Help Me Choose!! Brown Vs Penn

College Search & Selection
1

<p>hey-
i've got the next few days to decide between brown and upenn and i have no idea!! both of them seem equally good so if anyone has any advice i'd be more than happy to hear it. i'm looking for a school that isnt too huge, has great extracurricular activities and is strong in the humanities and social sciences because im looking at an international rel/journalism career. </p>

<p>so far: penn's urban but what if its too big and pre-professional?
brown seems really intellectual and liberal arts-y but what if its too laid back and whats providence like?</p>

<p>please help!</p>

2

<p>Go to Brown...smaller, prettier, safer.</p>

3

<p>you should definitely go to the school that seems like the best fit for YOU, but sometimes it's helpful to have "consumer reports" like data...
more than 70% of students with the same choice choose brown according to the cross-admit data & revealed preferences study</p>

4

<p>I'd go to Brown personally. Brown's in a great area of Providence (Its hip, young, fun, lots to do) and smaller, less pre-professional.</p>

5

<p>Brown sounds like a better fit for you. Providence is a small city. It has some diversity, not bad for New England. It has a new upscale mall downtown, with restaurants and entertainment (IMAX). The city also boasts RISD, one of the top two art/design schools in the country. There is also Johnson and Wales U- most known for it's culinary arts program. Boston is an hour from Providence. Providence has a great, smaller airport that many Bostonians and Boston travelers use. Providence has a river through the center and has some kind of festival of lights there in the good weather. I would go.</p>

6

<p>Brown, More Liberal, More Artsy, More Freedom (Open Curry)!</p>

7

<p>PENN, top 5 school, gets you into any grad school...
BROWN, top 20, still good, but no PENN</p>

8

<p>Penn is top 5 for one year out of the 23 years they've been doing rankings. Brown ranks higher than Penn on WSJ feeder school list.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

9

<p>Penn!!!
EC at Penn is so much more diverse and more selection than when I saw at Brown
Vibrancy of the school i thought was even more lively than Brown's
i'm going to penn over brown good luck deciding</p>

10

<p>If you choose Penn because of USNEWS its a tragedy. Penn isn't better than Brown at all, I'd argue the reverse.</p>

11

<p>i had no idea that Brown was such a great school, its near the top of my list now</p>

<p>slipper btw, brown this year, plans to take around 60 out of 1100 aps
no longer, the easy ivy to get into as a transfer</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
PENN, top 5 school, gets you into any grad school...
BROWN, top 20, still good, but no PENN

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yeah, and UPenn is better than Stanford and MIT as well just because it's ranked higher</p>

13

<p>They're both great academic institutions, and their general prestige (outside the business area) is really pretty equivalent. Penn undergrad is twice the size of Brown -- more stimulation or less intimate, depending on how you look at it -- and the university as a whole is probably 3-4 times larger. Wharton (grad and undergrad) is a huge part of Penn; you are much more likely to run into businessy types there compared to Brown.</p>

<p>Brown feels intimate and set apart from the city (but close). Penn feels really urban, with lots of lovely nooks and crannies. Brown is doubtless "safer", but it's wrong to think of Penn as "unsafe" or Brown as "safe". It's really a question of Penn being much more integrated with a much larger city than Brown. The average dorm at Brown is probably nicer than the average dorm at Penn, but it's hard to characterize Penn because there's such variation. More kids will live off-campus at Penn. The area around Penn has gotten much nicer over the past 20 years; Penn's last president did a lot to improve it. </p>

<p>Philadelphia is a much larger city than Providence (although BOTH have rivers running through them and convenient airports). There is a lot more going on there culturally, business-wise, research-wise (outside the university itself), and a lot more students of various stripes (although Providence has plenty). For the frequent trip, New York is about the same distance from Philadelphia as Boston is from Providence.</p>

<p>Penn takes sports, especially football and basketball, much more seriously than Brown. People care, sometimes to the point of obnoxiousness. Philadelphia is probably the best college hoops town in the country (all of the major local teams play each other every year, and that, not the Ivy League, is really what Penn sees as its competition).</p>

<p>For my money, probably the biggest negative on Brown is that people always talk about going to the nice downtown mall. It is nice, for a mall, but it's fundamentally a mall. At Penn, people don't regard going to a mall as something to do unless you have to.</p>

<p>Really, you should relax, congratulate yourself on your great options, and go with your gut about the schools.</p>

14

<p>Bball- funny that's about what it was when I applied in 1999. Transfer rates are very volatile.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
Penn is top 5 for one year out of the 23 years they've been doing rankings.

[/quote]

No, Penn has been top 5 four times in the last decade. </p>

<p>Plus, WSJ has only been doing that ranking for one year. WSJ is even more worthless as a ranking compared to USNEWS because WSJ doesn't take into account the number of preprofessional students that don't want to go into Law-B-Med schools.</p>

<p>Chose the school you like rather than get bogged up with useless rankings. Of course, If it were I, I'd easily take Penn without a heartbeat. lol</p>

16

<p>
[quote]
Of course, If it were I, I'd easily take Penn without a heartbeat.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Does that mean you'd only pick Penn over your dead body?</p>

17

<p>hey- thanks everyone for your great advice. i saw similar threads about this but they were all rankings-focussed which isnt what i care about.
i think ive decided on brown now. academics-wise i dont think i could have gone wrong so i looked at some other factors. </p>

<p>penn would have been an easy choice- i have a friend who's going to be a huntsman scholar and another classmate going to do engineering and my sister's classmate is a senior. but i think brown in a better fit.</p>

<p>i come from a big city but its still the kind of place where everyone knows everyone (and people are big on hanging out at the mall here, i just never have the time) and i like the sound of providence- not too big, not too small. risd is a big advantage and brown is better known for humanities with concentrations like south asian studies and modern culture and media. brown seems like it may be a little smaller and i like the intellectual freedom because i'm not 100% sure of what i want to do.</p>

<p>anyway thanks everyone for your help!! good luck to everyone else who's choosing colleges. i'm accepting brown but i've also been accepted to cambridge university, uk to study economics. any advice for my next choice, a levels permitting??</p>

18

<p>Cambridge all the way. That place has an atmosphere and beauty that no college in the US comes even close to. I can't imagine someone who's been there wanting to go anywhere else.</p>

19

<p>I'd recommend going to Brown (as you've said in your own words its a better personal fit for you and that's what really matters).</p>

<p>You can also arrange to take a semester abroad at Cambridge - speak to both Brown and Cambridge about setting this up in advance - since you've been accepted to both places I'm sure that something can be worked out through Brown's foreign study program.</p>

<p>Best of both worlds.</p>

20

<p>Go to Penn. It will strenghten your resume more than Brown, as you already show strenght im humanities. Penn will make u look more balanced.It is stronger in business owing to Wharton</p>