@Emsmom1 The average gpa is 3.6. It’s not just that they have all smart students. Grade inflation runs rampant at Brown.
If you’re doing anything science related, I wouldn’t choose a lower tier one like Brown which is known for its unemployed history majors.
For people saying Brown is not a lower ivy, Brown produces such little and useless research and rides off the sports division name. There definitely are tiers to Ivy schools, the top being HYP, then columbia, penn etc, and all employers rank schools in their heads. Yes, it’s still an Ivy but there definitely is a hierarchy like at a company.
As a fellow applicant who got into top tier schools and is looking at it from an outsiders perspective, Brown is decent. People who applied Brown and probably got rejected to it and all his/her other schools for the matter of fact, try their best to compare it to somewhere better, which displays something known as confirmation bias.
It’s all about perspective I guess. Of course someone who went to somewhere like NYU would think highly of Brown(which is the vibe I’m getting from people in this thread) over someone who went to Cal Tech. The majority of americans and people on college confidential probably aren’t going to the top schools so the overall public probably thinks very highly of Brown. My perception changed after watching a Brown grad get fired for not knowing how to do research lol.
You can’t take Brown’s average GPA and conclude that there’s rampant grade inflation. Maybe the students actually like studying for their courses because of the open curriculum, getting high grades. Maybe the students choose easier courses over harder ones, but how big would the difference in difficulty be? Maybe the quality of the professors is excellent. If you would like to do research on what causes the high average GPA, please do so! I would love to find out why.
Brown’s science departments are respectable. You can’t say that Harvard’s science departments are better than Brown’s just because it’s Harvard. Harvard doesn’t have the best science departments. MIT, CalTech, Georgia Tech, and Berkeley do. It’s splitting hairs to say Harvard’s science departments are better than Brown’s.
I would agree Brown lacks in research and its graduate schools. However, Brown’s focus is on the undergraduate experience, not the graduate. This is probably why Brown is ranked lower than most other schools. Brown’s post-graduation employment rate is also low because most Brown grads go on to graduate school.
What OP is really asking is OK I did not get into top Ivies, or as some’d say here even mid Ivies, am ‘I’ (not Brown) still worth it. The answer is Yes! But am I on top of the world. Well not quite, but maybe on top of 90-5% of the world. Still pretty darn good. Now move on to make the best of your life, instead of debating how great you should be just based on some college admission officers’ opinion. We all heard about the story of Harvard class reunion of 50 some year old alumni. Guess what, many of them, looking back, felt that getting into Harvard was the peak of their lives! It’s hard to prove you are the top 5% of anything after that. So big deal if you don’t get into Harvard.
Wow, so I just read the post that says: “My perception changed after watching a Brown grad get fired for not knowing how to do research. lol”
HAHAHAHA. My perception of that post changed after I read that the very negative view of Brown was influenced so strongly by ONE GRAD. N=1. Research, anyone?
Your focus should be on making the most out of Brown, thousands of Brown rejects would kill to be in your position. It doesn’t matter what Browns status is compared to other ivies and wha the perceived pecking order is. It won’t make a practical difference. You will have amazing opportunities at Brown, take advantage of them.
My take? I didn’t go to Brown, but I did go to an Ivy, and see lots of resumes (as I’m mid-career now).
In the big picture, a Brown (or any Ivy) undergraduate degree will put you in a small pool of people: “the highly intelligent”.
“The highly intelligent” run in similar circles and if you’re in those circles, there are slews of very successful people, so a Brown degree won’t by itself give you the cachet that, say, being a Rhodes Scholar who was magna cum laude from Princeton, got a Harvard Business School MBA and then a Yale Law School JD, but people like that are above the rest of us. But you’ll certainly have credibility enough to run with those people.
Someone who didn’t go to an Ivy/Duke/Stanford/MIT/U of Chicago won’t necessarily have enough credibility to run with those people and be considered an equal. But you will.
It’s going to come down to your major/grades, rather than the name of the school. If you major in sociology, potential employers are probably not going to be very impressed.
There are very few people who even try to distinguish universities at this level. 5-10 years out of college the idea of that in most fields will crack you up. CC posters probably make up 96% of the audience who cares to try and create meaningful differences between the top schools.
After kids and parents alike spent so much effort trying to knock on top schools, it’s understandable they’d try to attach some value or worth after fact, like how good am I, or really how better I am than others that got into XXX schools. It’s really fruitless exercise for mainly just vanity/ego. You present what you are and what you’ve done during HS and hope for the best. Decision depends on so many things it’s safe to say not all Harvard accepted kids are smarter or better than you. Plus how can what you did at age of 15-18 determine that much of you and in the long run anyway?
