Receiving a rejection from Brown can be a gut punch. Students who apply Early Decision to Brown tend to pick the university for very specific reasons, and there may not be another school of Brown’s caliber that fully fits the bill. But Brown isn’t the only strong school with a completely open curriculum, so there are options and we’re going to help you see them, pursue them, and receive an acceptance letter. First, let’s do a bit of an autopsy of your Brown rejection.
Deferred by Brown Early Decision 2024-2025
Applying to Brown Early Decision comes with some advantages. The rate of acceptance is higher than in the regular decision round, and you can confirm your plans for college months before the regular decision cycle sorts things out for most students. There’s one other advantage, though, that may feel, in this precise moment, like a set-back: Deferral. Getting deferred by your dream school isn’t the ideal outcome, but it also isn’t the worst possible result. You are still in the game, and in this post, we’re going to break down what you need to know to increase your chances of turning your deferral into an acceptance. We’ll also dive into everything else you must tackle to ensure your entire college application process is a massive success.
How to Write the Brown Supplement 2024-2025
Brown is the “creative Ivy.” A member of the famed Ivy League, Brown embraces opportunities to approach any subject from a creative perspective — whether it’s overtly ‘artsy’ or not. It’s also the only Ivy League school with a truly Open Curriculum. At Brown, you take what you want, when you want, within the context of your course of study. This encourages both exploration and depth, pushing you to try new things and test your academic boundaries. Brown attracts tens of thousands of applicants from around the globe, and competition for a spot is fierce. The acceptance rate has held at just over 5% for the past two years, for both the Class of 2027 and the Class of 2028.
Applying to Brown as a Student Athlete
Brown is an Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island with an open curriculum. They challenge students to create their own path, charting a track through the university that takes them where they want to go — on their own terms. It is a unique, highly-respected, and selective education in an urban setting with a strong campus culture and a vibrant creative community for the 7,000 undergraduate students who call it home.
Demonstrated Interest at Brown
Applying to Brown as an International Student
The undergraduate college at Brown University is an innovative program with an old-world vibe. As one of the 7,600 undergraduate students at Brown (and 11,000 students overall) you get all the romanticism of a New England college, but with greater freedom and more opportunities for exploration than most comparable colleges provide. A member of the vaunted Ivy League, it’s the only member of the most exclusive club of colleges in the world that has a fully open curriculum. Brown is a liberal arts school but without most of the strictures of liberal arts schools. Outside of your major, you aren’t forced to take anything. Instead, you get to follow your passions.
What to Do if You've Been Waitlisted by Brown 2024
How to Get into Brown University
Brown University is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States… It is actually older than the US. It was founded in 1764. This private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, has around 7k undergrads and is internationally renowned. It feels kind of silly to introduce Brown. Most students applying to Brown have been dreaming about going there for years. We talk to students every year who have wanted to go to Brown since elementary school.
Rejected Early Decision from Brown 2023
Getting a rejection from your Early Decision school can be crushing. You’ve worked very hard. You’ve not only put in the sweat equity, but you’ve invested emotionally and envisioned yourself at a particular school, otherwise, you wouldn’t have applied to a binding opportunity. We understand it’s a tough blow. But we also want you to keep in mind that college admissions are incredibly competitive. The acceptance rate for Brown is just 5%. So, the fact that you didn’t get into Brown ED does not mean you should rule out all of the other Ivies or other similarly competitive schools. We like to have our students consider it to be a minor setback, as opposed to a failure. Here are some steps you can take to help you get back on the horse after a setback:
Deferred by Brown — Now What? (2023-24)
If you’ve been deferred by Brown you’re not alone — but you’re also not out of luck. Brown doesn’t defer applicants on a whim. They only defer students who are “well-qualified for study a Brown.” But if that’s the case, why were you deferred? Well, as annoying as it is you were because there are too many qualified students applying for only a few spots.
