Brown is a prestigious university that has become immensely popular with international students for combining top-tier Ivy League academics with a creative community and open curriculum. Unsurprisingly, it’s also extremely difficult to get into. It is hard to gain admission to Brown for any student, but prospective international students face a particularly steep uphill battle. And yet, we regularly support international students from around the world in earning an acceptance letter. In this post, we’re going to give you a peek into our playbook — and how we pull it off.
First, though, let’s talk numbers. For the fall of 2023, Brown received 10,646 applications from international students and admitted only 401. Compare that 3.8% acceptance rate to:
the out-of-state but U.S. citizen or permanent resident acceptance rate of 5.5%, or even
the in-state (meaning from Rhode Island) acceptance rate of 10.6%.
Looking at the Brown student body, more than 20% of first-year undergraduate applicants to Brown are international students, but they make up only 15% of accepted students. Brown loves international students, but they accept fewer international students than domestic students, driving down that acceptance rate to under 4%.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that a 3.8% international student acceptance rate is actually quite high for an Ivy. Compared to nearly every other Ivy that publishes data, 3.8% is some of the best Ivy odds you’re going to get as an international applicant. Keep this in mind as you review our steps to success for international applicants to Brown below.
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When you are applying to Brown as an international student, there are three key things that you need to do to improve your chances of getting in. We’re not going to talk about grades or scores here, because it should be obvious that grades must be strong, and scores must be high. Those are assumed, and if you are reading this post chances are you have that part of the game under control. Instead, what we are focusing on are the less quantitative aspects of your applicant identity.
Start Early
Hopefully, a student or family member is reading this post months, if not years, before the application deadline. If not, you seriously need to reach out. This is because applying to college in the United States isn’t simply about a set of test scores or projected grades. Colleges and universities in the US, and perhaps especially Brown, practice ‘holistic’ admissions. They look at applicants from lots of different angles, and make a decision based on the whole picture.
That is not to say grades and scores are devalued. For top colleges, they are the starting point for serious consideration. If one applies to Brown without exceptional grades and strong scores, they will not get in. However, having strong grades and scores doesn’t mean an applicant will get in, either.
By starting to plan for the college admissions process early, and putting Brown at the center of their crosshairs, international students are taking the first step towards setting themselves up for success. But what should they actually be doing?
Whether a student is more than 1 year out from applying to college or the application is due in just a few weeks, everything we emphasize here applies. However, how much one can execute on it will depend on how much time one has. If a student is interested in attending college in the United States, we recommend that international students begin planning, and identify a top-choice school, by the equivalent of the beginning of junior year. This gives plenty to time to aim for the goal through strategic course selection, extracurricular development, and more.
Target Specific Programs
Brown as a goal university is great, but it’s also actually quite vague. Brown is big, and they have a lot going on — so what does one want to do there, really? We advise our students to pick 1-3 specific programs to target within Brown such that one can develop an application towards those programs.
How one picks a goal program isn’t, however, through throwing a dart at the list of concentrations (their term for major) or searching the web for the “most popular Brown programs”. Neither of those, for the record, are good strategies. Instead, the applicant needs to balance their passions and interests with what is in their own best interest as an international applicant.
One also needs to take into consideration that Brown has an Open Curriculum, but that doesn’t mean that they can do whatever they want. Brown students pick a concentration, or two, and each comes with a set of required courses that they complete over a period of 2-3 years. Outside of those courses, you have a lot of flexibility as a student. As an applicant, though, they want to show direction. This is why picking a program to focus on in your application is so important, and picking the program well ahead of submitting an application offers the opportunity to build towards an application that spotlights that goal.
But how to pick a program?
The first place to look is at what’s popular. The most popular areas of study at Brown are the physical sciences. This means that the programs are big, but there are also a lot of students trying to get into them…and Brown isn’t a school wholly focused on the sciences. This is all to say that simply having big programs at Brown doesn’t mean that it’s easier to get in.
We advise students to pick the program that is closest to their passions, but also not so specific that it’s tiny and has few spots available. For example, the Brown|RISD Dual Degree program is attractive, as is the PLME (Program in Liberal Medical Education), but both are excruciatingly hard to get into for any student. The PLME acceptance rate, overall, is 1.5%. That is less than half the recent international student acceptance rate. Instead, if a student is interested in the arts we recommend that they look at History of Art and Architecture or Visual Art, and if they are interested in medicine we point them towards Health and Human Biology, Public Health, or Science, Technology, and Society. But, of course, if you are dead set on a hyper-specific and selective program, we have a proven track record of pulling off an acceptance against the odds.
Craft Your Extracurriculars
Once a student has a program in mind, they need to make sure that what they are doing outside of their time in class underlines their interest in the subject that will be emphasized in the application. Prospective international applicants need to be taking the hardest courses they can in the most closely aligned subjects to what they are interested in studying at Brown, but if one’s interest seems stuck to class time that will work against the application.
We work with our students to develop deep, meaningful, and long-term extracurriculars that strengthen their application. For international students, this can take additional effort as your school may not offer many, if any, of the clubs, student groups, or other opportunities that are typical of most American high schools. But simply not having easy access to a school club isn’t an excuse for not pursuing activities outside of class. Instead, it opens up an opportunity.
The opportunity is this: make things happen. If there aren’t clubs, start them. If there aren’t relevant classes, take them online. If one feels limited by the opportunities at hand, look beyond what is right in front of you. Find internships, part-time jobs, or volunteer opportunities that are relevant, long-term (i.e., more than a few weeks), and that show how serious you are about your interests.
All of this is extra work on top of the minimum Brown requires to consider an application, but simply doing the minimum doesn’t get an applicant into Brown. You need to go above and beyond by crafting an application that is focused, targeted, and exciting for Brown admissions to review. With all that, we can help.
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