<p>It seems that Brown does things differently from everyone else. They often emphasize the role of the university-college in which case they make small specialized investments in a small number of graduate programs. It's like a mix of a LAC and a research university.</p>
<p>It also seems that the professors there are a lot nicer than professors at most other universities too...</p>
<p>Short answer: no. I’ve looked at Brown myself and didn’t really see how their particular program would be any different from another similar sized program with same quality.</p>
<p>There are other small schools that choose to make an investment in only a small number of graduate programs and focus mostly on undergraduate education - Princeton and Dartmouth are two other examples in the Ivy League that are noted for being sort of a “mix of an LAC and a research university.” There are other examples outside of the Ivy League, too. There are many small colleges that only offer a few master’s programs or one or two doctoral programs.</p>
<p>Having never been to Brown, I can’t say anything about their professors compared to other departments, but I doubt that they are “a lot nicer” than most other professors. Every department has its pricks and its angels; you will find nice people in pretty much every department and horrible people in almost every one, too. The ratio and intensity depends on the departmental culture.</p>
<p>Hmm - I’ve heard a lot of good things about the grad student life at Princeton too (across multiple departments). But it could be a size effect, since Princeton is small so everything is more intimate.</p>
<p>All I know about Brown is that tenure does depend on teaching (not just research) and that their average GRE scores do seem to be lower than programs of similar quality (across multiple departments too - I’ve looked on phds.org), which could imply a more holistic admissions process.</p>