ancient civilization study. Not to mention ancient Greek and Latin. Chicago is chock full of classics nerds.
As for workload and spirit – I think actual students would probably describe the workload as “intense” more than “brutal.” The people there tend to like it that way. They care about academics. People actually do the reading for their courses; it is really a social faux pas to come to class unprepared. There are plenty of students at Brown who are the same way, but plenty who aren’t, too.
The no-spirit thing is really a baseless canard.
The chem, math and CS workload is going to be brutal everywhere. What does he think of the Hum, Civ and Soc sequences at UChicago? If those types of class excite him it should be UChicago. If he would rather avoid that type of classes, he should pick Brown.
thank you all for your replies. I think he likes the open curriculum, but is excited for the challenge of more, shorter classes at U Chicago. He has been to Brown several times but never to U Chicago. I’ve heard the campus is amazing. i guess any insights into experiences at either school might help him
The CS department at Brown has a strong culture of collaboration and its own traditions. The TA program, for example, is seen as a hallmark of the Brown CS experience. FWIW, Andy in Toy Story is named after a Brown professor who pioneered computer graphics and taught several of Pixar’s early employees.
Re: Math at Brown, I know that the Applied Math program has a stronger reputation.
Location. Chicago is a much more exciting city than Providence, but NY and Boston are both quite accessible from RI.
Culture. Both schools will attract students who are phenomenally driven. Brown’s response to having such driven students is to get out of the way while providing support and resources while U of C’s is to see how they might be challenged further.
Culturally, Brown students are more likely to downplay how hard they work, claiming they only spent 2-3 hours studying for a test when their own roommate saw them spend twice the time. At U of C, in contrast, hard work is a badge of honor. I’m not sure the workload or rigor is actually different.
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thanks, sounds like it is more of a matter of preference than a matter of better/worse.
“H absolutely loves learning, but is driven by competition.”
Then Chicago for sure. Have you’ve been to an enclosed campus in a large city like Columbia or Johns Hopkins, you would get a feel for how U Chicago is. good luck!
Exactly. He has an excellent shot at good PhD programs if he does well at either school.
Brown is generally a very laid-back, unpretentious place, but that doesn’t mean its academics aren’t top-notch, and Brown students are no less intellectually curious or academically engaged than their counterparts at Chicago.
I will let others weigh in on math and chemistry, but I am not sure I entirely agree with the post above about the ancient language offerings at Brown and Chicago. The basic ancient languages - Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Akkadian, Egyptian, etc. - are taught at a high level at both universities, and for the majority of undergraduates interested in ancient history/languages there is not much difference between the two. If one wants to move beyond that to the more esoteric ancient Near Eastern languages like Hittite and Elamite, then yes, Chicago is the better option, but I would argue that such languages are best left for graduate school in any case. It’s also worth noting that Brown has a very fine Maya archaeologist and epigrapher on faculty (Stephen Houston). I have strong opinions on the two in this area and sent you a PM.
In the end it’s your child’s personal preferences, of course, that will drive this decision, but having had multiple generations of UChicago people in my family, it seems to attract a particular type. Driven doesn’t quite describe it. Driven occurs at a lot of schools. It’s the case at Yale, and small LACs but they seem to drive at different objectives. For example, some “driven” schools you get the impression that the person is driven to produce their own personal best work but doesn’t really care what their roommate is doing or the other person in their chem class. They just care about their own personal performance. At some other “driven” schools, students really really care about what their roommate and fellow chem student is doing and they want to beat them–and not just in chem class, but in all ways intellectually. Chicago has more of the latter type. My multi-generation family members who have loved UChicago are driven to “know” more than anyone else in the room regardless of topic. (And as I type this I am breathing a sigh to calm myself – because for me this gets exhausting and, as the young kids say nowadays, it’s a bit “extra” in my opinion. I sometimes think of it as being slightly “on the spectrum” to be hyper-knowledgeable about X topic and then Y topic too and have to show that in social interactions–being socially unaware about the effect this can have on others.) To my mind, for my personal kids, partly because of this hyper-intellectually-competitive tone of UChicago, I gently point my kids to places that have the other sort of driven, the students who care deeply about doing well themselves, but can relax socially. But each person is different! The people who thrive on those sorts of “did you know?” and “no you’re wrong it’s really this and I’ll prove it to you” discussions, deep into the night, find UChicago a great fit because it spurs them further intellectually. So … for me, for my personal kids, Brown seems like the better fit to get the high level of learning but can relax in other ways. UChicago would be a great fit for someone who thrives on intense intellectual competition outside of the classroom too–competitive cleverness in this way.
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@Dustyfeathers thank you for this. I’ve been reading the Chicago threads silently, trying to figure out if it might be a fit for my son and yours was the single most helpful post on all the threads.
There is a massive shift underway at Chicago, and has been brewing for some time. Dean Boyer, and others within the university have been trying to shift away from the previous stereotypes: dreadful workload, grade deflation, no fun, horrible athletics, cold-dark winters, etc.
There are a number of things that have changed: less grade deflation, reducing # of core classes, more emphasis on house culture, and shorter academic calendars. There is even talk about switching to a semester system. The administration has its sights set on Harvard, and has been trying to make the college a more attractive place to undergrad students: more preppy, less stress, and more fun. In 10-15 years from now UChicago will be a very different place.
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Former Classics major here from Brown (back in the Dark Ages though). There was ENORMOUS crossover between Brown and Chicago back in the day. Professors on Sabbatical, grad students at Brown who had done undergrad at Chicago and vice-versa, and this held for ALL the antiquity disciplines, including art/architecture, languages, philosophy and theology, history. At the time, Chicago was better known for the “physical” aspects- field work in archaeology for example, and Brown had the shinier reputation in the non-physical (literature, some of the languages, religious studies). None of this mattered for undergrads btw, since the core disciplines you’d need for graduate work were solid and rigorous at both institutions.
The two institutions are more similar than they are different.
@Dustyfeathers : That competitive aspect describes exactly none of the recent University of Chicago students I know. I’m sure there are people like that there, but it isn’t remotely the dominant mode. Even among pre-meds and people who aspire to six-figure consulting jobs. My kids’ experience was that it was a completely a collaborative place.
I agree with blossom that Brown and Chicago are more similar than they are different, notwithstanding the considerable differences in curriculum design. My kids would tell you, though – and I have to admit they are right based on the people they know – that there is distinct anti-intellectual streak among undergraduates at Brown. It seems to attract people who are really smart but a little cynical about school, and don’t care terribly much about their classes, apart from the grades. That’s 180 degrees from the dominant attitude at Chicago. I don’t know if I really believe that about Brown generally, but most of the recent Brown students I know have attitudes toward classroom learning that are almost absent from Chicago.
Mohn- have you ever met an anti-intellectual Classics or Ancient History or Archaeology major? Curious about your comment…
I know a LOT of Brown students and grads and “anti intellectual” is not a term I would use to describe any of them.
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This is an important consideration because it’s the visit to U Chicago that kills it for many prospective students. It is a war zone outside of the campus gates. There is nothing like the sound of gunshots from the surrounding neighborhood to negate the tour guide’s reassurances about safety. The education at either institution will be top notch, so why not choose the place where you won’t have to live in fear?
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