How important is visiting/making contact with Brown?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
1

<p>I have never made any contact with Brown before, and I won’t get a chance to visit before applying. They’ve never sent me anything in the mail, although I’ve received mail (without requesting) from other schools like Yale, UPenn, Stanford, Harvard, UChicago, WashU, Duke, etc. I’ve always been interested in Brown, but somehow it’s just slipped my mind to request any viewbooks or such from them, since they’ve never sent me anything before. </p>

<p>It’s my understanding that it’s best to “not be a stranger” to schools that you are applying to; that is, your application should not be the first time that a school sees your name. Is this a big deal at Brown? Will my lack of contact affect admissions decision? (I’m one of those students with pretty-good-but-nothing-extremely-special type of stats.)</p>

2

<p>I don't believe that Brown tracks interest, so they won't look up whether you've visited or if you're on the mailing list. But if you're interested, you really should have requested a viewbook at least, it takes like 10 seconds.</p>

3

<p>Brown doesn't "track interest" but does take into account your level of interest. Which you can show by ways other than a visit.</p>

4

<p>when we went on a tour we didn't even sign in-so clearly they don't track.</p>

5

<p>Being interested and having a knowledge of Brown is important. My father is an alumni interviewer and one of the questions on the evaluation of each prospective students he fills out after every interview says " Does the candidate seem knowledgeable abour Brown?" Visiting will definitely make you more aware of the specifics of Brown so you dont end up using completely vague statements during the interview that can be applied to any selective college or university.</p>

6

<p>For one example, my daughter was not able to visit Brown. She was only able to attend the info session the admissions officer gave at her high school. I don't think her "Why Brown?" statement was anything out of the ordinary, but I'm sure it showed some awareness of Brown's unique qualities.</p>

<p>Beautifullady has a good point that the interview is one way to show interest. She had a great interview. But I don't know that they talked about Brown all that much. The interviewer had only gone for grad school there.</p>