Brown University Top Questions

I've mostly taken large lecture classes, but in my smaller conferences my professors are fabulous. My favorite class would have to be my Spanish language class. Students here generally spend a lot of outside time doing work; ample sleep is rare, especially around midterms and finals. Probably the most unique class I've taken was a seminar on Sports in American History (fabulous!). My concentration is International Relations, which is a tough major, and honestly, there could be more support within the department (which is largely understaffed for concentrators). I'd say the education is balanced between education for the love of learning and education towards getting a job. People here are really self-motivated.

I would say alot of professors know my name. My favorite class is "The American Presidency". It's so interesting to study past presidency administrations and compare it to the general election. The class I least enjoyed was "Intro to International Politics". The teacher was so dull and I hated the essay questions. Students study alot. It is an ivy league after all. Class participation is very common in class sizes that allow it. Brown students definitely have intellectual conversations outside of class. Most of the time it's exciting to talk to people as engaged as you are, but sometimes it can get annoying. Students are not very competitive. They compete against themselves in order to do well, but students are always willing to help others. They are not sly nor do they do anything to lower others' grades. It is a very friendly environment. The most unique class I've taken would probably be Engine 0009. Even though it's an Engineering class, it teaches you about the business world. I am a double major in Economics and Political Science. I do not spend time outside of the classroom with professors. Even though they are very willing to do so, I am not yet comfortable going to office hours. I am very satisfied with Brown's open curriculum. Its lack of general academic requirements gives us more room to explore classes we are actually interested in. The education at Brown is definitely geared towards learning for its own sake.

This TOTALLY depends on your major. Brown, in my opinion, focuses on learning as a process. Certainly, there's the goal of getting a degree, but that's not the most important thing. It's really flexible and allows exploration of many different academic interests. I couldn't be happier with it. My classes are mostly small, because I take dead languages (Latin and Greek). This also generally makes professors available. Because there are no core requirements, all (99{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c}) of the students take classes solely because they're interested. It really frees things up. Also the pass/fail option is a really great way to decrease stress.

Brown academics are great, but you do need to be a bit self motivated here, because no one will necessarily hand you anything. Best thing about Brown is that there are many small majors that end up with small classes where you know all the students and the professors. There are 4 students total in my major (geophysics) and only 20 doing geology overall. I know many of the geology professors by first names, and they are always eager to sit and talk about whatever. Class participation is super common and I expect even moreso in humanities classes. My favorite class has been a philosophy class on moral issues that I picked at random. It was taught by a grad student who was fantastic. Second favorite was my physics class on relativity and quantam mechanics--great professor, great material. Least favorite class was Intro to Environmetnal Studies. Terrible. Terrible. Students study time varies. It seems that the pre-med kids and engineers do the most straight up studying--and they will never let you forget it, but most kids do a fair amount of work. The lit/comp lit/history kids are forever reading. And seriously, the art/film kids spend alot of time in the studio. You can definitely get away with doing very little work here, but for the most part people take their classes seriously. Most unique Brown class I have taken: I would probably go with Objectivity and Its Loss; it was a class about objectivity in science and in clincal settings. Brown education is definitely about learning for learning sake. My two majors geophysics and science and society are both fantastic in terms of the classes I have taken. I love the geology department because it is small and everyone is so nice. I am friendly with many of the grad students and professors and at every geo event there is always beer and food.

Freshman professors often make a special effort to know your name, but as I am in Engineering and my classes are often larger than 50, it is usually up to the students to make contact with the professors. On how competitive brown is: Students are very intent on doing very well in their classes but no one *no one* feels like they are competing against other students. Some friends at other colleges say that they would never take a class with a friend just because they would be competing against that friend and jeopardize that friendship. At Brown there is nothing better than taking a class with a friend.

Academics is awesome. The pass fail option is great especially senior year and freshman first semester. There are also so many different classes and majors that it is usually hard to narrow down your schedule once you have found classes that you want to take. There are some great professors here who know your name and are very friendly but depending on departments, there are a lot of grad students who teach classes and TA classes that are foreign and really hard to understand and don't explain things well. I am an economics concentrator and have had to try and deal with this problem alot.

