Marissa
The best thing about Brandeis is the people and the how friendliness abounds. The school is the perfect size for me, I love being able to walk to class and say hi to 10 people I know everytime. However, the school is still large enough that its possible to avoid people you don't want to see. When people hear that I go to Brandeis they are usually impressed which is followed by "Are you jewish?". On campus I spend most of my time on my hall, most of my best friends live on the same hall as me. I feel that all of Brandeis is unusual. We're the youngest research university in the country. Our campus was voted fourth ugliest in the country.. which is definitely false. The people that attended Brandeis have either wanted to come here forever or ended up here. However, once we're all here, I feel as though everyone LOVES it here.
David
Brandeis will get you to the next step in your life. It's a great academic institution that tends to provide students with great graduate school (including law/med school) and employment opportunities. Up until this year, the school's sports were not nearly as competitive as they have become. As a result, there's a lot more school spirit around campus, attracting many more fans to the basketball games (the biggest sport at our school). Although many students complain about a lack of social life/partying, the fact is, Brandeis is lenient when it comes to dealing with parties. Often, the campus aids (CA or RA depending on where you go) will break up parties, and students will get away with being written up. Unlike other universities, where you risk being kicked out of the dorms for partying even once, Brandeis gives its students warnings prior to taking action. Basically, if students want to make a bigger social/party scene, the opportunity is there for them.
Probably one of the greatest strengths at Brandeis, though, is its club programs and its intramural sports. Clubs usually receive the amount of money they request (especially now, when the athletics department assumed control over all club sports), and creating a club isn't difficult, so it allows students to participate/create whatever they want, really. Regarding intramural sports, it is a very organized league, and anyone can join. They have sports for all seasons, including soccer, flag football, basketball, softball, wiffleball, and even water polo (among other sports). It is possible to have a great time at Brandeis. If the school doesn't have you what you want, you can easily get it going.
Courtney
1) The best thing about Brandeis is that the professors are awesome.
2) I'd change the location of the offices (financial aid, registrar, etc) so that they would all be in one place.
3) It's just right. It's small enough so that the class sizes are tiny, and so that you know faces wherever you go, but large enough so that you don't know everyone on campus -- and always see new faces wherever you go.
4)I get one of two reactions: 1:"Wow! That's an excellent school," or 2:"Brandeis? Never heard of it. Where's that?"
5)I go all over the place. I spend time in the "Student Center," the gym, one of the two dining halls (Usdan), and in the dorms -- both my room and my friends' rooms.
6)Waltham is not a college town. However, Brandeis has a commuter rail connection to Boston, arguably the largest college town in the country.
7)The administration is kind of like the ivory tower; I don't see, hear, or interact with them much.
8)There were two, really, and both with the administration: The first was that the student government protested against the administration, claiming that it was appropriating money to student events without consulting the student government; the second was that a teacher got in trouble for an ambiguously racist remark that he didn't mean to make or something -- the ACLU actually released a statement berating the Brandeis administration for its actions.
9)There isn't a lot of school pride, but people LIKE the school. If they didn't, why don't they transfer?
10)Almost everything is unusual about Brandeis.
11)I'll always remember the Environmental Field Semester. A group of 12 students got 3 excellent professors all to themselves for an entire semester. It was all of our classes. We were hardly in the classroom, or even at school. We were on field trips all the time. We did real-life projects; learning by DOING instead of by being taught in the classroom. To my knowledge there is no other program like this in any other university in the United States.
12)The hours of most things -- like the dining halls, health center or mailroom.
Justin
The best thing about Brandeis is the type of student that comes here. S/he is usually genuinely friendly and interested in meeting new people. I find the campus here to be so down-to-earth and unpretentious that I dread going into the real world.
I have developed a very solid close-knit group of friends and I find that nearly all students also feel comfortable as part of their friendship group and their social life usually resolves around the same ten or so friends.
I find the campus to be just the right size.
People that know about higher education highly respect Brandeis. While the average guy on the street may not be wowed by the Brandeis name, anyone in the academic or professional world knows Brandeis gives you a solid education.
On campus, I spend most of time hanging out in the dorms and enjoying long meals in Sherman.
The administration, I think, is very caring and dedicated. It's very hard to fall through the cracks because we are on the smaller side and have such a solid staff of administrators.