Student Profile
Anonymous
- Class: Sophomore
- Major: Government
- Gender: F
- High School: Northern Valley Regional High School Demarest
- Transfer Student: N
Big Picture
The open curriculum and the vibrant, varied, interesting people you meet here are definitely Brown's biggest draws. Brown is a great size, and the focus is really on undergraduate education, not grad students. Also, our President, Ruth Simmons, is THE BEST.
Academic Life
Professors are generally very friendly and very open to after-class discussion. They appreciate your insights and treat you like an intelligent person whom they might even be able to learn from. My professors have been, for the most part, approachable, affable, and intelligent. Students are not cutthroat about academics, and generally, I feel, this fosters a happier student than competition does. Being at Brown is not really about landing a job at Goldman Sachs or making millions of dollars straight out of college (although some do), it's about the "Brown experience". Seriously, I know already that these are probably going to end up being the best four years of my life.
Student Body
Although Brown's students are very diverse (high minority population, big LGBTQ community), and people can have lots of different groups of friends, I feel that there is a certain degree of segregation/clique-ishness that goes on; e.g. the athletes all sit together and live together and party together, and the hipsters all smoke cigarettes together and look nonchalant. A vast majority of students here are liberal. It's hard to find conservatives, and they are often maligned. There is, of course, a lot of privilege here. But that's the case at any such institution as Brown. Even students from low-income or minority backgrounds probably went to prestigious schools and did very well - everyone's on a similar academic standing. If you're shy, boring, or conservative, Brown might not be for you.
The Best Things
Everything else!
The Worst Things
The weather
