What don't you like about Brown?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
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<p>On a less career-minded level than modest and geo, I would like to second the keen comments of fireandrain in the first post.</p>

<p>Brown requires a lot of responsibility, and I can see that being bad for a good number of people. Yes, even really smart people sometimes just need a lot of guidance. You won’t get that at Brown. </p>

<p>At Brown, if you want to go to medical school, it will be up to you to find the right advisor, choose the appropriate classes, and get the research experience. We don’t have a pre-med suction tube that pumps out doctors (or JDs or MBAs or PhDs or MRSs [jk!]). Brown is not for people looking for that type of educational funnel. </p>

<p>Given I was so busy organizing my education, I had a hard time finding people I could be comfortable with. My living situation was tough, with a roommate I didn’t like and hallmates with different values. Brown doesn’t place any emphasis on personality in roommate selection. You get what you get. Tough. Deal with it. I did, I got screwed in the housing lottery, and you know what? I’m living with good friends and will have 10 excellent classes next year.</p>

<p>So, yes, qualms:</p>

<ol>
<li>Poopy roommate assignment methods.</li>
<li>Difficult time finding good intro math classes.</li>
<li>Potential overwhelmingness.</li>
<li>Diligence and foresight required to thrive.</li>
<li>Hit-or-miss housing lottery.</li>
</ol>

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<p>This thread is super-depressing. But I know it’s supposed to be an insult Brown thread, so I’m still applying. Seriously though, good job with the insulting. Very informational.</p>

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<p>It’s a thread worth reading, but then worth taking with a grain of salt. Obviously, Brown won’t be 100% perfect for most students. One person’s problem is another’s plus. Some things that we were looking forward to when we applied turned out not to be as we thought. I chose Brown in part because I wanted an environment less stressful and competitive than my high school. After 2 years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m happier with more stress and more-competitive classmates. Other students love the atmosphere. So unless there are things on here that would make you absolutely loathe the place that you hadn’t thought of, don’t let this thread stop you from applying. I see it as a thread to convey information while letting out some frustration at things I thought would be different when I applied.</p>

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<p>I might be critical, but I sort of asked for it by applying ED. </p>

<p>I am glad I go to Brown, I am very impatient to get back next week, and I know that we Brunonians are the luckiest students in the U.S.</p>

<p>Anyone would be lucky to go to Brown; as a friend who visited put it: “You go to school in HEAVEN?!!?”</p>

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<p>when we went to a parents orientation program last year and 3 students were asked this question (what’s the worst thing about Brown?), 2 of the 3 said the weather! of course I realize you’re not going to have kids who don’t love Brown on a panel to talk to parents, but still I was pleased that that was the worst they could come up with. I think the other mention was food. The list of “best” qualities was much longer!</p>

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<p>I think the grading system would the best, IMO.</p>

<p>And the worst would be the open curriculum. This is also amazing, but it depends on how you look at it.</p>

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<p>The weather is mild compared to where I’m from…that’s the one thing I’ve never complained about ^_^</p>

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<p>Providence weather SUCKS. But Boston’s worse, so pick yer poison.</p>

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<p>Going to throw in my few cents here, will probably be a rehash of what’s already been posted. I like certain parts of Brown (mostly the people), but the purpose of here is to just for me to be negative!</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Libraries are terribly over-crowded with students who are just procrastinating anyway, especially the Friedman study center. It cuts down on the efficiency of your studying significantly. Your only option is to go into the upper levels which have incredibly uncomfortable, unadjustable seating, or to The Rockefeller (seriously, just go here), because humanities majors don’t need to do work so that’s always pretty empty.</p></li>
<li><p>The open curriculum is a joke. They use it as an excuse to allow BSc concentrations to take up an overwhelming majority of your course-load ( >2/3rd) because nothing else is required of you. Have fun enjoying with your “liberal” education in every single aspect of biology if you want to graduate with a BSc. The only way you can benefit from it is if you major in something like anthropology where your only goal is seem “edgy” for medical school or to take a position working for your parents as soon as you graduate. If you want a useful degree the open curriculum offers virtually no advantage.</p></li>
<li><p>The math department is generally clueless for beginning classes. Just buy any calculus/linear algebra/dif eq textbook with a solutions manual and you will learn everything you need to significantly faster and clearer.</p></li>
<li><p>Food sucks and is overpriced. My friend saved over $2,000 a year by going off meal plan and ate much healthier than me, but I guess to most Brown students that’s a meaningless amount anyway.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>**5. Almost all of my classes have been uninspired and apathetically taught. Professors literally just copying and pasting slides from the textbook CD into a powerpoint and then going through them faster than you can comprehend, and then expecting you to go back and memorize every minute detail (try BIOL0280 or 0500). The organic chemistry class series is equally outrageous and functions solely by giving you an incredibly dumbed down textbook, and then they take problems from much better, challenging textbooks (I think I found about 1/2 of the final exam of Chem36 in a graduate level textbook). How original and fair. </p>