My best classes have been those that emphasize experiential learning and on the whole, classes embrace learning that occurs outside of the classroom setting. As I said before, we're all smart kids. I think the thing I'll miss the most are the "Brown conversations", the nickname my friends and I use for conversations that you'd never hear when you leave. Where else can you discuss Nietzsche, The Big Lebowski, theoretical physics, national politics, the history of India's independence, and proper Beirut technique in one lunchtime conversation? Students are not competitive and neither professors nor the administration try to foster competition. Professors are accessible and it's fairly common for undergrads to do research with professors.

most professors make the effort to get to know your name. my least favorite class was SO164: Social Exclusion. Brown students definitely have intellectual conversations outside of class and are competitive but no always with each other but themselves.

Depends on the type of classes you take. If it's a huge lecture class, the professor won't usually know your name unless you make the time to go to his/her office hours. Because I take a lot of small classes in Art History and Creative Nonfiction, almost all my professors know my name. I have pretty close relationships with all of them, and I will go to their office hours even years after I've taken a class with them just to chat. They are all so amazing, and they love talking with students. I have so many favorite professors - one of them is in the Art History department, he teaches introduction to Art History along with many other Art History classes. I decided to major in Art History after taking his class - I fell in love with the subject. I would always go and sit in the front row and forget about the outside world listening to him. His lectures would take me to another world where I forgot about all my worries. It was almost therapeutic. He is really funny, he makes these jokes that nobody really understands and he laughs by himself. He had these funny gestures and sometimes trips on the cords on the stage. He is the funniest person!!! He is also pretty awkward outside class, but that makes him a wonderful character. Another favorite professor is in the Creative Nonfiction department, he teaches a cultural criticism class. He is a book reviewer for the NY Times and he's won a Pulitzer. He's this really old, gentle and sweet guy - and he breathes out metaphors. My hands would ache after leaving his class because I couldn't stop writing down his beautiful sentences. It was a very challenging class, and it taught me a lot. My professor now invites me over to Boston to have lunch with him! My least favorite class was Experimental Psychology. I thought I was going to major in Psychology when I first came to Brown, and I fulfilled a lot of the requirements - and I loved most of them- until that class. The professor was very sweet, but we had to sit in lab with a rat for three hours and code every single thing the damn animal did. One day I walked out of that class and I knew that I was going to drop Psychology. I loved Social Psychology, but Neuro and Cognitive Psychology were not my thing. Brown students have nothing but intellectual conversations outside of class. Sometimes we sit in the Ratty literally for hours and discuss whether there should be trans gendered bathrooms on campus, or the Bush government, or the Kurds in Turkey, or cultural differences between France and the States... Sometimes we get so into arguments we end up staying up all night and forgetting about work. It is awesome..One thing that sucks is that because most students are liberal here, there is really not much tolerance for conservative ideas. People tend to get pretty hostile at times and most students know if the Republicans on campus by name. I don't think we are competitive here. We challenge ourselves, and do not weigh successes against others. However, because there are no pluses and minuses, getting a B is pretty much the worst you can do in most courses and obviously nobody wants to get a B. But it's not the end of the day when you get one, and by the end of your fourth year your transcript is pretty much sprinkled with them. The liberal arts education at Brown is geared mostly towards learning for its own sake, but it all depends on what major you choose.

With the lack of requirements and the opportunity to take all classes pass/fail, Brown students approach academics with a laid-back, collaborative attitude that should nonetheless never be confused with laziness. Brown students see their university’s flexible academic guidelines as a means of while also pursuing their own passions without the unnecessary pressure that many times clouds college students’ academic experience. It also allows them to explore new subjects without repercussions on their grade point average, making intriguing classes like “Human Sacrifice” and “Contemplative Studies” popular even among Business concentrators or Engineering students. Brown students have a recognizable enthusiasm about learning and though they often suppress it by trying not to discuss academic matters outside of class, their hidden “nerdiness” and overachieving sides of their personalities eventually leaks out.