The other more practical question is if my Brown or Ivy badge opens some doors that are close to people otherwise. It can to certain professions dominated by Iviers. And generally when you go to good (like all ivies) schools people assume you are smart, driven and all that. But at many other (more objective) fields it depends more on how good the major is at that school and how hard you’ve worked on that field. Badge along may not carry much in those cases.
My daughter graduated from Brown and my son is a current senior at Harvard. From my close observation of the two, Brown is much more focused on undergraduate education, and Harvard is just, well, Harvard. I do think that Brown students get more personal attention from faculty and staff than at Harvard. My son is extremely independent, but even the few times he’s wanted advising, etc., it takes several emails and cajoling to get a response. Some professors never bother to respond to emailed questions and they don’t do regular office hours. He has developed a close relationship with his thesis advisor and a few other professors, but that’s about it. Most medium to large classes are taught by TFs.
As far as rigor, my son took a math class at Brown his senior year of high school, and he says that class was more difficult than anything he took at Harvard freshman or sophomore year. He knows brilliant students and students who he says can barely do the work and take the easiest classes to get by. Any argument that there is less rigor at Brown is silly – it is obvious that most colleges have such a wide range of offerings and rigor is what you make of it.
At Brown, professors seem more accessible and responsive to students, and it’s a closer knit, supportive community. Most people would consider this a positive.
FWIW, all of my daughter’s friends who went on to grad or professional school had great results at the tippy top schools. Brown is very well respected.
If you really have a choice, you may want to consider other schools with stronger Math programs. At the risk of speaking generally for silicon valley companies, an ivy undergrad in math (exception of Harvard, maybe Princeton) is not going to wow any hiring manager. Most of the ivy undergrads here are here on their grad school, I’ve met folks in say marketing with undergrad (Brown, Yale) and MBA (Michigan, Stanford).
As for math, if you got into Brown, you should at least have applied to non-ivy schools with I think, stronger if not much stronger math programs, just to give you a choice (and maybe you’ve done this). MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago, UCLA, NYU, CMU, Duke, Michigan for starters.
@theloniusmonk Interesting post. I wonder if Columbia’s careers office is being disingenuous then when it states that Google made offers to more than 20 Columbia undergraduates? Indeed, when Google was busy recruiting my D, what they were interested in were her language skills and her ability to develop innovative business models. They even offered extra money for knowing “exotic” languages.
@Gourmetmom Guess it really depends on your child. Faculty at Harvard’s Kennedy School make a point of working with Harvard undergrads, and the IOP offers fantastic research and internship opportunities. You do however have to proactively seek them out. It is a shame your son had that experience. Some do while others have fantastic experiences (especially in science).
Which House is your son a member of? He should have raised these concerns with his Senior Tutor. Indeed, the House system normally is one of the best aspects of Harvard College and has no equivalent at Brown.
All said, Brown is obviously a predominantly undergraduate institution. When I used to do alumni interviews, I would always stress to applicants that (1) Harvard College is a relatively small unit within the overall university; (2) that Harvard is most definitely a research university; and (3) Harvard isn’t for those who do not pro-actively engage themselves. It is most definitely not a place where the faculty will seek you out.
The Brown Math majors tend to go straight to grad school. Here are the 2015 placements (most current available):
Brown Alpert Medical School, MD
Harvard University, PhD, Biology
Harvard University, PhD, Mathematics
Harvard University, PhD, Planetary Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD, Mathematics
University of Cambridge - Benefactors Scholarship at St. John's College, MPhil, Computer Science Theory
University of California, Berkeley, PhD, Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara, PhD, Mathematics
Whereas, the larger group of Brown Comp Sci undergrads tend to go straight to work: Here are the 2015 placements:
Associate Product Manager, Google
Associate Product Manager, Google
Data Scientist, Censio, Inc.
DevOps Engineer, Kyruus
Developer, Microsoft Corp.
Growth Marketing Intern, DataFox Intelligence, Inc.
Product Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Product Quality Engineer, Palantir Technologies
Production Intern, Imprint Projects
Program Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Program Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Program Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Program Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Project Manager, Microsoft Corp.
Research Developer, Vision Systems, Inc.
Security Researcher, Salesforce
Software Developer - Big Data Discovery Team, Oracle Corporation
Software Developer, Casper
Software Developer, Jane Street Capital
Software Developer, Surround.io
Software Development Engineer, Amazon.com
Software Engineer, AppDynamics
Software Engineer, Appnexus
Software Engineer, Blend Labs
Software Engineer, Computer Science Corporation
Software Engineer, Delphix
Software Engineer, Delphix
Software Engineer, Delphix
Software Engineer, Dropbox Inc.
