S/O getting shut out of privates - do you have to declare major for Brown all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Intrigued by humanities boy who got into Brown despite DCUM predicting he wouldn’t. Do you have to declare a major when applying to Brown? My DS has strong credentials in unusual humanities area. Not necessarily what he wants to study though. Can he apply as the unusual major and then switch if he wants?

Even if students don’t declare majors, they usually give hints about what they want to study and be.

It’s idiotic beyond human understanding for unhooked, non-URM kids who are not National Merit valedictorians with national awards to hint to T50 schools that they want to be CS, business or premed-oriented biology or chemistry majors.

Those are very difficult, expensive majors for colleges to offer right now, because hiring is difficult and the infrastructure needed to support the classes is expensive. Meanwhile, every boring, money-worshipping, AI-cheating-focused, parent-pushed moron is trying to major in those subjects.

The goal for unhooked students with just OK stats is to hint to the schools that the students will be fun and cheap to educate, and that they will be great at keeping service clubs, performing arts organizations or school publications alive.

So, even at T50 schools that pretend not to care what kids will major in, it’s critical to give the impression that the applicant will first-major in the humanities or social sciences. Express an interest in business, CS or premed only if the applicant’s record is such that there’s no other way to present the applicant’s record.

You'll notice a ton of colleges are beefing up their fine art programs and buildings, because they realized that it is not sustainable for half the College to be in CS and Business. Colleges need a healthy does of liberal arts majors (Math, History, Philosophy) where the total costs are a blackboard and some faculty. Many institutions also relied on POC/Women to fail out of STEM programs and majored into the Humanities, but that tide has quickly turned.

Math is liberal arts?

Do you know what the M in STEM stands for?

DP.

Yes, math is one of the liberal arts. At universities it is almost always in the college of liberal arts, and it is also taught at every Liberal Arts College I have ever heard of.

Possibly you are confusing the term with Humanities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Intrigued by humanities boy who got into Brown despite DCUM predicting he wouldn’t. Do you have to declare a major when applying to Brown? My DS has strong credentials in unusual humanities area. Not necessarily what he wants to study though. Can he apply as the unusual major and then switch if he wants?

Even if students don’t declare majors, they usually give hints about what they want to study and be.

It’s idiotic beyond human understanding for unhooked, non-URM kids who are not National Merit valedictorians with national awards to hint to T50 schools that they want to be CS, business or premed-oriented biology or chemistry majors.

Those are very difficult, expensive majors for colleges to offer right now, because hiring is difficult and the infrastructure needed to support the classes is expensive. Meanwhile, every boring, money-worshipping, AI-cheating-focused, parent-pushed moron is trying to major in those subjects.

The goal for unhooked students with just OK stats is to hint to the schools that the students will be fun and cheap to educate, and that they will be great at keeping service clubs, performing arts organizations or school publications alive.

So, even at T50 schools that pretend not to care what kids will major in, it’s critical to give the impression that the applicant will first-major in the humanities or social sciences. Express an interest in business, CS or premed only if the applicant’s record is such that there’s no other way to present the applicant’s record.

You'll notice a ton of colleges are beefing up their fine art programs and buildings, because they realized that it is not sustainable for half the College to be in CS and Business. Colleges need a healthy does of liberal arts majors (Math, History, Philosophy) where the total costs are a blackboard and some faculty. Many institutions also relied on POC/Women to fail out of STEM programs and majored into the Humanities, but that tide has quickly turned.

Math is liberal arts?

Do you know what the M in STEM stands for?

Math is a liberal art, and I think they just mean cheap-to-run majors, which Math may just be the cheapest.

[Anonymous]

My Brown kid found this book invaluable. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Into-Brown-Successful-Applicants/dp/1672012058

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My Brown kid found this book invaluable. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Into-Brown-Successful-Applicants/dp/1672012058

Was your kid a public or private school kid ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My Brown kid found this book invaluable. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Into-Brown-Successful-Applicants/dp/1672012058

This guys name is thrown around here a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Brown looks for kids who are self-driven and aware and will thrive in the open curriculum.
They need to have evidence of the drive and their own intellectual awareness.

Brown is looking for: (1) Unusual independence; (2) Unusually self-motivated and (3) Unusual expertise in one academic field.

those looking for what brown looks for in its students. might be harder for boys to show this?

[Anonymous]

There's pure/theoretical math which is usually in the "college", and Applied Math that's usually in the Engineering schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's pure/theoretical math which is usually in the "college", and Applied Math that's usually in the Engineering schools.

Are either of them considered humanities or liberal arts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Intrigued by humanities boy who got into Brown despite DCUM predicting he wouldn’t. Do you have to declare a major when applying to Brown? My DS has strong credentials in unusual humanities area. Not necessarily what he wants to study though. Can he apply as the unusual major and then switch if he wants?

Even if students don’t declare majors, they usually give hints about what they want to study and be.

It’s idiotic beyond human understanding for unhooked, non-URM kids who are not National Merit valedictorians with national [b]awards to hint to T50 schools that they want to be CS, business or premed-oriented biology or chemistry majors.

Those are very difficult, expensive majors for colleges to offer right now, because hiring is difficult and the infrastructure needed to support the classes is expensive. Meanwhile, every boring, money-worshipping, AI-cheating-focused, parent-pushed moron is trying to major in those subjects.

The goal for unhooked students with just OK stats is to hint to the schools that the students will be fun and cheap to educate, and that they will be great at keeping service clubs, performing arts organizations or school publications alive.

