Brown University: Self-Directed Excellence

Sadly, my camera battery died as I took my first photo in Providence. All photos in this post are from here.

When I go to Boston, I often fly in through Providence's airport, a mere twenty minutes from my aunt and uncle's place south of Boston. It's smaller, less busy, and you can get there on Southwest, for you fans of Hobby Airport.

If you've never been to Providence, Rhode Island, I insist that you check it out next time you're in New England. Providence is like they took all of the nicest and most charming things about Boston and Harvard and crammed them into an even smaller space. It's a charming city with a beautiful waterfront. All jokes about Rhode Island's size aside, it's a fairly large city that's fun and easy to get around. From here, you're close to the ocean, close to the country, and on the doorstep of two of the most impressive universities in the US: Brown and RISD.

Like Harvard, Brown isn't just special because it's old and carries the Ivy moniker. Instead, it's special because of what it offers its students: no core curriculum, no requirements common to all students--just the opportunity to construct a self-directed course of study under the guidance of distinguished full faculty members.


The Brown curriculum--which you can read about in greater detail here--is one of the best things about this place. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Brown has had a commitment to allowing students to be self-directed; the idea is that they become thoughtful, self-educating students who make the best use of the resources that a major research university has to offer. There are over eighty concentrations (AKA majors) available, including the world's only History of Math program and a rare program in Egyptology.

All students will choose a concentration that becomes the focal point of their academic career, but there is no set list of courses that any student has to take. Instead, students work closely with advisers to construct the program of study that best fits their academic goals. In this sense, it's a lot like Bennington College, though Brown is in the heart of a major city and has a much higher profile. The more important similarity that the students at Brown shared with Bennington students was a sense of contentment. Because they have so much agency in the things they choose to study and the terms under which they do so, students here are just happy. The students I met here were some of the most grounded and downright normal college students I've ever met. While Brown students can get a bit of a hippy reputation ("You don't have real majors? You don't exactly get grades?"), I was most struck by how secure and self-aware these students seemed.

This was most apparent in the students that I met during my visit. On each visit, I like to ask the students I meet a couple of questions. First, What do you like best about being a student here? Why did you choose to come here? Secondly, and often most tellingly, What do you think is your school's greatest strength? What it its greatest area for improvement? I'm as frequently impressed with the answers to these questions as to the way the students react to my asking this question. (For example, the two boys I presented this question to at Dartmouth stared back at me as if I'd just sprouted a second head. A bad sign.)

At Brown, the three students working the admission desk were completely game for answering my questions. We must have spent 45 minutes talking about life at Brown, the things they loved best about going to school here, and the reasons this place is right. They even took the time to walk me around the admissions building (it was raining cats and dogs outside; otherwise we would have ventured further afield) to show me historic elements and show off more admission materials.

Most of what they said is what you can read on the admissions website. This is a great place to go to a small school in an urban setting. There are great athletics here, great libraries, amazing professors, great guest speakers. But the core of all of this--which each student kept coming back to--is the Brown curriculum. "Everyone here is just so happy," one of the boys said, and the others nodded vigorously in agreement. Student choose this place because they're excited about learning and excited about collaboration. In a place where you're free to choose your own adventure, so to speak, you have the freedom to allow the conversations you have to really impact the choices you make about your education. "I love that my classmates just want to know so many things," one of the students said. Being a Brown student demands a lot of energy ; you're constantly having to make big choices about your life and your education. That is, you can't just pick a major, spend four years studying a set course list, and then leave--instead, every student has to be thoughtful enough about their education to construct a coherent list of courses that lead to an end goal. Perhaps that's why people here are so happy--if they don't all know exactly what they want out of life, they're at least unafraid to be in constant engagement with that question.

I had a brief but informative talk with the representative for Texas, who emphasized a lot of the same points I've mentioned about admission to highly selective schools: great grades are key, and the essays should be all about what, in particular, you're all about. As you might expect, she placed a special emphasis on the self-awareness aspect of the application. If your plan is to come here and choose your own adventure, the admissions office wants to make sure that such an adventure is really the right fit for you. They're obviously looking for bright, high-achieving students, but they're also looking for people who are willing to participate in their continuing adventure in collaborative education.


So if you're looking for freedom to explore with remarkable classmates, Brown might be the perfect choice for you. I fell in love with it on my visit, and I can't wait to help STES students find their way to this place.