Final thoughts , Brown or University of Chicago

Parents Forum
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That’s absolutely ridiculous. Anyone who thinks that hasn’t spent actual time there in 25 years. (And, unlike Columbia, but like Brown, there are no meaningful “campus gates.”) My kids spent 7+ person-years living in Hyde Park year-round, mostly off campus, and one of them has gone there daily (except for vacations, business trips, and coronavirus) for another 7 years, usually by bike or CTA bus. It’s not even remotely a war zone, unless your idea of a war zone is Park Slope.

@blossom I agree with you. And do you know how many Ancient History or Archaeology majors Brown graduated last year? According to NCES, 0. https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=brown+university&s=all&id=217156#programs There seem to have been a smattering of Classics majors, but it’s hard to tell because the department was merged with Linguistics.

A close childhood friend of my son’s went to Brown (and from there to Bain, and to Harvard Law School, etc.). He was a Presidential Scholar. He chose Brown over several other colleges even more difficult to get into. When he was a senior there, he earnestly told me that all his classes were jokes, and the only point was getting the grades that qualified him for his offer from Bain. All of his energy went into the extracurricular he led. He was (and is) really, really intelligent, no question about that, but he had contempt for academics.

Of course, he is just an anecdote, but it is almost impossible to imagine a similar conversation with a Chicago student. The closest I ever came to that was a recruited football player who was miserable there, resentful of not being able to play in Division 1, completely focused on his fraternity and on getting hired by an investment bank (at which he was successful). He’s a PhD student in biostatistics now.

I have three young cousins at Brown now. (Well, of course, not AT Brown, but you know what I mean . . . ) They are all really smart, accomplished, and well educated, but I don’t think anyone has accused any of them of being intellectuals. Or of caring that they weren’t.

I am not saying there are no intellectual students at Brown. Of course there are, probably lots of them. I am absolutely not saying it’s not a wonderful place to go to college. I am saying that in my children’s world, Brown was attracting, among others, a type of student that was practically nonexistent at Chicago. Both kids decided not to apply to Brown, principally for that reason (a decision I disagreed with). In one case, the nonapplication was something of a sacrifice – her school’s counselors were really pushing her for Brown, and she loved Brown’s creative writing program. I’m sure she would have loved Brown had she gone there.

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IPEDS data is extremely unreliable. Whenever possible, one should use data from the colleges themselves. Of course, some colleges have always been much more transparent about data than others.

The correct numbers for Brown:
[ul][]Archaeology & Ancient History - 9 graduating majors per year on average (2010-2019), 11 graduating majors in 2019
[]Classics - 24 graduating majors per year on average (2010-2019), 19 graduating majors in 2019[/ul]
I couldn’t find Chicago’s breakdown of graduating seniors by major, but currently there are 30 declared majors in Classics according to the registrar’s quarterly report. Since those include not only seniors but also sophomores and juniors, one can assume that are perhaps around 15 senior Classics majors at Chicago, not a significantly different number.

I couldn’t agree more with the posters who doubt the student bodies at Chicago and Brown are all that different these days. 20 years ago, sure, maybe. In any case, I have never run into anyone from Brown - undergrad, PhD student, or faculty member, and I know quite a few - who has been anything but effusive with praise for Brown’s academics. Brown students are encouraged to pursue their interests, bridge disparate disciplines in unconventional ways, and go beyond traditional courses and take advantage of opportunities like Group Independent Studies. I know one Brown graduate who helped organize a GISP in underwater archaeology, for example, and is now a PhD student in nautical archaeology. The class attracted not only archaeology majors but also enthusiastic non-majors like members of Brown’s pirate a cappella group (or arrrcappella, rather).

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Mohn- the last 5 Ancient History majors I met from Brown (all within the last few years) would not have been “counted” as Ancient History majors- since their departmental affiliation was Religious Studies (a core strength of Brown’s for decades) and they created their own course of study with history, classics, art history, philosophy, etc. There is an informal newsletter which goes out periodically (faculty deaths, recent publications, that sort of thing) and it amazes me how the flexible curriculum has allowed students interested in antiquity to pull together an interdisciplinary program which gets sponsored by a professor from any relevant department and allows the student to focus on the area of interest once the basics are covered. The only difference between now and back when I did the same thing- it seems that the custom of being fluent (at least in reading) in German and French in addition to one of the core ancient languages seems less prevalent. Perhaps the German scholars of the 20th century are less in vogue? Or perhaps so much more is being done with primary sources that fluency in Aramaic AND Greek is considered more relevant??? In my day you needed at least one ancient language (most people had several) and either French/German to be considered for a grad program…don’t know if that’s the case now.

