<p>This is carried over from a post made by lostmyeszett on another thread, but seems worthy of its own thread:</p>
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<p>Are you finding or did you find your first semester at Brown to be extremely stressful? Was the quality or quantity of work expected a major surprise that caught you unaware?</p>
<p>I’m actually replying more to the original post, but I agree that this deserves its own thread. 
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<p>I went to Brown; my D applied ED this year. (12 days and counting down!)</p>
<p>I did not find Brown stressful. It was fun. If it hadn’t been, I would not have encouraged my D to apply.</p>
<p>On the stress scale, new environments and new challenges (even really positive ones) rank as stress-inducing. Most students experience stress to some degree in college.</p>
<p>I think that Brown can be stressful for a couple of reasons. 1. The classes are challenging. 2.Your peers all
seem alarmingly smart.</p>
<p>Sorry - premature posting.</p>
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<li>You also want to do things besides academics. 4. Time management is not a strength of college freshmen. 5. There are many classes with only one or two grades in a semester.</li>
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<p>Most of these things could be said about any college. Is Brown more stressful than other schools? Probably not for the majority of students. Most of them are pretty happy.</p>
<p>Again, though, it does matter how well you fit into the culture. Smart, sell-motivated people like challenges. Many are often pretty hard on themselves. (My D is one.) Many are very competitive. (My D is not.) This impacts your stress level.</p>
<p>Students at Brown trend to compete with themselves far more than they compete with each other. For some students, that is stress-inducing. It can be the first time that you’ve ever really done that.</p>
<p>I’ve said this before, but I think that it bears repeating - not many people choose to take many classes without grades, even though they can, and Brown doesn’t report GPAs. Students want to work for the grade - they want to be challenged and stretch themselves, our they wouldn’t have gone. They love what they do. Is it hard? Yes. And it should be. If it isn’t, why would you bother?<br>
some people.</p>
<p>I don’t remember feeling very stressed freshman year, at least about grades. For me, the bigger stress was socially as I tried to figure out where I fit at Brown. I went to an extremely academically rigorous high school, so honestly freshman year wasn’t much of a problem, even though I was taking tough classes. However, my high school was also tiny (about 60 kids in my senior class), so being in a community where my dorm was the size of my entire high school was overwhelming at first, as was being across the country on my own. However, I figured it all out.</p>
<p>My son sounded a bit worn out for a week or two after a brief illness, but he’s taking 5 classes, two with labs, and still getting orientated. He was quite chipper by Thanksgiving weekend and was happy that he hadn’t been given assignments to do over that break, which always used to happen in high school.</p>
<p>Bruno’s experience sounds almost exactly like mine 5 years prior to his. Went to the same small school from 1st through 12th grade with a graduating class of 50. For the first two weeks I was pretty disappointed and felt like there was no one I liked at Brown and was worried I had made a mistake in coming. By thanksgiving though I had already drank the kool-aid and was in love but it was weird to go from knowing/having a relationship with every one of my teachers to being completely anonymous in half of my classes. Freshman fall the workload was actually easier than high school and I got higher grades than I did in high school. Freshman spring brought on my varsity sport and rushing/pledging so that trend didn’t continue, lol</p>
<p>I attended another Ivy. I recall the first semester after midterms and just before finals being very stressful for my classmates. I think it’s because we had no context to judge what would happen during the finals session.</p>
<p>Afterward, most everyone knew what to expect and the end of Spring term and as upperclassmen.</p>
<p>Freshmen year at college is stressful, and Brown is no different. You’re away from home, maybe thousands of miles away, surrounded by people you’ve only known for a short time – your parents, siblings and longtime friends are miles away. </p>
<p>When finals approach, you realize that your grade – depending on the class – may be based on just a couple of tests or three papers. Suddenly those few weeks after Thanksgiving take on a whole new meaning – that final paper or exam is worth 50% of your grade. Very different from high school, when daily homework assignments and frequent tests mean you can mess up once or twice and still get an A.</p>
