<p>The number of good LACs with business and technical sides is tiny-to-nonexistent - that’s why they are called LACs. But Brown doesn’t have them either.</p>
<p>For business or technical majors, you might want to check out Lehigh.
Yes, the culture is way different than Brown’s, I am sure.
But it offers a wide variety of majors, business and technical majors are especially good, it is in a small city, has access to larger cities, and has bright students, which the OP mentioned as attractive.</p>
<p>I’m a little confused because OP wanted an open curriculum, no core curriculum, etc. Brown is also a more laid back environment where kids do all sorts of amazing things because of the freedom allowed them. Brown loves our high school, taking five or more kids almost every year because we are a quirky high school with a lot of freedom for the kids. My daughter would love to go there except she refuses to take SAT IIs and has even written a letter asking the admissions people why they require SAT IIs if they don’t even require grades be given for their classes. She goes on to suggest more creative ways to evaluate potential students.</p>
<p>I don’t think Johns Hopkins or Tufts have a similar culture to Brown, much more traditional curriculum with more pressured kids. </p>
<p>My top suggestion for you, which has not been mentioned yet, is Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. It is part of the Five College Consortium and may fit most of what you are looking for.</p>
<p>My daughter loved Brown, but we realized that she probably wouldn’t get in. She loved Tufts and JHU also. She ended up getting in ED to JHU and is thrilled. She did not get the “pressure-cooker” impression at all, even with an overnight visit in the middle of the semester. All of the students said that this was a myth, that there were hard-working students but that they were not “cutthroat” at all and helped each other a great deal. There are distribution requirements but they are actually very lenient - there are all kinds of courses that qualify for these requirements. They are very explicit in saying that there is no core curriculum, just distribution requirements</p>
<p>But - for a school with VERY loose requirements - check out University of Rochester. They only require one English course and everything else is total choice. It is in a city (really at the edge of the city, but very accessible to downtown, with a self-contained campus) and has intellectual students and tons of undergraduate research opportunities. Bonus - great concerts and musical opportunities through the Eastman School of Music!</p>
<p>Many students interested in business actually major in economics for undergraduate studies.</p>
<p>A girl from our high school loved Brown, was rejected, and got into JHU. Her parents told me that she recently visited a friend at Brown and came back so happy that she ended up at JHU. So, I do think that these schools have an intersection somewhere - not sure if it is the intersection interesting to the OP.</p>
<p>Tufts doesn’t really feel like a “traditional” curriculum, nor a pressure cooker atmosphere at all. While it doesn’t have an open curriculum like Brown, it is more in the middle of the spectrum as the distribution requirements are pretty open ended and there is no core. </p>
<p>There were some good suggestions like University of Rochester and Vassar.</p>
<p>I have two kids who are/will be Rice grads. Although not an “open” curriculum, there are very flexible distribution requirements in 4 areas that can be met many different ways, and students can design their own majors if they don’t find one that fits their interests. “Students with well-defined needs that are not met by established departmental or interdisciplinary majors may propose an area major. Area majors combine courses from more than one department into a cohesive plan of original study that is equivalent in quality and rigor to a traditional major.”
In a big city in a lovely part of city near museums, right by park and zoo, on a rail-line, lovely campus, relaxed and super-friendly residential college system campus, excellent science, engineering as well as all areas, 1:5 faculty/student ratio, huge endowment, approx 50:50 male/female ratio, top ranked in “student happiness”, great study abroad, tons o’ paid research possibilities… I could go on and on, but both my kids have been very happy there- :)</p>
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<p>Actually I mentioned Hampshire and Amherst back on page 1.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1066258528-post12.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1066258528-post12.html</a></p>
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<p>I would turn it around: Brown is “very different” than most schools. It’s almost unique: Ivy selectiveness; wide open curriculum ; liberal add-drop policy; small Uni, but LAC-like; city campus, but in a residential section; socially active…</p>
<p>While some colleges may have one or two of those features, hard to find the rest. Since you can’t get them all, busdriver, can you rank order the preferences: </p>
<p>For example, is the Open curriculum most important? (That would narrow the list down real quick.)</p>
<p>Urban/residential campus?</p>
<p>Size (small Uni, large LAC)? </p>
<p>I do agree that Tufts has some similarities to Brown. But Hopkins? Not to me.</p>
<p>btw: most colleges have a distribution requirement. Very un-Brown-like.</p>
<p>"“While some colleges may have one or two of those features, hard to find the rest.”</p>