Glad to hear that Brown students are getting recruited at places like Bain. I’ve been interviewing prospective Brown students for a long time and the “rap” was always that Brown might be a fascinating place to study the Renaissance or anarchy or the Russian Revolution but you’d never get a job at a big bank or consulting firm. For that you’d need to go to Dartmouth.

To each his/her own. Glad your kids found their people.

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I lived in Chicago in the 1990s. And back then, Hyde Park was certainly a rough place. Especially anything south of the Midway Plaisance. But nowadays the area is very pleasant. The University has done a great job at revitalizing the surrounding neighborhood. There are a lot of new restaurants and small businesses.

The area south of Midway is still not the greatest area (Woodlawn). But it has definitely improved. Within a few blocks of midway there are a lot of new condos, a new Jewel Osco. And UChicago is in the process of building a mega dorm on the south end of campus. All these things together make the Hyde Park area a much different neighborhood than it was even a few years ago.

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Just a few random thoughts.

Pure math at Chicago is quite a lot better than at Brown. The kids are more talented as well. Computer science will be better at Brown, but perhaps that is changing now.

Brown will be quite a lot “easier” and more relaxed.

You can’t go wrong with either.

Haha I am old enough now to remember when Park Slope was a war zone. I agree that the Hyde Park of today is nothing like even 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40. Maybe not quite the level of transformation as Park Slope, though :slight_smile:

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@MohnGedachtnis you’ve posted about Brown being anti-intellectual on several threads now. I’m sorry you’re relatives have that impression, but that’s absolutely not the impression that many, many other people have and can’t be further than the reality that my kid is experiencing there.

My kid has said that everyone she knows are all sincerely engaged in their subject matters, with the exception of a very few one-off situations. She keeps going back to the fact that you get to choose what classes you get to take. And, if your major does require a particular class, then if there are a couple of different sections offered you can sit in on the different sections and then choose which one you’d prefer as different profs have slightly different teaching methods. The system is set up to promote choice.

My kid also said that almost every student she knows is doing some kind of outside the classroom engagement in an area related to their major. Most of these involve research, but she also has friends editing journals, doing tangible work in foreign countries, writing articles for publication etc. I had also mentioned on another thread that Brown is one of the highest producers of Fulbright Scholars for many years running. My D also wanted me to mention the Brown Design workshop, where any student (not just engineers), go to design and build whatever they are interested in. She’s had friends use that to design and sew costumes, and friends use it to design and build race cars. The friend with the costumes is a theatre major and the friend with the race cars is a physics major. Like many other schools, there is an EC related to entrepreneurship, which has students from all sorts of majors learning how to take an idea, bring it to the production stage, and market it. She knows several CS students who used this for various apps.

With regard to ancient languages at Brown, there is a separate department at Brown for Egyptology and Assyriology. My kid knows this department, and said there are just less than 10 kids in it. But she said this is no problem whatsoever; my D is in a department with less than 15 kids in it, the university fully funds and supports them, the advising is terrific, and she feels like there are unlimited opportunities available to her. The profs in her department work closely with profs in other universities and are on top of their game. Going back to the Egyptology and Assyriology department, she has overheard various conversations among those students and said that they, along with the Archaelogy students seem to be among the happiest at the university.

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Thanks for the comment. It’s good to hear from a parent of a current student. Big weekend of thinking for my son. He read this thread and said it was very helpful!

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As a well-intended correction to an above comment, Columbia just looks like it has gates between it and the surrounding neighborhood. In fact the “gates” at 116th street are to the smallest part of the campus and the campus spreads far and wide throughout the city, mostly toward the north. In addition to the many buildings surrounding the central core, there’s a brand new campus being built 1/2 mile away on 125th street and buses circulate between the two campuses (though it’s walkable distance); there’s the medical school area just north of there on 168th about and then further north, in the 200s, there are the athletic facilities–stadium and rowing center etc.

Also, two of the people in my multiple generation family that has attended UChicago–one is there currently and one graduated just two years ago in premed.

