So Brown is pretty much my #1 university that I’d like to go to, I love the open curriculum and the grading system especially because I’m aiming for medical school in the future. I was actually planning to apply ED but when I told my parents they were adamantly against it…saying that they would disown me and refuse to pay tuition if I apply Brown ED (they think very lowly of Brown and said that at least one member of the family has to go to Harvard ugh).
Anyway, I know that the ED acceptance rate is like 22% and RD is like 7%, but a lot of the ED acceptances are for athletes and legacies too. So, would my chances of getting into Brown be similar if I apply ED and RD? Because I would be really devastated if I would be able to get into Brown ED but not RD, but at the same time I don’t to create such a divide among the family either.
Don’t be. There is know way to know if you WOULD have gotten in ED.
Debatable and it’s been debated a lot here. Do a search. Personally I think ED improves chances. In the ED round Brown selects almost 40% of it’s class from a mere 10% of the applicant pool; whereas, in the RD round you’re competing against 90% of the applicant pool including the HYPS et al SCEA applicants who were not in Brown’s ED applicant pool.
A year ago, we calculated a best guesstimate of the ED acceptance rate at Brown for “unhooked” applicants (i.e., not legacies and recruited athletes). If memory serves, we had a fairly reliable approximation for athletes, and I simply do not recall how we came up with an approximate number for legacies. Anyways, our guesstimate was that the ED acceptance rate for the unhooked is in the neighborhood of 14-16%. This may not seem high, but it is considerably higher than the RD acceptance rate, which is crazy low.
Probably more important, though, is that Brown was VERY clearly my child’s first choice school. So, although she put a lot of effort into other schools’ RD applications (some of which were due before Brown’s ED decision date), she decided to go for it and apply to Brown ED. Lucky for her, she was accepted.
But I should add that I believe the process of researching other schools really helped for two reasons. It helped her decide which ones to put on her list, but also, it helped her to see that there really were quite a large number of wonderful options for her, lots of places where she would be happy and be challenged. So if she had not been accepted to Brown, she would have been well-positioned with lots of other good options (with a range of acceptance rates!).
I disagree strongly with the last part of the above. @amonaroll, I think the more immediate issue is that you need to sit down and have an honest talk with your parents about what you want. Applying ED to Brown does not make sense if your parents refuse to support you financially - if you get in you will be committed without the resources to pay for it, and will have to take on crushing debt. Their attitude seems ridiculous to me, but it’s important to make sure that you have a clear understanding of what to expect before applying ED.
Brown is a fabulous school and a great undergraduate experience. Try to make a list of reasons as to why you like it so much, and why it is a good fit for you, and have an honest discuss about why being at a school where you are happy is much more important than being at one with a slightly bigger name.
FWIW, my brother went to Harvard and was miserable. I went to Stanford, my younger sister went to Brown. We both loved our experiences. That’s just an n of 1 and can’t be extrapolated, but certainly the quality of education did not vary significantly among schools. My sister went on to do her PhD at MIT and felt well prepared, and has since had a success research and policy career in her field.
(they think very lowly of Brown and said that at least one member of the family has to go to Harvard ugh).