<p>I love brown! So gorgeous! But I hate that the SAT scores to get in are like ridiculous...which sucks! So after analyzing my chances of getting in I completely decided not to apply. Although it was my childhood dream ever since I went to my cousins graduation there has been to go there...it definetly is out of my reach. I wish you guys luck!</p>
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1) while the lack of core curriculum is obviously SO appealing, it also means that **not everyone leaving the college benefits from a real liberal arts education. **there's a lot more responsibility on the individual student to DECIDE to take a class in each of the different areas, instead of the university forcing him/her to.
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<p>While the bold is true, when I tell people the correct fact that over 93% of students take what would be considered a distribution requirement at other schools (two classes in social sciences, two in humanities, two in life/physical sciences), they tend to be surprised.</p>
<p>Brown students don't really take classes all that different than any other students.</p>
<p>Read this thread:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-brown-curriculum-university-college-explained.html%5B/url%5D%5Bquote%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-brown-curriculum-university-college-explained.html
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</a>
2) from what i hear, it's overbearingly liberal. while there are definitely conservatives on the campus and conservative organizations, the majority of the student body is closed-mindedly liberal. I think Brown must be the most liberal in the Ivy League.
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<p>Completely untrue and has been debunked all over this forum. Perception is a dangerous thing-- sometimes it can be far removed from reality. Overbearing is somewhat subjective, but truthfully, no conservatives I know think people are overbearing or close-minded, simply that they're outnumbered.</p>
<p>I took a Summer@Brown course, and the thing I dislike most about Brown is the smoking. </p>
<p>Yes, people smoke at every University, but at Brown on Thayer Street (the main street where everything is) the sidewalks are so narrow that it's pretty difficult to evade the smoke. The main reason the sidewalks are narrow is that restaurants like to put tables and chairs outside, so that takes up half the sidewalk.</p>
<p>In the first three days of my Brown experience, I went through 6 contacts, which are supposed to last me 6 weeks. </p>
<p>In other Ivies I visited (Cornell, Princeton, and even Columbia), smoking didn't seem to be too much of a problem.</p>
<p>But, so I don't get pummeled by your "I love Brown" comments, there are many things to like as well, which I wrote about in my application. </p>
<ul>
<li>The Bear's Lair is an awesome little gym. </li>
<li>Thayer Street has many varieties of food and amusements. </li>
<li>The Mall is enormous, like 3 times the size of our local mall. </li>
<li>6th floor of the SciLi is like my heavenly recluse.</li>
<li>The Waterfire is pretty cool (awkward for me though because I went with another guy)</li>
</ul>
<p>do you mean cigarette smoking or smoking pot?</p>
<p>Cigarettes</p>
<p>yea that bothered me too.</p>
<p>no matter how liberal/open-minded someone is, it doesn't necessarily have to equate with cigarette smoking.</p>
<p>One major thing I don't like about Brown is the city. All I ever hear people mention is "Oh, we have a giant mall right in the city." It's like, what do I need malls for? I live in Southern California, and I hate malls. I'm wondering what do you guys think about Providence as a true city? Are most of the people there "typical" suburbanites, in that if it's not at a mall then it's not safe? I'm really looking to something that's at least quasi-city, in that it feels real and not like a Disney-fied campus. </p>
<p>And how is Providence compared to New Haven? </p>
<p>I love Brown, but the city aspect is the only thing I truly fault it for. I couldn't do Columbia with it's crazy academics, but I'm thinking of Harvard/Yale as an alternative, not because of the prestige, but because they're in relatively decent cities, for what I'm looking for.</p>
<p>new haven>providence?? i don't think so</p>
<p>I mean, which is a more lively city? Is Providence halfway decent?</p>
<p>i lived outside providence for 13 years of my life, and was born in new haven. in my personal opinion, providence is way nicer, cultured, pretty etc. and the crime speaks for itself. my mom robbed twice in new haven. given we didnt live inside providence for an equal comparison.
i love providence though. its got a lot of unique characteristics, good food, thayer street etc. thats why im applying to brown and not yale :)</p>
<p>i lived outside providence for 13 years of my life, and was born in new haven. in my personal opinion, providence is way nicer, cultured, pretty etc. and the crime speaks for itself. my mom robbed twice in new haven. given we didnt live inside providence for an equal comparison.
i love providence though. its got a lot of unique characteristics, good food, thayer street etc. thats why im applying to brown and not yale :)</p>
<p>Providence has really grown on me. It's a relatively small city, but it has a lot of restaurants, shops, theaters, some music venues, and various resources for your four years at Brown. The area that Brown is in is not representative of Providence as a whole. If you venture off of College Hill there are different neighborhoods and boroughs (Federal Hill, for example, is the "Little Italy" of Providence with a lot of good restaurants). I've been visiting an elementary school in the West End for an art mentoring program, and it spurred my interest in the public school system here. </p>
<p>Also, be careful about what you gleaned at your stay during Summer@Brown because the students you saw might not have been actual Brown students, but rather other high schoolers who are not representative of the student body.</p>
<p>Spending time in New Haven all summer, if anyone thinks that dump is comparable to Providence you're absolutely crazy.</p>
<p>Their art museum is better than the RISD museum, but we're closer to the Boston Museum of Art than New Haven is to the MET.</p>
<p>After that, Providence is WAY better than New Haven and I think it's a pretty ok city. To give you perspective on my mindset until I was 15 I thought every city other than New York was a total joke. I laughed when I went to other cities.</p>
<p>And also, there are less than 1k Brown students around each summer. Potentially way less. So anything you see at Summer@Brown is primarily "outsider" students or locals. The smoking around Thayer Street is no different than anywhere else there are bars, honestly. Go walk down High Street/Crown Street area in New Haven-- more bars than Thayer and more smoking.</p>
<p>Okay, great. PHEW! </p>
<p>And also, are the hills that giant and massive? Are there ways around them? Like if one wanted to bike from Brown in town, you can go down the hill but is there a way to get around it back up? </p>
<p>These might sound like strange concerns, but I'm VERY passionate about cities, cycling, and transportation. I plan on majoring in Urban Studies.</p>
<p>I actually remember thinking about this when I visited, because I love to bike too. a Brown student would know better than me, but I would find it pretty difficult to ride up college hill. around the campus area it's pretty bikeable though.</p>
<p>also I'm pretty sure RIPTA buses, which are free for students, have bike racks.</p>
<p>Well Brown is literally on top of a hill. It's a better situation than RISD, though, whose campus (well, part of its campus) is on the slope of the hill. It's pretty hellish to walk up in the winter when it's not only buttfreezing cold but also steep and tiring. My friends and I joke about how if the RISD freshmen aren't skinny and fit before they came to RISD, they are afterwards..</p>
<p>Yeah, I biked down once to the Metcalf building to buy plexiglass for my printmaking class, and I had to push my bike back up. It's pretty nice to have a bike on campus, though. Saves you five minutes when you need to get to class from North Campus and you're already late.</p>
<p>You have to go quite a way around to get up and down College Hill in ways that are not an impossible slope to pedal up, but it can be done. It's going to be tough no matter how you go up. However, there are several beautiful bike paths-- Blackstone Boulevard and the one to Bristol comes to mind-- which are several miles long (one is like 3 miles, one is like 25) and are easily accessible by bike from campus. Riding around the whole of the Eastside is pretty easy, however.</p>
<p>And yes, RIPTA buses have bike racks on the front.</p>