<p>And you think those lectures you(r parents) are paying out of the ass for are good for anything? I did better than 80% of the class both semesters of organic chem, literally without attending a single class because it was at 9am + I was incredibly irresponsible. What a joke this school is. </p>

<p>Do these people really think that the key to creating innovative scientists is to just jam facts down our throats for four years and then release us into the wild? No wonder every science class has to cling to mentioning Craig Mello, as he is the only example of an innovator that this school has ever, through sheer luck, produced.</p>

<p>Humanities classes are better? Yeah right. Enjoy reading the most trite, unoriginal thoughts drawn out for a semester long while paying $200 > per every lecture. ‘You mean to tell me conflicts can be started by social and economic factors?’ Your grade is solely dependent on your ability to repeat the concepts in the book clearly, instead of coming up with anything avant-garde or that would actually challenge the professor (excuse me, the TAs) to think. And then the professors love taking “trips” where they give you a short documentary during class and ask you to write an essay on it. Your tuition at work!</p>

<p>I’ve only had two exceptions to this, and so far I’ve taken 17 classes. Seems like a pretty bum deal for the outrageous tuition.</p>

<p>If it wasn’t for the fact that (probably out of sheer ignorance of other schools) a Brown degree seems so respectable for graduate school I would be out of here. </p>

<p>Oh and the weather is fine.</p>

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<p>Can you elaborate on this a little bit more? What do you define as a “useful degree” and even if open curriculum offers “no advantage” in your opinion, does it still do what it says?</p>

<p>I mean, Brown is one of the top schools in the country academically and financially (a $2B endowment is much more than most can ask for) - how is it that their teaching sucks? This is the first I’ve heard of it after much research and asking friends who go there about their experiences. </p>

<p>And as for the food, I’ve heard that it is not that good, but do they not offer healthy/fresh options?</p>

<p>Nonetheless, you are entitled to your own opinion, I guess.</p>

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<p>I’m saying the whole “open curriculum” phrase is just something they made to make them look liberal, but in reality it’s exactly, if not more so, as constricting as any other school. And I view a useful degree as something where a person could graduate from Brown and through no usage of their parents connections or money get a job with a livable salary while paying off loans.</p>

<p>I think all of your friends you talked to about teaching are still too delusional to see how lame the teaching at Brown is. And you think having more money is just better? I used to think that too. But Brown misuses their money so severely so that nobody can actually benefit from it.</p>

<p>And all of their food is garbage. The only healthy thing I can think of is if you got yourself a salad with spinach, but then you get to enjoy the ecoli festering in the “fresh” tomatoes they use.</p>

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<p>^I have to say, I’ve taken no biology or chemistry classes here. But in the CS department, and Physics department I’ve only had good teaching professors. Even my lit professor was about as good at pure teaching as any high school teacher I’d had, but she expected more out of us, and was able to teach us on a subject high schools don’t talk about.</p>

<p>As for the open curriculum: I will say, getting a BS at UofA in CS takes about 12 classes. But their rigor is waaay less. Basically, their Upper Division, senior-level classes (according to the syllabi) are things we mostly cover by sophomore year, or only covers part of what one of ours does. And for CS I know I can get a Master’s my senior year (which requires an additional 10 courses outside my concentration) if I push myself. And that’s coming in with no AP credits/experience: if there’d been a core, and the same level of expectations, I still probably could, but my 10 classes would be core classes, rather than things like CogSci or City Politics or Engn 90, etc. that I was actually interested in.</p>

<p>Admittedly, if you don’t take advantage of the open curriculum, or pick classes you don’t really enjoy, or a concentration you don’t enjoy, then you’re going to struggle or feel like you’re not getting a great education. But if you take challenging courses in things that interest you (and really, very little in your concentration SHOULDN’T interest you, or maybe you should be doing a different concentration), it’s a pretty great thing.</p>

