Interesting to see a few posters openly seeking comfort in Brown’s “Ivy League” status and urging that people accord Brown an “Ivy” level of “prestige” regardless of its innate merits. Brown is a great school. It is almost as good as Pomona, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Duke, Wash. U., etc. Oops…those are not in the “Ivy League”. But the heck with that. Let’s just seek refuge in the “Ivy” label.
Rankings change over time. 40 years ago Brown was ranked the #1 ivy and the best school in the country. I think it was mostly because Amy Carter, the daughter of the President had chosen to go there. For a number of years, going into the early 80s when I was looking at college, Brown was up there with Harvard and Yale. Likewise back in those days, nobody I knew from my top northeast prep school would be caught dead applying to Pomona, Vanderbilt or Wash U (whatever that is). Indeed, nowadays everyone thinks Penn is a great ivy but when I was applying we all joked it was the ‘Rodney Dangerfield’ of the ivies, in fact I remember the average SAT back then for Penn was 1240! wow! how times change huh?
So rankings change and perceptions change. Some schools do a good job of marketing and attracting $ and get better rankings, other do a poor job and fall off the top tier ranking bandwagon. But for what its worth, I would wager that in 40 years from now Brown will still be among the top schools in the country, whereas some of the new upstart schools achieving top tier ranking mention may likely decline or become less ‘prestigious’ than many consider today…
Agree with Regulus that Brown is likely to continue borrowing its prestige from the Ivy label even though it will be surpassed by more and more non-Ivy schools, many of which already have similar or higher credentialed students. The same way that prestige seekers will pay up for a German label in cars even though a Lexus may be better quality. That is more of a reflection of our societal mentality, no blame goes to Brown. In all honesty it is again the Ivy label that separates it from a dozen top LACs also. Very similar academic quality. All good.
“I would wager that in 40 years from now Brown will still be among the top schools in the country” (#21)
This I hope will be true for a school in hilly Providence, but other established coastal-city schools will eventually (the actual time frame is unknown) be at risk for seawater incursion. The fact that this is currently outside the thoughts and imaginations of many does not make the possibility any less real. Schools have changed and will change in their relative desirability. Everything changes.
In the other direction of time, based on a used book I bought, Amherst once had a higher average SAT score (CR+M) than Princeton, St. Lawrence a higher average than Bowdoin, and Reed a higher average than the University of Chicago. Everything changes.
OP, depends on what you want to focus on. Brown does a great job with its undergraduates and the atmosphere encourages creative scholarship and interdisciplinary thinking. Penn 95, not sure what you mean by Brown lagging in all the areas you listed. Brown had more Rhodes Scholarships awarded (4) last year than any other Ivy+. There are many illustrious and powerful grads (Janet Yellen and Tim Cooke come to mind as two you might read about on any given day). OP, I would encourage you to dig deeper into these rankings because a lot of the statistics about starting salaries say more about programs offered (Brown has no business school and a very small engineering program which it is working on, for instance) than about quality of departments or students. I wouldn’t pay attention to slight differences in SATs amongst accepted students at all these schools for this often is skewed higher at schools with less diversity. Apples and oranges. And anybody who ranks Ivy League schools is obsessively competitive and you should probably discount their opinion.
Tim Cook from Apple? I don’t think he graduated from Brown. Thought it was undergrad from Auburn and grad from Duke.
You are right @goingnutsmom, my error. Thinking of John Sculley and wrote Tim Cook.
Speaking of former Apple employees: Andy Hertzfeld is also a Brown alumnus.