Inferiority Complex

<p>Does brown suffer from an inferiority complex at all - in comparison to harvard, yale, princeton?</p>

<p>Actually, I saw the inferiority complex a lot more during the time I've spent at Yale. Yale seems to resent Harvard a lot and think a lot about playing second fiddle, whereas Brown students just tend to do their own thing. Sure, some kids may be resentful that we don't have crystal chandeliers or leather couches in our dorms, but for the most part that's not part of the culture here.</p>

<p>interesting question.... One problem with it, however, is that it's overly general. Do you mean, do ALL Brown students have inferiority complexes? Certainly not, since Brown is the first choice for many students. From my high school alone I knew quite a few students who turned down Yale, Princeton, and Stanford for Brown. I also knew quite a few students from my high school who were rejected from their first choice schools and matriculated at Brown, but all of them eventually ended up loving Brown and finding it difficult to imagine having gone anywhere else. </p>

<p>Are there SOME students who do have inferiority complexes? Probably, but there are at every school, and at Brown I imagine the number is relatively small because an "inferiority complex" is something so antithetical to the culture there.</p>

<p>Finally, it doesn't matter. (Maybe a little sense of "inferiority" is healthy). I think what's more frightening is what happens at a lot of other schools -- the sense of being a fake, caused by the reputation of a school far exceeding the actual substance of what one's learned there. Reputation tends to be misleading and inaccurate like that, so I wouldn't bother much thinking about it, so long as you still have faith in meritocracy. As one of my favorite law professors once simply said, "A thing is what it does," as opposed to what it's called. A person is what he or she does. At Brown, you can do a lot.</p>