<p>How prepared you are for the academics depends on what your high school was like and what classes you take. If you went to an inner-city or small rural high school, and never wrote a research paper in your life, Brown academics might be pretty challenging that first semester. And some students who did really well in high school (as in, never got below an A), may be taking engineering or science classes that are graded on a curve – and realizing that they will be getting their first C ever. (Just wait for next semester, when all the premeds sign up for organic chemistry.)</p>
<p>Our cruel joke: Chem 115 – source of many Psych majors (from all the previous pre-meds who bombed the class and were re-evaluating their career choice)</p>
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<p>On my son’s first math test in a 1000-level class the average score was around 65%. Since this is Brown and this was not the baseline intro class, I would have to assume that almost everyone in that class considered himself or herself a math geek in high school. I would think this would be very unsettling for those used to 97%+ averages, especially when the professor doesn’t actually tell you what grade your score was: the rather vague “we wait until the end and determine final grades by logical breaks in the total points” must induce more than a few nightmares!</p>
<p>Can anyone contribute information about the stress level for pre-med people? (And goodness, I hate to keep exploring the vibe of Brown and falling in love before I receive an acceptance/deferral, awkward) It seems like the competition at Brown is high enough, and although an adjustment of going from “I’m one of the smartest people in this school.” to “Wow…no.” will be typical of many, many universities, I feel like the competitive vibe would be a huge (and somewhat negative) supplement to the competitive vibe that comes with pre-med.</p>
<p>I say a competitive vibe comes with pre-med because you will be competing with these very intelligent people for very few spots at medical schools (including Alpert, which already has spots taken by PLME kids) starting day one of college, and in order to compete, you’ll need a very strong GPA, MCAT score (which is based off of how well everyone else did), networking skills, entrance into all the strong research/intern/shadowing opportunities, and other things; I’m sure most of you are familiar with what it takes to create a strong medical school application and I’ll try not to be verbose with that.</p>
<p>I’m an alum who graduated a while ago, although my kid is a more recent Brown graduate. My impression, from my experience, my daughter’s experience, and from lots of students I’ve talked to over the last few decades, is that if there is any competition/stress at Brown, it’s mainly felt by premeds. I’m sure BrownAlumParent could add more info, since s/he experienced this firsthand.</p>
<p>I think Brown can be less stressful for premeds than other schools, but it’s just the nature of the beast – I don’t think you can be premed and not feel some stress.</p>
<p>Organic chem is a killer class. There are students who fail. There are students who realize that medicine is not in their future because of organic. On the one hand, Brown students have a very high rate of acceptance to med school. On the other hand, many Brown students drop their med school dreams. And yes, as LoremIpsum points out, these kids are really smart and did really well in HS. </p>
<p>I don’t think the competition at Brown is high at all. The vast majority of students never discuss their grades, either theirs or their friends. The competition is all internal, generated by students wanting to do their best. It’s one of the things I loved about Brown, and I’ve always asked about that when I talk to students, to confirm that it hasn’t changed since I was there.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed a correlation between kids who experience killer classes and kids who decide premed isn’t for them. I honestly think that’s a shame. I hate the idea of “I can’t finish this premed track and it’s not for me because OChem/ChallengingCourse202 was too difficult.” It’s such an awful (but legitimate) reason for a kid’s dream of med school to die, ugh.</p>
<p>At least the competition culture at Brown isn’t as bad as other colleges, where there are horror stories of kids sabotaging books and lab projects, withholding information from other students, ect.</p>
<p>As a current freshman and potential pre-med, I would say that Brown students are not particularly stressed even on the pre-med track. Of course I haven’t taken Orgo yet…
I concur with what has already been said, that Brown has more of a collaborative culture than a competitive one. You don’t feel like you’re competing with friends for a limited number of A’s like at other Ivies.</p>
<p>Now that finals are approaching, there is considerably more stress on campus, but you’d be pressed to find a campus without finals-related stress.</p>