<p>Maybe the best solution, though, would be to have a quarter-schedule and the open curriculum: then, you could take more classes, so you’d get up to 12 or 15 classes a year (and would have to take 8 or 9 a year). I think the biggest problem, in general, is that there always is more to explore than there’s room for (and this is true pretty much no matter where you go: at least at Brown you don’t have to waste your time in IHUM or Philosophy or whatever if you don’t want to).</p>

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<p>Matt… I disagree with almost everything you said. While you have more classes under your belt, I have taken classes from music to biology to economics, and have been pleased with the interesting teaching and the novelty of thought presented to me. My humanities class, an anthropology seminar, had the heaviest workload of my first semester.</p>

<p>College libraries everywhere are full of procrastinators, and we have pretty nice libraries. In my experience, the Rock is usually pretty busy, especially in the evenings, and the 4th floor of the SciLi is usually full of hard workers, as are the quiet portions of the basement.</p>

<p>Re the food, ours is not the most expensive of the Ivy League, and has a lot of non-junk-food. If you eat unhealthfully at Brown, it’s your own fault. And being off meal plan means cooking your own food, which has its own drawbacks.</p>

<p>I believe most of the ScB degrees Brown offers require a student to take roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of classes in the area of concentration (which might even require liberal education requirements, such as with the ScB in CS)… but this is the case at most colleges of the same caliber. This allows for roughly one non-concentration class per semester. </p>

<p>In the case of the Applied Math-Economics (Finance) ScB, I am taking all but 2 of the required classes in the last 3 years, and I <em>still</em> have room for an AB in Computer Science, provided I take 5 classes one semester. My freshman year, I took 9 classes, only 2 of which contribute to APMA-Econ, the rest of which were about food science, the Blues, and health care, etc.</p>

<p>If one doesn’t want to take as many classes in Biology, one gets an AB, which is clearly more representative of that student’s interests. </p>

<p>While it’s upsetting to see people have a crappy time at Brown, I know a few people who are dissatisfied like Matt… I just don’t think those people are common, and there are counterpoints to many of his complaints, some of which won’t satisfy everyone.</p>

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<p>First, Mattgriffin needs to transfer. Someone who is that unhappy and disgusted with the academic offerings at any college needs to leave.</p>

<p>Second, no school is perfect. Every school has its problems, and by senior year every student at every college will find something to complain about. At every school, you will find happy students and unhappy students. As applicants, you need to figure out what is most important to you and whether you are willing to compromise. For example, if having a beautiful room in a quaint dorm is of prime interest to you, then either don’t apply to Brown or compromise that desire and settle for less beautiful housing.</p>

<p>Matt’s complaints about the open curriculum are very puzzling to me. He moans that if you are getting an ScB you have no opportunity to take other classes. Just how is this different from other colleges? Let’s look at the engineering requirements, for example. These are mandated by a national accrediting association (or something like that). These required classes are going to be mandatory whether you go to Brown, Cornell, WPI or ANY college. I haven’t studied requirements at other colleges (which applicants should do), but I can’t imagine that getting an ScB at another school is going to require significantly fewer classes than Brown. </p>

<p>Humanities majors do have to work. </p>

<p>Food. Brown’s cost for meal plans is not outrageous compared to other schools. Brown charges about $4000/year for the most expensive, 20-meals/week, plan. University of Delaware charges $3862; University of Alabama is $4,114 and Wash U is $4788. The average eater going off meal plan at most any school is going to save money. As for the quality of the food – some students are happy, others aren’t. If food is one of your most important aspects of college, then make sure you visit every cafeteria before making a deposit. </p>

<p>Since I’m not a student at Brown now, I can’t respond to his comments about professors and classes. I will say that if what he says is true, Brown’s transfer rate would be significantly higher.</p>

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<p>Brown the school does NOT portray itself this way. Applicants do. Guidebooks do. But official literature from Brown – no. I laugh when I read some of the comments here on CC, with applicants thinking that Brown is so much more liberal/laid back/etc. than every other school. </p>

<p>geoforce, if Brown is a 1.5 tier school, then what do you rank Georgetown? A 5-tier school? There are 3000 or so schools in the country. Step back a bit, and realize that of those 3000, Brown is a top-tier school. Why is it that Brown is only compared to HYP? Honestly, how many students each year actually get to decide between Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown.</p>

