What differentiates Brown from the other Ivies?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
1

<p>Yesterday I was hanging out with my friend, a graduate student from Bristol. In the course of a casual conversation, I had (God forbid!) stated the obvious in some benign remark. </p>

<p>In her typical incisive way, she decided to mock me. (Explanation: she thinks she’s superior to me because she’s 5 years older. I think she’s a little too patronizing at times.) Anyway.</p>

<p>“Aren’t you applying to several Ivy League schools?” she asked me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Harvard…or Brown?” She then collapsed into fits of laughter. </p>

<p>I tried to defend Brown. I told her how it gave students complete educational freedom by not requiring core courses, and how students could take any course they were interested in without being worried about their GPA’s. Uneasily, I also mentioned that it had the lowest endowment of all the Ivies (which, in retrospect, did not help my argument). Then I ran out of interesting points to make, and the conversation moved on.</p>

<p>But it still bothered me. I felt like she had proven that Brown was somehow an inferior Ivy by juxtaposing it against Hah-vard. Even though I knew Brown was a great school, I couldn’t articulate what made it so special in time to win back my dignity. </p>

<p>So how would you have defended Brown?</p>

2

<ol>
<li><p>The Ivy League is not a meaningful group of schools against which to compare.</p></li>
<li><p>Gross (rather than per-student) endowment figures are meaningless.</p></li>
<li><p>Wealth and fame do not a good education buy.</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard is a miserable hell :)</p></li>
</ol>

3

<p>It baffles me that some people can be dismissive of Brown. Your friend is depending on stereotypes, not realities. I do think that Brown is more undergraduate focused than Harvard. Standing on it’s own merit, there is a cooperative and interdisiplinary culture to the school. Access to professors and doing research with them is just about as easy as asking. Access to undergrad research grants funded by the Uni is good. Undergraduates play an important part in research and other functions because the grad school is so small. They are well valued.</p>