Software Engineer, Facebook
Software Engineer, Facebook
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Google
Software Engineer, Joyent, Inc.
Software Engineer, MathWorks
Software Engineer, Microsoft Corp.
Software Engineer, Microsoft Corp.
Software Engineer, Mitre Corp.
Software Engineer, Pinterest
Software Engineer, Pure Storage
Software Engineer, Quora Inc.
Software Engineer, Redfin
Software Engineer, Redfin
Software Engineer, Twitter Inc.
Software Engineer, Vistaprint
Software Engineer, Vistaprint
Software Engineer, Vistaprint
Software Engineer, Zillow.com
Software Engineering Intern, Yelp
Summer Imersion Program Teacher, Girls Who Code
Technical Director Intern, Pixar
iOS Engineer, Getaround
@ManaManaWegi first of all, congratulations on getting into Brown! Your goal is to study Math and get your degree in that field, correct? What do you see yourself doing with your math degree? Research? Teaching? My opinion is that general public perception of a degree from Brown would be favorable as it is an Ivy. However, perception by prospective employers that are looking to hire from a competitive pool may not rate a Brown STEM degree as prestigious as say a STEM degree from Cornell. C is a huge research institution and is on the cutting edge in science and technology in many fields. Just look at what they’re building on Roosevelt Island in NYC. I don’t think Brown is on the same level. Brown wouldn’t hold a candle to a Berkeley STEM degree for the same reasons. If u have other options to pursue STEM in a better known university for it, I would recommend that.
@CALSmom your statement baffles when I look at the published post-graduate data for Brown for Math and Comp Sci concentrators as linked upstream on this thread.
I believe Brown math undergrad is a fairly small group, yet their latest published grad school placement data for JUST ONE CLASS is:
Brown Alpert Medical School, MD
Harvard University, PhD, Biology
Harvard University, PhD, Mathematics
Harvard University, PhD, Planetary Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD, Mathematics
University of Cambridge - Benefactors Scholarship at St. John’s College, MPhil, Computer Science Theory
University of California, Berkeley, PhD, Physics
University of California, Santa Barbara, PhD, Mathematics
Source: https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/post_grad_data/concentration/MATH
Per capita is Berkley and/or Cornell getting substantially better placements than that? If so, I’m impressed.
There are colleges that aren’t known to the general public for STEM (or not known at all to the general public for that matter) that have strong per capita post- grad placement for Math Majors: Swarthmore, Reed and Williams come to mind…
Smaller can mean better undergrad access to professors and research opportunities which translates in to higher per capita PhD placements.
I know it’s not Berekley, but I spoke with a recent UCLA grad, and he said it was a scrum trying to get access to resources as an undergrad. How is it for undergrads at Berkeley in terms of access?
@arwarw I was just giving my opinion to @ManaManaWegi on perceived reputation of Brown regarding a math degree. That’s all. Just basing it on snap judgment…Brown is a very good school, one any student would be proud and thrilled to get into but I’m just saying that when one thinks of Brown they don’t associate it with a prestigious reputation for STEM. IMHO grade inflation and liberal course selection (i.e., being able to take whatever classes and graduate) are the first two things that come to my mind when I think of Brown. Not saying it’s completely true but it’s out there and the OP was looking for honest opinions on PERCEPTIONS @ManaManaWegi don’t get hung up on all this. You will end up where you are supposed to be and I find that it’s the individual who makes their success. So make the most of your education and EC on campus and enjoy this short period of your life! :)>-
Here’s something else to consider about Brown STEM…its students (undergrads and recent alumni) do really well winning one of the most prestigious STEM grants for graduate studies–the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (NSF GRF)–probably because it is, in fact, highly regarded for STEM. (One can only apply for the award as a senior in college, or during a gap year post-bac [6 brown alumni on a gap year won it this year], or once either as a first or second year grad student.) Brown compares favorably to its peers. I’m thrilled because my kid is amongst this year’s winners (he’s one of the 23 kids who have recently graduated). There’s about a 10% acceptance rate, so any one school getting this many awards is outstanding; Brown and its peers did equally well.
And here is the NSF site where you can search this year’s awardees by undergraduate school (just FYI: Brown was awarded 28 and Berkeley was awarded 27; given Brown’s student body size relative to Berkeley’s, I think that’s indicative of a similarly strong STEM education):
Make sure you click on offered award rather than honorable mention. And to search by undergraduate school, click on baccalaureate institution.
As a parent of a brown STEM concentrator, I couldn’t be happier with his education. He thrived and loved his overall Brown experience. He applied to graduate school this year in a “hot” STEM field and was accepted to a number of schools ranked in the top 10 in his discipline. He’s heading out to CA for grad school.