Haven’t had enough experience to come up with a “worst” yet, sorry.
Like others, I really, really, really like Providence. I could easily see myself living there. It’s such a nice, beautiful and livable city. I also love College Hill, the Brown and RISD campuses and the surrounding neighborhood, the churches, the old houses … all of it. College Hill and the schools on the Main Line in Philly are my personal favorite college locations.
Brown has been, to us, everything it’s cracked up to be. Responsive admins, great professors, engaged students. I love the place. And while some may disagree, I think they managed the pandemic very well.
Many of the dorms are old and run down. One of the dorms, grad center, was built to withstand riots and is a blob of concrete without good gathering places.
The administration…. For me the problem is they use all these buzz words that make it seem like they are altruistic, but the reality is they are focused on the economic health of the college rather than the students’ experience. I don’t think the administration in reality is worse than anywhere else, it’s just that I expected more given how they talk and portray themselves. Also, a little pat on the back to the Parents Group. The admin recently re-imposed very strict Covid regulations where kids couldn’t gather in more than groups of 5, yet the university reserved the right to continue to host large events that it wanted to host. So on the same day that the restrictions were reenacted, the U was hosting a huge dinner for all their athletes and posting about it. The students and parents both pushed back on how hypocritical that was, and the admin backed down.
But those are the bad things. I can’t say enough good things about the support you will get there. The other poster is right about how wonderful the faculty are. My kid has had 2 amazing independent studies, and her concentration advisor has offered to promote her for various impressive fellowships. Another terrific thing about the school is it’s advising system. My kid has a wonderful faculty advisor, and she’s had terrific peer advisors and has been a peer advisor herself for 2 years.
I’ve heard once you go off meal plan the world opens up for food! With Johnson and Wales right there, Providence is such a foodie city, it’s just not practical to spend additional money on food off campus, esp without a car.
Miller and the other freshman dorms on andrews quad are def the nicest first year dorms, recently updated. I don’t mind my old dorms–freshman was built in the 50s and my current dorm was built in 1926. It’s really cool to see all the old-fashioned stuff that still survives. I just wrote a paper about the signage in my dorm, actually.
Grad E has a nice space…I get the impression most people live in grad center for the singles, not because they want to socialize in their dorms. The outside is horrific though. It sucked with having nowhere to go with covid, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by all the nice gathering spaces on campus.
Someone above said the people were one of the great things about Brown. I don’t know much about Brown but my favorite colleague was (we don’t work together anymore ) a Brown engineering graduate.
My kid goes to Brown and so I may have a little bias but on my son’s college campus visit, our move-in, and family weekend, I found every student we met there super friendly. My son has a small friends group so I didn’t meet many, so the ones I met were total strangers. They saw me looking lost, they gave me directions. When we moved in, upperclassmen helped us with the move in. They were NOT on the moving staff. We looked kinda confused and they were already moved in to their junior/senior dorms, so they just randomly came and helped us. On his campus visit when most of the campus was quiet due to hybrid structure, folks he talked to on the self-guided tour were more than happy to talk to him and my husband. I hope that helps. I think as a parent, I really appreciate the unsolicited friendly interaction of students who had nothing to do with any organized campus tour or event.
My son is taking premed classes and he said classmates are really collaborative.
Another parent of a freshman student here. It seems to me the thing that makes Brown unique is the students the school attracts and admits. All of the kids seem so kind, friendly, collaborative, smart and unique. The school is not perfect…. Dorms and dining are not its strengths (though my son is totally fine with both). But overall, my son is so happy with his experience so far and I couldn’t ask for more.
Housing and food service is completely atrocious. This spring, residential life closed down the housing lottery for sophomores-seniors twice because they ran out of rooms. In other words, kids were waiting online for their timeslot to open up and instead got a message that the university will figure things out by July and assign them something. Hundreds of rising sophomores are in limbo and parents are livid.
Food service is also awful.
My son likes his teacher and his classmates. But the quality of life issues are really problematic.
Most things in my experience were positive. I will say that the forums on this website make Brown sound like this perfect nirvana and I think to myself “is this where I went to school that they are talking about?”. There was stress when I went there, there was competition. Yes it was a great school but it was not immune to issues you find at other schools.
I actually was very disappointed in the academic advising as well as the career advising. I feel like students had to really make their own opportunities and look out for themselves and advocate strongly for themselves.
I also did not like that there was so much emphasis on everyone doing their own thing, open curriculum, etc that there were very few traditions at the school or common experiences that unite everyone at the school. I can’t tell you how many times I have come across a Brown alum from my year or close to my year and we have no common ground/experiences/links to talk about or share.
Finally, I consider my self in general pretty liberal. However the Brown student body as a community can at times be ultraliberal to a point where it starts to embarrass itself. When the police commissioner Ray Kelly came to speak at the school, or when a transgender speaker was not welcomed as long as she was partly sponsored by the Jewish group on campus was two instances where I was not proud of my school. (Even if you were not a fan of Ray Kelly the way it was handled was problematic).
Good outweighed the bad for sure but is Brown perfection? not yet anyway……
As a parent: the meal plan is not flexible in that a student in a suite with a kitchen has to pay a min meal plan (at least as a sophomore and freshman). We are from CA and my kid is a foodie. He says the food isn’t great. It’s definitely no UCLA but it’s dorm food. I went to a public university and I tried the Brown food move in day for fun and it seems to be like food at any other campus. The cupcakes and the frosting are good!
The housing lottery was mediocre this year only because it seems like it’s been the same issues over the years but Brown hasn’t done anything different to improve the process. My kid has a room in the second lottery (didn’t have a room first round) but it’s a repurposed suite living room so two suite mates walks thru his room to get to theirs. Weird, and first world probs but it is kinda annoying because we pay $$.
) a Brown engineering graduate.