How to Write the Brown University Supplement 2023-2024
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is a member of the vaulted Ivy League and has the most flexible curriculum and creativity-centric program of all of the Ivy League schools. The university challenges students to learn and act collaboratively in a way that is interdisciplinary. At the core of this is the Open Curriculum, which allows students to go deep on topics they are passionate about while exploring broadly without strict core or distribution requirements. The city of Providence nurtures this ethos. With nearly 200,000 people and nestled on the coastline, it is brimming with world-class creative and academic minds — and the seafood is also fantastic. Brown is extremely selective. They recently received 50,649 applications for the undergraduate college and admitted 2,560 for a mere 5% acceptance rate.
Brown Extracurricular Activities
You have a 4.3 and 1590 on the SAT. You might be asking yourself, can I get into Brown? We hear this question all the time and the answer is… maybe? Having great grades and scores is only the first step for elite colleges like Brown. You need more than that. One of the most important things you will need is great extracurriculars
Brown Legacy Strategy
Brown is kind of always having a moment. It's gotten even more popular than some of the other Ivies recently. In turn, this has driven down its already competitive acceptance rate. Right now, its acceptance rate sits at about 5%. It's harder than ever to get into Brown, but many alumni parents talk like their students will 100% get in because they are “legacies.” This always makes us a bit, to use an SAT word, ~trepidacious~. Legacy admissions are complex, secretive by design, and not the lock that many parents believe they are. So today we want to talk about what legacy admissions actually look like at Brown and what legacies can do as candidates to help stack their decks.
What to do if You're Waitlisted by Brown 2023
Brown is the Ivy League school preferred by creative, humanities-minded students — or STEM students with a humanities approach — who want to be among the best of the best in a flexible setting. Rooted in Providence, Rhode Island, Brown is known for having the most open curriculum (i.e., the fewest required classes) in the Ivy League, allowing for students to focus in on their passions. Brown is also known for offering an intimate education. They have a student-to-faculty ratio of just 6:1, and 69% of undergraduate classes have fewer than 20 students.
Transferring to Brown 2023
Brown says that the transfers they admit “are people who are unwilling to settle.” We like that characterization. If you are going to try to transfer into the Ivy League, you need to have the gumption to believe you deserve to be at one of the best schools in the country — and the essays, grades, scores, and extracurriculars to back it up.
Brown Deferral Rate
In 2021, Brown announced its lowest acceptance rate on record for the fourth year in a row. While it’s the overall acceptance rate they’re pointing to, the statistics for early applicants were even tougher. Brown rejected more early applicants — 60% of them — and only deferred 25%. That was a 5% drop from the 2020 deferral rate. It’s likely that the 2022 statistics will only continue the trend with even lower early acceptance and deferral rates, and higher rejection rates.
Brown University Legacy Guide
Most universities like to keep a couple of secrets. One of the most heavily guarded secrets is the truth about legacy admissions. Some top schools, like Brown, barely publish anything about legacies. We love getting to the bottom of tough questions, especially ones important to our clients. We talk to insiders, sift through data, and watch trends closely to get as much information as we can to help our students. We have been doing a series about legacy admission at top schools. We get a lot of questions about Brown (mostly because they don't make a lot of info readily avaible.) With this in mind, we wanted to answer some of the most common questions we get from parents about Brown.
Most Unique Programs at Brown University
Brown has a totally different vibe and feeling from the other Ivy League schools, and it has a huge emphasis on creativity, discovery, and intellectual curiosity. Not to say other Ivies aren’t intellectually curious, but Brown takes it to a whoooole other level. This means when you’re applying, you’re going to need to get super duper specific. It’s not enough to say you like math. What do you like about math? What kind of math? How does your interest in math tie into other programs at Brown? How will going to Brown make you the math all-star you were meant to be???
Top 5 tips for the Brown University Interview
If you have been following our blog, you might have picked up on a series that we have been doing where we share our top tips for Ivy League school interviews. We wanted to include Brown, but this one has to be a little different. The reason? Brown is moving away from alumni interviews and is replacing them with videos.