<p>i think i like them both. to me they seem a lot the same (that may be wrong.)</p>
<p>what are some major distinguishing factors?</p>
<p>tufts is better</p>
<p>I would say Brown is slightly more artsy; Tufts is slightly more political. (Just one of many difference, but I thought I'd get the conversation started.)</p>
<p>both are very selective but Brown has had really sad admission stats recently- still not a reason not to try though</p>
<p>academically, it really depends on what you're interested in</p>
<p>providence is cute and not too far from boston but tufts is two T stops from Harvard Square</p>
<p>sorry, those are really random differences...</p>
<p>Well, Brown clearly has more cachet and a higher ranking/national prestige, if that's important to you.
The schools share the "feel" of a mid-sized New England liberal arts college/small university.
Many, many years ago, I fell in love with Brown as a high school sophomore, and thought that that was where I wanted to go ... until I saw Tufts. I preferred being closer to Boston than being in Providence, and as it happened, at the time Tufts probably had some more distinguished faculty members in the area in which I wanted to concentrate. I was quite happy with my decision to go to Tufts (the whole college prestige thing was less of an issue then than it seems to be now).
But interestingly, I was at a Tufts function for alumni interviewers a couple of years ago, where the Dean of Admissions was talking about the P.R. being done for Tufts, and he read us a great description of the school. It talked about the feel of the school, the New England campus, the remarkable availability of faculty to undergrads which is seen at few other schools of this caliber.... And he asked us what we thought of it. The crowd responded enthusiastically, telling him that we thought it was a great description of Tufts for the Admissions Office to use. He laughed, and told us that the problem was that it had been written for Brown!</p>
<p>^^^^ neat trick. It is funny how people, myself included, always filter facts to fit the reality they want them to fit.</p>
<p>I would go to Brown if I wanted a free curriculum and hated structure. I would go to Tufts if I didn't mind walking up a hill every day to class.</p>
<p>I dropped my one class downhill so I don't have to go down/up the hill for classes, so some of us don't share your predicament, snuffles ;)
(before you all think I'm really superficial, it was the deciding factor between that class and an excollege class I was considering, not the only reason I dropped it...I work downhill and live uphill anyway, so even if I had taken it I would be trekking up the hill. Still, it's nice to keep my classes uphill)
But I would second the free curriculum aspect: Tufts has a lot of distribution requirements, which aren't that big a deal to fulfill but are still more than Brown has, at least. If you really hate the idea of having to take a language/take courses in different areas like science, math, the arts, etc, you might not want to come to Tufts.</p>
<p>unless you have already been accepted to one, don't get your heart set on one over the other
keep your options open</p>
<p>I think Snuffles hit the nail on the head. I think the major difference is that Tufts has a lot of required distribution courses, Brown doesn't have any.
My brother, his wife and their three children all went to Brown and loved it.
My nieces and nephew got very good jobs upon graduation, one's at Microsoft, another is at Morgan Stanley and the third one works for a healthcare consulting firm in DC. I didn't find the distribution requirements to be a problem when I went to Tufts, but in retrospect, I'm not sure I would want to go to a school with so many required courses. The language requirement is pretty intense. My daughter decided that she liked Tufts better than Brown because she wanted to be near a big city. She is in the combined degree program with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Brown
has recently established a similar program with RISD. If that program had existed when she was applying, she might have considered Brown more seriously.</p>
<p>I love both schools. They're both my top choices. I like the size and politically liberal atmosphere of both schools. Brown's no GE is very attractive, but so is Tufts close proximity to Boston. Ohhh I hope come April I'm faced with the delema of having to choose between these two schools!!! (fingers crossed)</p>
<p>I think many people apply to both. Perhaps some view Tufts as a "safety" of sorts, at least relative to Brown, but my sense is that for many people the two schools are in some ways similar. My D is applying to both, if she has the choice she says she will choose Tufts, or at least this is what she thinks today.</p>