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<p>Thank you so much for that - I think by coming to CC, my opinion of Brown has sort of dwindled because so many people are only about comparing it to the top 3 schools. It took me a while to step back and realize that Brown is a TOP-TIER school and not just another top-tier school but leagues ahead of around 95% of the universities in the country. It would be an honor and privilege to attend Brown - and I think so many people on these forums have discounted Brown as a “low Ivy” so much so that it doesnt’ even seem like a good college.</p>

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<p>People deny it, but obviously, it’s got to do with many criticisms about Brown.</p>

<p>And ranks related to research should be listened to by the administration, because it sure is in need of expansion, not necessarily only improvement.</p>

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<p>The crappy rank: Brown is considered (by US News & World Report) the 15th best national university in the country. There are THOUSANDS of school ranked lower. How can anyone think that being number 15 is crappy?</p>

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<p>I thought some hard evidence might help. I post mostly on the law board and parent boards. In the “law board poster” capacity, I’ve searched for data re law school admissions stats for various undergraduate colleges. </p>

<p>Here’s the link to Brown’s:</p>

<p>[Brown</a> University - Dean of the College](<a href=“http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/advising/law_admission_stats.php]Brown”>WELCOME TO PRE-LAW ADVISING | Pre-Law Advising)</p>

<p>•Schools where five or more Brown graduates matriculated, fall 2008:
Harvard 17
Columbia 11
University of California-Berkeley 11
UCLA 8
George Washington University 7
New York University 7
University of California-Hastings 7
Yale 7
American University 6
Boston University 6
Boston College 5
Georgetwon 5</p>

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<p>My son is a senior Neuroscience major (ScB) and he seems to have had plenty of room for exploration. Even with fulfilling his major requirements and his med school requirements, he was able to study abroad junior year (taking NO science classes) AND he may graduate with a double major in a humanities subject. I think he may be one credit short. So I’d say even as a ScB he was able to make use of the open curriculum. He turned down higher ranked schools for this freedom. At other schools, he would have had to take those pesky core or distribution credits and possibly even theology classes. Instead he decided to try out a new language and some subjects he had never encountered before. </p>

<p>I can’t comment on the teaching and my son hasn’t complained. Then again, I don’t think he took those intro math/sci classes because he used AP credits to start at a higher level. </p>

<p>On occasion, he has complained there isn’t enough room to take every class he wants but that’s his own fault. He could have taken 5 classes every semester or every other semester like he would have needed to do at Yale (Yale requires students to complete 36 credits to graduate). A student at Brown could CHOOSE to take 40 credits if they so wish. </p>

<p>I find it interesting how mattgriffin feels the need to put down humanities majors, stating that they don’t need to do any work. How would he know that? If he doesn’t have room to take classes outside his major, then how would he know the workload of classes he hasn’t taken? My kid spends time at the SciLi like lots of other kids, but even as a science major, I don’t think he has any more right to be there than someone else. </p>

<p>As for food, he went off meal plan as a junior because he wasn’t using it enough (he eats at odd hours) and he likes to eat out (cheap). His choice. He had done summer@Brown so he knew going in that he wasn’t thrilled with the food there. But then again, he hasn’t been thrilled with food at the 4 other colleges he’s taken classes at over the years. His dorms were ok, nothing special but not bad either. He moved off campus this year and has more space (and it’s a bit cheaper). My DD on the other hand definitely took food, dorms and bathrooms into consideration as well as her major’s curriculum, faculty and facilities. In the end, they both chose lousy weather.</p>

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<p>I will be negating one opinion that has been not been debated as of yet: the weather being lousy.</p>

<p>My rebuttal is thus: Seriously? Get out more. </p>

<p>Summer is amazing most of the time only a tad humid, mostly 80’s, max upper 90’s, low maybe 60 (very refreshing). </p>

<p>Fall in New England in beautiful.</p>

<p>Winter is 30-40 degrees with the coldest month being January (when you won’t even be here) and it’s not even windy ie 37 means 37 not -20 windchill, snow doesn’t match anything compared to places north of Providence, or even most places in the northern United States. </p>

<p>Spring is rainy but beautiful all the same with the magnolias, etc blooming at Brown. </p>

<p>No more complaints from any of ya!</p>

<p>That will be all.</p>