Why Brown
A Brief Reflection on Undergrad at BrownBrown
I cannot tell you where to go to college. I am not qualified to make such a decision for you, and anyways I don’t want to. Where you go to school is your choice. You may ask me about Brown, but I cannot tell you what to make of it! I can only tell you about my experience, and you may make of that what you will.
What follows is a broad overview of my relationship with Brown over the past half decade. I will attempt to contextualize my experiences within my background, and my decisions within my values. These thoughts are both an extended reflection and a momentary snapshot; they are instantly true and also sure to change in the coming years. If you read this and any of the points strike you as interesting, I encourage you to find me.
I must disclaim my em dashes. I have been a terrible glutton for the half-stop for as long as I can remember. No, this was not written using ChatGPT. I don’t care for that in the slightest. LLM-authored writing is uninspiring at best. Please forgive my disinterest — we were fine-tuning GPT-2 on our own writing back in high school. It’s been old for a while.
This brings us to our first piece of context: I went to a slightly unusual high school. It is difficult to explain that strange and wonderful place, so I will collect a few bullet points for you:
- students addressed teachers by their first names (no “Ms.” or “Mr.”)
- students dominated class discussions (no true lectures)
- students could take any class that suited them, regardless of seniority (we had first-years in Differential Equations)
- classes were heavily project-based (International Relations featured a long-running wargame, Environmental Economics ran an energy market simulation, language classes led to short film productions, etc, etc)
- there were no Honors or AP courses
- there were no GPAs
- the school had not sent anyone to college (the first class had yet to graduate when I started ninth grade)
- and, finally, the students were incredible nerds that would write novels, genetically modify worms, create stained glass sculptures, discover bugs in the Rust compiler, etc. (They were also occasionally incredibly mentally unwell, but that’s another story.)
Do not worry about wrapping your head around this. I still cannot find words to capture the entirety of my experiences. What matters is that you understand the following:
- I considered myself an immense nerd — a very lucky one — and
- I did not think about college until about a year before applications were due.
How did you choose Brown?
I was stubborn about not “doing things for college.” I didn’t even think about applying to schools until I absolutely had to. I’m lucky this worked out; it is a product of privilege that I could feasibly take this approach. One benefit of going to a school full of interesting nerds: college admissions officers tend to look favorably upon subsequent classes, even if the applicants don’t really know what they want to major in.
I applied to a smattering of medium-sized universities and some liberal arts colleges, mostly at the behest of my school-assigned college counselor. Even when writing the applications I knew very little about the schools, and perhaps even less about myself. My applications to Harvard and Harvey Mudd alike were really just formalities (for whose sake I do not know). There were two exceptions. The first was Brown, and the second was Carnegie Mellon.
My two principal interests were architecture and computer science. CMU offered a combined degree in both; Brown, with its open curriculum, would not stop me from studying either. CMU would take me deep into seventy hours of type theory and studio work per week; Brown would grant me broad access to however many subjects I could stomach. Both promised to surround me with nerds. I deliberated until the last day, emailing professors at both schools, comparing course catalogs and student reviews. In the end the choice was very simple: Brown offered breadth, while CMU offered depth. And while you can always get depth in grad school, it’s hard to get breadth after undergrad. Thus I chose Brown.
A brief detour: I did not consider rankings in my decisions. Nor did I consider startup culture, cost, university endowments, internship opportunities, research groups, athletics, student clubs, job prospects, alumni networks, or any factors of external perception that might benefit my future. I was simply interested in the learning, and anyways I’d never even thought I’d make it to college. Your decision-making process is probably very different from mine — I would’ve never read a blog like this.
After an apocalyptic few seasons (wildfires, pandemic, etc.), I eventually made it to Brown.
Non-obvious notes on Brown
I will not attempt to regale you with the entirety of my Brown experience. Those stories are my treasures and I will tell them to you in real life. That said, here are some notes that I did not find obvious:
Brown is full of nerds. This does not mean that people talk in class. As someone who had never sat through a lecture (save for a single sex ed speaker series when I was fifteen), this was bewildering. I was incredibly disappointed to find that I was the only one who’d raise my (zoom) hand during class discussions, and I quickly learned that it was not necessarily cool to do so in all classes. (The solution: skip the lectures, find the seminars.)
Brown is full of nerds. That does not mean that everyone is primarily motivated by an ardent love for academic learning. Some people come to Brown to get a degree and a job. They aren’t necessarily interested in their classes! Many of my friends wanted to focus primarily on their clubs/research/teaching/volunteering/etc. That, or they were just having fun — as one of my most brilliant friends put it, “Brown is a bunch of burnt out gifted kids who just want to chill for four years.” (He TA’d for six semesters, conducted research, completed an extra degree in photography, and is now in quantitative trading. I don’t think he was chilling, but maybe we have different definitions.)
Brown is full of nerds. That does not mean it’s full of academics. Many people will go into tech, consulting, finance, or some variation of thereof. The largest concentrations were Computer Science and Economics. On the flip side, every STEM concentrator seemed to have their artsy side. Visual Arts, Comparative Literature, Music, you name it — Brown students are a quirky bunch. Don’t even get me started on the Brown-RISD dualies. People have a wide range of interests, and often one of those makes money.
Brown is full of nerds. Some of them will use the famous Open Curriculum to study a huge breadth of subjects. I think I managed to hit eighteen different departments during my time. However, there’s another way to use the Open Curriculum: to avoid taking classes in a particular subject. One may even avoid multiple subjects. (One of my friends didn’t go to Harvard because they’d “make her take calculus.” I am personally of the opinion that she’s very capable of passing a calculus class, but then again I also put off my calculus requirement until well after I’d taken abstract algebra.)
One of my friends affectionately described the place as “clown college.” I’m inclined to disagree. I’m personally no better at juggling than I was five years ago, and I only know one person who ran away to join the circus.
Clown College taught me focus
Brown taught me to spend my focus on the things I love.
That may sound silly, but it’s the single most important lesson I learned at Brown. There is no core curriculum. Your concentration comes with some requirements, but they’re fairly loose, and anyways you have to choose your concentration to get to that point. My classes were pretty easy, too, so I was left with ample time and little prescribed direction. It was a good time to try all sorts of things: cooking club, computer science research, cocktail-mixing, TA jobs, new languages, startups, internships, etc. Spontaneous trips around Providence and the rest of the northeast; relationships both near and far.
I promised I would not be prescriptive, but if I had to give advice: if you go to Brown, you must make sure to try everything. Try every club. Try being an Academic. Try teaching and try instigating; see how far light bribery will take you. Throw a few parties; make a few impulsive decisions. Make it down to Block Island and up to Maine. Take classes you love, and pass-fail all the rest. Befriend your seniors and your juniors. Leave a legacy, even if it’s just for a few people in the class under yours. Get around Providence, and make friends everywhere. Don’t hold back! Four years is too short for ironic detachment. Try as many things as you can, and find all the things you can love. Find all the people you can love.
Do not go to Brown if you’re just going to stay on a railroaded path — other schools will do that for you. Go to clown college to focus on what you love.