So, even at T50 schools that pretend not to care what kids will major in, it’s critical to give the impression that the applicant will first-major in the humanities or social sciences. Express an interest in business, CS or premed only if the applicant’s record is such that there’s no other way to present the applicant’s record.

💯 this.
Anything arts/literary/performance is a huge win. Schools have orgs/money set aside for this and not enough interest bc all ppl list is coding clubs, Regeneron and USAMO or whatever

Even the National key awards for literature are still meaningful for humanities majors. Extra if you can get into Adroit. Commitment to the arts is the “easy” way to a top college, but also is where the colleges are investing more and more each year

NP. This is all so interesting to me. In the past couple of decades, there was the huge push for STEM and everyone was advised to excel in STEM during high school and then go into STEM fields in college. My kids were always huge humanities lovers and just kept on that path. It served them well, but most of their friends went for STEM and other parents just couldn't believe we weren't jumping on the bandwagon. Glad to see the tide is turning back.

I think it’s helped my kid. He’s got the high stats but his major is Film. He’s done 3 years of Film Study and 3 years of Creative Writing in addition to his IB/HN English. He loves history and his college app essay focused on storytelling and history.

He’s definitely a STEAM kid too - he taught himself coding and uses it to modify video game graphics. He also learned Adobe Premier Pro and Final Cut Pro for video editing. He also does basic animation and graphic design. Strong in math and science but doesn’t want to engineering.

He’s been accepted to all his EA options and waiting on Ivies/T20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's pure/theoretical math which is usually in the "college", and Applied Math that's usually in the Engineering schools.

Are either of them considered humanities or liberal arts?

Personally, I don't consider Pure Math = liberal arts/Humanities. However, the fact that it is usually housed in the college, I wonder if the Universities consider that (historically, pure math is associated with philosophy. That's why some of the top LACs have really good math programs) But again, this is my guess.

Applied Math is definitely considered Engineering, since it is usually housed in the Engr School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Intrigued by humanities boy who got into Brown despite DCUM predicting he wouldn’t. Do you have to declare a major when applying to Brown? My DS has strong credentials in unusual humanities area. Not necessarily what he wants to study though. Can he apply as the unusual major and then switch if he wants?

Yes you can do this almost everywhere if it’s in humanities/arts & sciences.

People do this all the time at Stanford.

why specifically Stanford?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Intrigued by humanities boy who got into Brown despite DCUM predicting he wouldn’t. Do you have to declare a major when applying to Brown? My DS has strong credentials in unusual humanities area. Not necessarily what he wants to study though. Can he apply as the unusual major and then switch if he wants?

Even if students don’t declare majors, they usually give hints about what they want to study and be.

It’s idiotic beyond human understanding for unhooked, non-URM kids who are not National Merit valedictorians with national awards to hint to T50 schools that they want to be CS, business or premed-oriented biology or chemistry majors.

Those are very difficult, expensive majors for colleges to offer right now, because hiring is difficult and the infrastructure needed to support the classes is expensive. Meanwhile, every boring, money-worshipping, AI-cheating-focused, parent-pushed moron is trying to major in those subjects.

The goal for unhooked students with just OK stats is to hint to the schools that the students will be fun and cheap to educate, and that they will be great at keeping service clubs, performing arts organizations or school publications alive.

So, even at T50 schools that pretend not to care what kids will major in, it’s critical to give the impression that the applicant will first-major in the humanities or social sciences. Express an interest in business, CS or premed only if the applicant’s record is such that there’s no other way to present the applicant’s record.

You'll notice a ton of colleges are beefing up their fine art programs and buildings, because they realized that it is not sustainable for half the College to be in CS and Business. Colleges need a healthy does of liberal arts majors (Math, History, Philosophy) where the total costs are a blackboard and some faculty. Many institutions also relied on POC/Women to fail out of STEM programs and majored into the Humanities, but that tide has quickly turned.

Math is liberal arts?

Do you know what the M in STEM stands for?

Yes Math is part of the traditional liberal atrs curriculum. Physical sciences (and Economics) are too. You would know that if you had paid attention in school.

[Anonymous]

I don't know what crack some ppl are smoking, but barring athletes (and then even some of the athletes), the gpas of admitted kids at our school were tippy top of the class (straight As) and scores in 75% according to SCOIR. Does every school have an anomaly once in a while, sure? The mistake is thinking that is the norm. Also, course work and activities can pretty quickly determine who is talking out of their *ss when saying they are going to be a philosophy or English lit major.

75% scores for ACT were 36 reading, 36 english, 36 science and 35 math. And, yes, they are score required now so they might drop slightly...but they are very, very high. 97% had SATS 1500-1600.
92% in top 10 of class. 99% in top quarter (and this average includes, legacy, athletes, hooks, etc). Unweighted gpa 75% 3.9.

pretty standard for the 8 ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Intrigued by humanities boy who got into Brown despite DCUM predicting he wouldn’t. Do you have to declare a major when applying to Brown? My DS has strong credentials in unusual humanities area. Not necessarily what he wants to study though. Can he apply as the unusual major and then switch if he wants?

Yes you can do this almost everywhere if it’s in humanities/arts & sciences.

People do this all the time at Stanford.

why specifically Stanford?

Bc CS at Stanford is not housed or silo’d in a separate school there. Common advice from private college counselors is never to apply to CS at Stanford since everyone can be a CS major anyway.

Look at the Stanford major #s. Apply as history, philosophy, English, other liberal arts, etc provided evidence for stated major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My Brown kid found this book invaluable. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Into-Brown-Successful-Applicants/dp/1672012058

This guys name is thrown around here a lot.

This. NO one is legitimately recommending this book by this guy advertising himself directly or through someone else.