<p>I don’t have a lot of knowledge about brown, but one thing I noticed is that, on CC, I’ve seen a lot of people make fun of Brown. Why? Is there any particular reason of this?</p>
<p>1) who knows? Likely, they’re petty.
2) who cares? you shouldn’t.<br>
3) Why should you pay attention to them?</p>
<p>I don’t know of anyone making fun of Brown, but if they are it is likely due to lack of knowledge, misunderstanding, stupidity, etc. Lots of colleges can be teased about quirks or stereotypes that aren’t representative, perhaps you are taking things too seriously?</p>
<p>In case you guys don’t know what I’m talking about, here are some comments about Brown that I saw on CC, some people are joking about Brown not being a real school, I’m just curious to know if they are referring to Brown’s open curriculum or something.</p>
<h2>Some comments:</h2>
<p>Brown for med?</p>
<p>83% is a perfectly respectable number presuming – as I am pretty sure is the case – they do no screening.</p>
<h2>I’m not the biggest fan of Brown in general (it’s not a real school!) but even I concede that it’s almost certainly just fine for premeds.</h2>
<p>Columbia vs Duke, Brown</p>
<p>Well Columbia definitely has the most prestigious name of the three, followed by Brown then Duke.
Duke is hot…yuck.
Brown isn’t a real school…yuck.</p>
<h2>Columbia wins.</h2>
<p>Wharton vs Yale vs Brown</p>
<p>Brown isn’t a real school.
New Haven is the ass of America.
Penn is a real school and West Philly is where Will Smith is from in Fresh Prince.</p>
<h2>Go to Penn.</h2>
<p>Ivy League Ranking </p>
<p>Each school has its pros and cons, with its own individual strengths and niches that make unique and different. This is largely my opinion:</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton (undergraduate focus, ultimate college experience, liberal arts feel with top tier engineering, amazing humanities, strong sciences and social sciences, diverse student presence, safe, beautiful campus, great professors, amazing alumni loyalty and connections, centralized campus spirit, best financial aid, prestige. I’d say its weakness is lack of professional school resources [but this is easily made up for by other things], which is what one pays the price for wanting more resources and attention for undergrads. There’s also grade deflation, but really what top tier school isn’t competitive? Grade deflation has a marginal effect on one’s success in college and post-graduation. Also it’s a little secluded if you’re more into urban areas.)</li>
<li>Yale (strong undergraduate focus with a nice rescol system, although rescols are pretty universal nowadays… [a rose by any other name is still a rose]… strong political presence, same strengths as Princeton in terms of faculty and resources, campus spirit, alumni network, and student engagement. I’d say the main flaws are its location, obsession with beating out Harvard, weak STEM majors, and relatively homogenous student body.)</li>
<li>Harvard has all the typical strengths of a great research university mentioned above, but there’s just a weak sense of student pride/happiness/atmosphere and just a weird cachet in my opinion to hold a Harvard degree. You’re immediately judged and I feel like that stereotype does draws a bit from the experience you have there as a student. Also, grad schools are way better at Harvard than their undergrad. Their engineering is also relatively weak.</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Brown (is this even a real school?)</li>
</ol>
<h2>8. Cornell</h2>
<p>It sounds like these are all written by the same person! Some of these posts are a decade old. Are you trying to stir something up?</p>
<p>What? I’m not trying to stir things up!
I’m just confused by the comments, and I only asked the question because I had repeatedly come across comments like that, so I was wondering if they are referring to the open curriculum or what.
(I don’t think that these comments were written by the same person though.)</p>
<p>@daphne13: I’m sure if you dig hard enough, you’d find dirt or someone with negative things to say about your beloved gramma. </p>
<p>A Brown admission is one of the most sought after seats in this country. And those people who blithely dismissed it are idiots sans doute. I can guarantee you that they never attended an actual top school – else they’d be humbled and not slag a school such as Brown. They were only passing along juicy tidbits to sound knowledgeable – akin to someone posting: “I just saw Bieber acting a fool at the club” on their instagram. WHO CARES?</p>
<p>Stop paying attn to HS students’ half baked, ill informed stereotypes. Ask academics, people who have jobs and hire others. </p>
<p>They claim it isn’t a real school because they got rejected.</p>
<p>OK got it, thanks for the answers, guys!</p>
<p>Huh? I see snide remarks about HPY as well, so I don’t see what the issue is. All schools get mocked.Brown no more than others, from what I can sense.</p>
<p>Ooh, I’ll be graduating next year. It’ll be shocking to find out that my diploma isn’t ‘real,’ whatever that means. I think the most common question I get from people back home is “wait, does Brown have grades?” and it often leads to playful joking about how I must have it easy because everything is S/NC – it’s not. But that’s part of the Brown stereotype.</p>
<p>I have 2 kids at Brown. I think retrorocket is right. It’s the misunderstanding about the S/NC, as if no one is getting graded (hence “not a real school”). It seems a very small percentage of the kids actually take advantage of that since they know they are putting the work in and will do well. My son just finished freshman year and said the school is filled with super smart kids who are chill and don’t brag about all the wonderful things they are doing. They both love it!</p>
<p>I went to Yale - Class of 82. Trust and believe that Brown is a real school - an Ivy League School. As such, you will get a great education there. But like all the Ivies, it has its own personality. My daughter went there for 2 weeks for a summer school program, it is very pretty. They have a curriculum that is unique to them, and is probably not for everyone, but it is still one of the top schools in the country. Its students are very self directed. They have to be because they have a lot of choice in how they pursue their academics. Though my daughter loved her time there, she decided to attend Yale this fall - more from familiarity than the fact that there was something missing at Brown.</p>
<p>Brown is teased about:
- Open curriculum. Critics claim it is similar to what 2 yr tech and community colleges offer and below the “ivy league”. It would be a problem at many universities but with the academic profile of students at Brown it works well.
- Grade inflation. No grades or everyone gets an A. Critics slam grade inflation but the students, parents, & faculty are happy and their students are getting into grad schools and able to gain employment with their high GPA’s. </p>
<p>Oh, c’mon. If OP can’t get past some CC style comments about an Ivy, she’s got some thinking to do.<br>
Harvard was slammed for grade inflation. By bigger powers than folks, including high school kids, on a public forum.
Fact is, if you don’t know a college, you can’t get the right view.</p>
<p>Seriously, nobody is going to give a real response to this?</p>
<p>Brown is made fun of because it’s perfectly possible to slack your way through all four years, and I’d say about 40% of people do just that. It’s not just the S/NC thing, it’s the implicit guarantee that nobody will fail a class if they try hard and talk to the professor, outside of math and science fields. That being said, life is what you make of it, and I know plenty of people who took challenging classes and used the openness of the curriculum to expand their worldview instead of just finding the easiest way to a 3.0 in political science. </p>
<p>Source: Brown grad.</p>
<p>There is a thread on here apparently written by a Brown student that appears to answer your question although it, like perhaps yours, could be ■■■■■. The thread is called something like “I fear junior year”. Read it.</p>
<p>^ Can you provide a link?</p>