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Both are great schools, and when compared against each other, neither will provide a significant advantage for jobs, grad or professional schools assuming equivalent academic achievement. That really is the key. In his gut, where does your son think he will have the best experience over the next 4 years? It’s not just which school has higher ranked relevant department(s) (which is often driven by grad schools). Also don’t necessarily expect your son’s interest not to change. It’s also about the location and other elements of student life, housing and dining situation, clubs and other activities.

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"UChicago would be a great fit for someone who thrives on intense intellectual competition outside of the classroom too–competitive cleverness in this way. "

Agree, which I thought Chicago could be better as the OP’s son is driven by competition. I only know a few Brown undergrads and they really liked their time there, anecdotal as that is. They would never characterize their experience as intense, probably the first adjective to describe Chicago, which is why people were surprised that’s it come down to these two colleges. I know a few people who visited both and basically applied to one but not the other, they said the campus feel was that different.

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I too am a Brown grad, but I attended when dinosaurs roamed the earth—well before @blossom. I agree with her that for most students their experiences attending them won’t be radically different. OP’s S can’t go wrong.

Preliminarily, IMO, students & parents get too caught up in subject matter rankings. I think this for 3 reasons: 1. Lots of students change their majors; 2.Many of those ratings tend to be linked to a university’s graduate programs’ strengths & ,especially in science, the number of faculty publications and ability to attract major grants, patents registered, etc. Few of these have much impact on undergrad education. 3. Most students are not true stars in their fields and are never going to come close to exhausting the undergrad offerings in their major at a school with a fairly strong department. I think OP’s S should be asking current undergrads what it’s like to be an undergrad chem or CS major: how big are your classes; do you have TAs and how well do those TAs speak English? Can you talk to profs? Do they have office hours or do you have to make an appointment? Are there review sessions? If you’re struggling, how easy is it to get help? Are their get togethers with profs for undergrads in your department? Who teaches seminars? How hard is it to get into them? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I think finding out is more important than checking rankings.

I am clearly pro-Brown. I may be out of date, so please check what I say here, but these are what I see as differences:

Brown is the “big fish” in a small state. This makes a huge difference to poli sci concentrators, but it also matters to other undergrads. Often, Brown profs and therefore its students become involved in trying to come up with practical solutions to Providence’s and Rhode Island’s problems in ways that just don’t happen in larger states.

Providence is close to other, more major cities that can be reached by mass transit. There are lots of other colleges in these cities. Chicago is a major city, but there aren’t a lot of other big cities or many other top colleges close by. In some fields and for some ECs this matters. It can also matter during job searches. In others, it doesn’t.

As far as I know, all Brown profs teach undergrads. If you don’t want to do so, you don’t teach at Brown. The last time I checked, this wasn’t true at UChicago. My kid --a long time ago, I admit–was interested in economics. Chicago had something like 7 Nobel Prize winners in econ on the faculty at the time, but most of them had never taught an undergraduate class. I think the “New Curriculum” is one reason Brown profs are willing to teach undergrads. We tend to think of Brown’s flexibility as a draw for students, but for faculty who teach introductory classes, it’s nicer to have students who are actually interested in the subject than students who are only taking it to satisfy core or distribution requirements. I remember–again a long time ago–someone telling me an astronomy associate prof chose Brown’s offer over some other more prestigious University’s when he found out the students at Brown in intro astronomy were actually interested in astronomy. At the other college he’d spend at least 3 years teaching the intro class with at least half the students in it taking astronomy because they saw it as the easiest way to meet the physical science or science requirement. He had TAed such classes as a grad student and had no desire to teach them again. In the old days when USNews included “undergrad teaching” in its ratings, Dartmouth and Brown consistently topped the ratings.

Brown is stronger than UChicago in performing arts. My own kid–who didn’t attend either school–had no intention of continuing to perform in college. Nonetheless, a vibrant performing arts scene was important in choosing a college because she wanted to be able to attend plays, musicals, concerts, etc. and because she knew enough about herself to know that she tended to gravitate towards performers as friends. This criterion eliminated Chicago. Brown has always attracted a lot of students interested in the arts, not only performing, but in arts management, literary agencies, musical composition for film and stage,etc. Laura Linney, John Krasinski, Emma Watson are among the “big” names, but there are many others. (I haven’t performed since high school, but attending Trinity Rep which is now affiliated with Brown, was the beginning of my life-long love of theatre. )

Intellectual means different things to different people. My kid’s high school alma mater sends about a half dozen or so students to UChicago every year and about the same number to Brown. In the aggregate–there are always exceptions–those going to Chicago tend to be interested in academia & less interested in the world around them. Those going to Brown are interested in the world more generally and often were EC stars and SJWs. Even pre-med types tend to be interested in health policy.

