My daughter is a current student at Brown. I am sharing what I heard from a Brown admissions representative at an info session at Brown in January 2015. Clearly there are students admitted to Brown without calculus, but when asked about course rigor, those were the exact words of one particular admissions representative regarding calculus.
@ciervo very interesting. In that case, the AO was irresponsible. FWIW my d did NOT have calc. She is NOT an athlete (but she is a musician). And she received likely letter. Clearly, the lack of calc was not an issue. Course rigor can be measured in other areas as well. Brown is not an engineering school (yes, I know they HAVE an engineering school. Presumably students applying to it will have at least calc AB in high school).
Hi Jess. As noted, stats don’t really tell the whole story about a person. I agree that higher SAT scores would be better, but other than that your stats, etc. look very good. It’s true that some people have an amazing list of accomplishments, but there are people who get into Brown with less ‘stellar’ sounding stats, EC’s, etc. My D got in (just graduated) with a relatively spare list of ECs, but some of hers were sort of of her own making – things that she was interested in and passionate about and not usual in any way. There are a lot of posts over the years about finding things that you are passionate about, rather than just being involved in as many things as possible, and I happen to think that having something unique makes you stand out more than having a lot of ‘stuff’ in your application that is the same ‘stuff’ as everyone else. I also can’t imagine that not having calculus is the ‘kiss of death.’ I’d wager that there are many humanities majors at Brown who don’t know the difference between a ‘cosine’ and ‘cosigning’ a loan (including me) – and they all got in. Good luck to you.
@bonenz thank you!!!