Hi guys I am an international student that was recently admitted to Brandeis. Anyone has visited Brandeis? Can you please tell me how you feel when you visit the campus?
I will not have a chance to visit Brandeis before May so I really count on your experience and advice!
What are you other options and what are your financial constraints?
Brandeis is an excellent, highly respected school with excellent teaching and good research opportunities. It is located within easy reach of Boston, so students can take advantage of the cultural and social opportunities there. For international students, being close to the Boston airport is a plus. In terms of campus feel, I think that while most students are very happy there, I would say it is a relatively serious academically-oriented campus - not a sporty, fratty type of place in general (although I know a girl in a sorority who loves it). Opinions differ on the attractiveness of the campus - you should go online and look at pictures.
I feel that Brandeis is good school, not great. It has a fair amount of name recognition, especially in the northeast. For me, Brandeis was a safety school.
Brandeis is actually a great school. Where else did you get in @SteadfastSoprano to make Brandeis your safety?
Read about the history of Brandeis.
People are often known by the company they keep, and schools can be too.
I think of Brandeis’s peers as schools like Boston University, Boston College, Case Western, Wake Forest, Tulane University, the University of Rochester, Northeastern and Lehigh.
So, yes, Brandeis is a strong school. You have done well to gain admission as an international student.
I see that nobody in this thread has mentioned this yet, so I will. Brandeis University has a high percentage of Jews (I think around 50%); just mentioning this because you are international (meaning your values might be different than American’s), and I you should know the religious affiliation of a school before you attend it.
Brandeis is a premier University and it is in line with WashU and Tufts. Its acceptance rate skews higher not because they are less selective but because the people who apply generally apply there because they really want to attend and have the grades and scores to do so. In Naviance, it scores higher in terms of test scores than both Tufts and WashU.
It is a very social campus with tons of opportunities from theatre to hard science.
Just to expand on what @ryanordy88 mentioned: According to an info session I attended with my niece last August, though Brandeis was founded by Jews and still does have a large Jewish population, it has always been non-sectarian. The school was founded as an option for students who were not welcome at Harvard and other Ivies and has always been socially progressive. It certainly has had a reputation among some circles as a Jewish school. But it has always been secular and not religious.
We noticed on our campus visit today there are three chapels: centers for Catholics, Protestants, Jews. There is also a suite that houses a Muslim Student Association https://www.brandeis.edu/studentlife/chaplaincy/index.html
Also 20% of students are international, representing 63 countries. http://www.brandeis.edu/about/facts/schools.html
To answer the OP’s question, we just got back from a daylong visit to campus. Because it is a relatively young school, the architecture represents a variety of styles from the 50s to the present, so there aren’t any ivy covered gothic arches, though there is a Scottish-inspired castle. There are some whimsical touches, like the theatre building that looks like a top hat, or the art building with an entrance of lamposts you might see in old Europe, or the music building with 88 windows like a piano. It was a beautiful spring day, the tulips are blooming, the lawn has violets. There is a pedestrian bridge across a busy road to get to the athletic center. The campus is hilly, which adds some visual interest.
I’m going to disagree with #7 – Wash U is a notch up from Brandeis and Tufts, at least in terms of rankings and rep.
Brandeis was founded by Jews, but it is a nonsectarian university. Many U.S. colleges were founded by religious groups but are nonsectarian.
Brandeis has a very high percentage of international students.
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a feature in 2012 that mapped out “peer relationships” among colleges and universities based on the colleges’ own selection of peers. Brandeis was matched (i.e. each school selected the other as a peer) with Wash U, Rice, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, USC, and Boston College. Brandeis had also been selected by (but did not reciprocate with) Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Michigan, Notre Dame, Virginia. So it seems that within academic circles, Brandeis occupies a fairly high position that may not be up at the Ivy level but certainly deserves respect. In my field (academic), Brandeis is taken very seriously and students applying from the school are given serious consideration. The faculty at Brandeis is top notch and when they leave Brandeis (for whatever reason) they often end up at places like Columbia, Cornell, and Michigan (all specific cases I know). Because of its Jewish affiliation, I think it doesn’t get the number of applicants that its quality would otherwise suggest, resulting in a higher acceptance rate than its peers. It may not have WASPy snob appeal, but if you do well at Brandeis, grad school will not be a problem.
Steadfast soprano is not correct. If you are in line for Princeton or Yale, Brandeis might be considered a ‘safety’- MIGHT. It is a great school, but should never be considered a safety school. Their admissions rate is in the low 30’s, and that’s only because they don’t have as many applicants as let’s say a more name brand school. They’ve only been around for like 50 years, so they just don’t attract the same number of applicants. In a few years, their selectivity will increase even more, maybe to the 20’s or 10’s. But even now it is very selective and a very strong school. It is not a safety for even exceptionally bright kids.