I’m sure someone will disagree with my observations, but that’s my opinion.

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32

Think you to everyone who took the time to give advice and perspectives. I know my son was deciding whether it was OK to pass up going to school with a top 10 chemistry program. I think what we have learned is that as a chemistry major, he can do well at either school if he applies himself and is self-motivated. I think with the still uncertain future , he is thinking that being closer to home is not a bad idea.

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Congratulations to your son. He really can’t go wrong with either. As others have mentioned, they are quite different schools culturally. Brown may be a little more highly regarded for CompSci but Chemistry at UChicago is a real gem. The association with Argonne and FermiLab offer opportunities that can only be matched by a handful of more STEM-focused universities. Both were among my sons top choices and he visited UChicago a couple of times and really liked everything about it. Ignore the negative talk about Hyde Park. It’s a nice area and UChicago seems extremely supportive of students. Best of luck with the decision.

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Congrats to your son. Having worked up the street from Brown and spent some time at U of C, I’d say that unless he has a particular pull to UChicago he’s probably made the better decision. UChicago is unparalleled for kids who have (a) bottomless intellectual curiosity; (b) eyeballs of steel; © no particular worries about what they’ll do afterwards; (d) no real itch to go have big party fun. Brown’s programs aren’t as stiff, but eventually you want to do something with chemistry, and unless you’re going to be an academic, there aren’t too many places better to start out than Boston/environs (will count Providence there). Because it’ll be pharma, mat sci, or petrochemicals, and Boston’s got the two that won’t be on life support by the time this is all over. Brown is also still, alas, the better place to meet someone’s rich dad who can use a guy like you.

Actually if I was going to do chemistry in Chicago I probably wouldn’t go to UChicago anyway, I’d want to work for Sir Fraser Stoddart at Northwestern. He seems all right and Northwestern doesn’ t make people crazy, just poor. UChicago’s physical sciences are standing under a money waterfall and trying mightily to pull ahead and be a big thing there, but they seem to be making people even more miserable than usual in the process.

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@jonri Well…I mean come on. I have nothing in particular against Brown except how miserably they treat the children of a very rough, poor city, but “intellectual” is not what leaps to mind when I think of Brown, and I spent a while serving its students and going to campus events. Some of the faculty, sure. And staff. But UChicago it ain’t in the brains department.

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With more than a handful of Maroons in the family, including a noted particle physicist who was placed at UC as a prodigy and earned his PhD in physics there at age 21, as well as a law firm classmate who attended LS at Chicago (where he truly found his tribe), I really agree with your assessment of Chicago. That’s as close as I’ve been to the place in terms of experience. D2 was recruited to play soccer there but (1) I didn’t think she would clear admissions even with the coach’s help and (2) she didn’t belong there IMO. IMO, the stereotypical Chicago grad wants to be intellectual and wears it as part of their identity.

I’ll say this about Brown with a kid there (not the soccer player): Providence is terrific and manageable and College Hill is lovely. The Chicago campus is beautiful architecturally, but there’s no doubt I’d rather spend 4 years on College Hill than in Hyde Park. And while Chicago is truly one of the country’s tippy tippy top academic powerhouses, I think for me and mine Brown offers more than any of us could ever consume in 4 years. It really is a beautiful and pleasurable place to get a high level education.

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Peace Corps versus West Point.

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We’ve raised our family in Hyde Park, so when I hear it characterized as a war zone, I have to scratch my head. Kids much younger than college age walk to and from school on their own in our neighborhood. While there are indeed occasional gun shots, as with any big city, that is the price you pay for living in a socioeconomically diverse place. Having grown up in small towns, I think Hyde Park feels a lot like a small town; neighbors know and look out for one another. In that sense, it is safer than many suburbs.

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I do agree about the academic competitiveness of U of C students that others on this thread have mentioned. I would describe it as posturing.

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OP hasn’t posted since 2020. closing.