<p>Very true bluebayou, which is why I am appreciative of all the input on this thread! You can read about a place all day, but getting the combined knowledge and experience of people who’ve attended, live near or have already researched these universities is invaluable.</p>
<p>And as far as a distribution requirement, yes, it’s probably very hard to find many programs with as few as Brown. Certainly, nothing wrong with requiring a small number of classes. But there’s a huge divide between Brown and Columbia (I’ve heard the core takes about two years to complete)?</p>
<p>busdriver:</p>
<p>My point is that you can count on one hand (or maybe two) the colleges that have completely open curriculums (such as Brown, Amherst, Smith) and those that have a solid Core (Columbia, Chicago, Boston College). </p>
<p>ALL others have distribution requirements/GE’s or whatever else the college calls them. And many of those colleges that have distribution requirements just require 6-8 courses outside your field or major. However, that ‘flexibility’ is typical. Other colleges may require a math/science type course (Physics for Poets), a Lang course and a Lit/hume course, but they can sometimes be fulfilled by AP/IB credit.</p>
<p>So, if an Open Curriculum is the most important item to your S, it is a very short list and he may have to compromise on location.</p>
<p>“While some colleges may have one or two of those features, hard to find the rest. Since you can’t get them all, busdriver, can you rank order the preferences:”</p>
<p>Gosh, that’s kind of a tough one, but I’ll try to at least group them a bit.</p>
<pre><code> Most important: Happy, intellectual students
important: STEM majors available (though not neccessarily predominently STEM, business would be good but not essential)
Highly reguarded, well known
No huge core, the less, the better
</code></pre>
<p>somewhat important: picturesque, relatively safe campus, less than 10K
less important: near a mid or large town </p>
<p>prefer (but not critical): not hyper-conservative or religious, not hyper-liberal (I know many campuses are, but we’re just ruling out ultra extremes of either side).</p>
<p>Open curriculum is not that important, it’s just an added benefit. But not having a huge core is very important. If he had to spend 2 years writing English papers, taking classes he isn’t interested in, he would be miserable no matter where he went. My older son goes to a school that has a core, but they have several classes they can choose from in order to meet that requirement, and they had very few core requirements at all. It isn’t considered an open curriculum at all, but he only ended up taking 2 classes he wasn’t interested in to fulfill it. An open curriculum is really just a dream, and probably improbable to find it.</p>
<p>I haven’t examined the course requirements but based on some other criteria you mentioned…</p>
<p>Tufts
Northwestern
Lehigh
Carnegie Mellon
Johns Hopkins
USC
Washington Univ. St. Louis
Rice
Swarthmore
University of Rochester
Tulane</p>
<p>Emory is a little bigger than your ideal and isn’t for engineering but has business.</p>
<p>Duke is very hard to get into but not as hard as Brown.</p>
<p>I also don’t know your son’s stats but every student needs reaches, matches and safeties and so I’ll add George Washington to the list.</p>
<p>Thanks, I am starting to hear some of those names often…and am putting them on a short list to go check out. Now if only they were all close to each other!</p>
<p>Rice fits to a T! (okay - so not the business school part, that’s just for grad school…he’d have to major in economics or something like that…)</p>
<p>It’s interesting to me how many posters have totally ignored the OP’s request for schools with business and technical majors. That would quickly eliminate three quarters of the schools suggested.</p>
<p>I’m sure you all know more than I do, but I am very surprised that you think JHU is like Brown. The people we know who apply to Brown are not at all like those who apply to JHU. The latter seems to attract very intense pre-med and career-track types who are the antithesis of everything I think of when I think of Brown. Not that there aren’t pre-med kids interested in Brown, but Brown seems to attract a more laid back crowd with a big heart for community service.</p>
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All of them would have some math and science majors. Just not business or engineering. But everyone is conjecturing on schools without any idea of the students stats.</p>
<p>Math and science are not “technical” majors. Business, engineering, nursing are.</p>
<p>And a school that has the laid back open feel of Brown, with excellent academics, no fraternities, in a great town, but without the admissions pressure?</p>
<p>Evergreen State College. (Not at ALL like JHU or Washington U.)</p>
<p>I realize that the vast majority of smaller schools don’t even offer a business major…which surprised me. I’m assuming that is more of a graduate track. They all seem to offer economics. So we aren’t ruling out schools without business majors, but would like him to have options more than purely humanities. And certainly Brown is unusual in that they have world class research in computer science, and a business economics concentration. We don’t expect that sort of variety in most of the smaller schools we’re looking at.</p>
<p>As far as his stats, they are pretty good (not good enough for the ivies, no 2400 SAT). Many of these schools would be on his reach list, but that is the list we’re working on. He is in the middle 50% for most of the schools, though he’s going to have to bring his writing score up.</p>