<p>What other schools are similar to Brown in terms of academics, people, and awesomeness? I’ve asked this but just incase some of u know more…</p>
<p>Well, you would probably want to look at more liberal colleges, politically, such as Oberlin, Macalester, Wesleyan, Brandeis et cetera. I applied to Oberlin and Mac and I love them both (I also applied to Brandeis but I don’t love it as much).
There are, of course, other liberal colleges, but those are the first that came off the top of my head.</p>
<p>what’s the deal with uchicago? dunno why i’ve heard ppl who loves brown tend to also be interested in uchicago</p>
<p>omg, i applied to Macalester too! And my brother (who is pretty much me + three years) goes to brandeis!! I might apply there, but i don’t want to be in his shadow AGAIN.</p>
<p>Funny.</p>
<p>what about swarthmore, amherts and williams?</p>
<p>Is for University of Chicago and Swarthmore, I don’t think they have much in common with Brown other than a reputation for being a bit different/quirky/alternative (I’d say liberal, but University of Chicago isn’t all that liberal by most standards). </p>
<p>While Brown has complete academic freedom and the ability to avoid receiving potentially harmful grades in some classes, the University of Chicago has a very rigid core curriculum, and I believe Swarthmore has quite a few requirements as well. Swarthmore and the University of Chicago are both considered among the hardest schools in the country; they kick your ass with ultra-demanding, grinding academics, and tend to attract intense intellectual types. Obviously, Brown is great academically, but by all accounts it’s a more laid back, easier place, and I don’t think the students it attracts are quite as geeky (not to generalize all the students at the other two places, but the University of Chicago is “where fun comes to die”).</p>
<p>I guess it all depends why you’re looking at Brown.</p>
<p>Wesleyan has the same liberal feel as Brown, although smaller</p>
<p>I’d like to comment on what elinck said:</p>
<p>First, Swarthmore’s graduate requirements are not very strict–they’re just general distribution requirements, which a lot of colleges and universities have. In fact, I wish that Swarthmore had some required classes that set a foundation for knowledge–for example, the Core Curriculum at Chicago, the Core at Columbia, and HUM 101 at Reed College. Swarthmore definitely has a reputation for hardworking students, and it is true that most students put academics as their priority and want to do well. I think of Goethe when he said, “Great suffering is noble.” But that honestly doesn’t really apply here. What matters isn’t that you suffer because of all the work, but more that you learn, and learning doesn’t mean that you’ll have to slavishly work all day and all night. Not all my classes are incredibly demanding. Some are, but some are probably of similar challenge that you’d fine at any other college. But you definitely have to work very hard if you take a standard course load and want A’s. Professors here tend to award fewer A’s than you might expect, because they have very high expectations for what they consider an A. I think it’s not really that you get tons more work here than you get anywhere else, but that the expectations are greater–you have to work very hard to get an A (provided you don’t just take a bunch of easy courses), hence the statement, “Anywhere else it would be an A–really.”</p>
<p>^ I must defer to your obviously greater knowledge in this case. Interesting - I was under the apprehension Swarthmore had something resembling a core program.</p>
<p>Whatever the actuality about the workload the school has, it has a bit of a reputation. Obviously, if you have the grades to get into Brown, you can probably handle it, but for instance, my friend was deferred at Brown, and refused to look at Swarthmore because she didn’t want to have quite so strenuously a workload - she doesn’t handle stress very well, and Brown appealed to her because of its apparent low stress environment.</p>
<p>Sarah Lawrence College?</p>
<p>i hear amherst is really similar</p>
<p>Does anyone know if UC Berkeley can be compared to Brown too?</p>
<p>You could compare UCB to Brown if you were so inclined, but besides their mainstream reputation as bastions of liberalism, the comparison would not be too accurate. UCB is obviously much, much larger, has nothing resembling Brown’s New Curriculum, is public, and is far from the hippie mecca it once was. Geographically, they are very different as well. </p>
<p>Amherst, Wesleyan, Vassar, Grinnell and Hamilton have curriculum that is open like Brown’s, although Vassar and Wesleyan have a few caveats. </p>
<p>Yale, Tufts, Carleton, and Pomona have the high academics while also being more laid-back than other smart pressure cookers.</p>
<p>Oberlin, Macalaster, Reed, Bard, Hampshire, and Skidmore seem to have Brown-like liberalness.</p>
<p>University of Rochester is also thrown around as like Brown, but I never considered it too much myself. All of these are my own perceptions, so feel free to disagree. But I think these schools have at least some portion of the appeal Brown does.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley? Well if you want to compare a large public university to a small private one just because both are associated with “liberalism” (which means something different at Brown, actually)…</p>
<p>Oh, sorry. I was just wondering in terms of prestige/education. I mean both are great universities.</p>
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<p>With no common characteristics and completely different approaches to education…</p>
<p>No need ot be sorry, just saying, I would never say they’re similar schools, really.</p>
<p>As for prestige, well, I don’t care about that so I typically don’t care to have that conversation in general.</p>