<p>I was admitted to Brown a few days ago. I’ve been on the Facebook page, and I feel like I really fit in with the student body. Still, I was also admitted to Amherst and I’m having a hard time deciding which school to attend.</p>
<p>Some facts about me:
I’m fairly certain that I want to be an English major, though I also have an interest in Political Science, History, Art History, and foreign languages. I am also interested in taking some film classes. As for ECs, I’m currently in an orchestra and will most likely continue that in college. I’m also interested in joining a film society, some sort of comedy club, maybe a literary magazine or the school newspaper or I might want to try some theater. My plans could change, but at this point I’m thinking of being an English professor.</p>
<p>I get the feeling that Brown is more “artsy,” which fits my personality, but I’m concerned about the size of the school. I have thrived in a small high school environment (about 200 kids), and I’m a little worried about suddenly going to a school with around 6000 undergrads (correct me if I’m wrong on that number; for some reason I’m having difficulty finding the exact amount of students online). I do my best work when I’m in small classes where I get to know my teachers well. Do students generally get to know their professors well, or is it kind of anonymous? Do you have to be really self-motivated to develop a student/teacher relationship? Also, how is the advising system? Do the advisors really know the students, or are they one of those counselors who is assigned to about a hundred kids at once? </p>
<p>Does anyone know how Amherst and Brown compare in terms of the types of students who go there? Is there a particular school that you would say is more intellectual? I’m really not looking for a party atmosphere. Rather than partying, I’m more into talking with friends, going to movies or plays or restaurants together, maybe doing some IM sports. Advice on any or all of these points would be helpful. Thanks!</p>
<p>My D loved Brown, but decided not to apply to Amherst after her visit. I’m sure other kids feel just the opposite after visiting. It’s a very personal decision. Both are great schools, but different in many ways. </p>
<p>You mention comedy. We saw a student improv group at Amherst and the kids were amazing. Very sharp and VERY funny. It was packed on a week night and the audience was great.</p>
<p>As someone who went to a high school with 200 people, let me share my experience with Brown.</p>
<p>yes, it is a transition and it will feel different. I personally wanted to leave the incredibly insular, gossipy environment of the NYC private school scene and welcomed being in a larger more diverse environment like Brown. I don’t have any good friends who went to Amherst, but one who went to Williams said he quickly grew tired of the student body because of how small it was. I definitely would not say that about Brown.</p>
<p>With regard to your classes, there are plenty of small classes where it doesn’t take any effort to develop a relationship with the prof, but most of the time, yes, it will take effort. Same thing with advisors, they are not assigned to hundreds (more like 15 if I recall) but it will be up to you to utilize them. They can and will provide all the support you request. This is the Brown way, the resources are all there, but no one is going to push them on you. If you want to drift off into anonymity with no support (or if you don’t try to avoid it) it can and will happen, but if you seek out support, you will find plenty of it. My understanding is that advising has improved in the 5 years since I graduated since it had been an issue voiced by students in the past. Certainly the career office at least seems much more legit/structured/organized than when I was there.</p>
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Definitely will find plenty of this at Brown (as well as parties). I never set foot on Amherst’s campus (the least urban school I considered was Princeton) but it does appear to me that in general, the less urban the environment the school is in, the more drinking/partying there is (since there’s nothing else).</p>
<p>My daughter also went to a small personal boarding school of about 320, where she had really close relationships with faculty and I was imagining that would be the best for her, but I was wrong. I can’t say the early advising clicked for her but once in her department she has so many resources to draw on and a new dept advisor where she started out undeclared so just chose a random dept for advising. Early on she had a rough patch and sought out help and opinions, found some old history of mathematics professor who happened to say just the right thing that really opened her mind and got her to attack her problem in a different way and succeed. I don’t know how she found these people. She also decided to go to the Brain Institute to tell the Nobel prize director some ideas she had for his freshman seminar (which she had not taken, lol) and ended up talking to someone else and who offered her a job there, which she took. My point is that it is easy to connect with people. I know in her dept she had one class with just 3 undergrads and one grad student. She TA’d that class and grew it to 12 the next semester, and had a drop in relationship with that prof who liked to hold open office hours. She ended up doing a Sr project with him too. I think he was one of her LOR for grad school. She had research with everyone she asked, and was even approached without asking.</p>
<p>She didn’t apply to Amherst but did pick her colleges for wanting an intellectual student body. I imagine the Brown and Amherst students would be fairly similar. Maybe more premeds at Brown? I recently saw an interview with John Krasinsky who talked a lot about his experience joining the comedy troupe Out of Bounds on a fluke when he realized that the basketball team was too good for him. He was a screenwriting major. I don’t know much about the English dept except that a fiction writing workshop was one of her favorite classes.</p>