Duke or Brown? Engineering and history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would try to focus on the undergraduate engineering experience. Duke is a true research university while Brown has more of a pumped up liberal arts college atmosphere

More stupid. Brown is also an R1 research university, with a large compliment of graduate programs and more grad students than Duke (3000/2200).

https://graduateschool.brown.edu/about#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_School_of_Duke_University

From their websited:

Brown: 2689 graduate students + 611 medical students = 3300
Duke: They don't break it down individually, but they have 10,612 graduate and professional students.

https://www.brown.edu/about/brown-glance
https://facts.duke.edu/

Duke also has fewer undergrads (6543) compared to Brown (7125), but this difference isn't really meaningful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would try to focus on the undergraduate engineering experience. Duke is a true research university while Brown has more of a pumped up liberal arts college atmosphere

More stupid. Brown is also an R1 research university, with a large compliment of graduate programs and more grad students than Duke (3000/2200).

https://graduateschool.brown.edu/about#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_School_of_Duke_University

From their websited:

Brown: 2689 graduate students + 611 medical students = 3300
Duke: They don't break it down individually, but they have 10,612 graduate and professional students.

https://www.brown.edu/about/brown-glance
https://facts.duke.edu/

Duke also has fewer undergrads (6543) compared to Brown (7125), but this difference isn't really meaningful.

Mea Culpa on the number of grad students. Go and update wikipedia please.

Doesn't change the fact that Brown is a full on R1 university, and PP was dead wrong in their main point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Brown and Duke have very different cultures. Is your kid more preppy (Duke) or more crunchy/granola(Brown)? Dies your kid like watching sports and want a school with a lot of spirit in the traditional sense of the word (Duke)? Does your kid get really stressed about school and therefore would benefit from Brown's more lax grading policy?

Both are great schools but they are super different.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Crunchy/granola versus preppy. Which does she prefer? Both are great schools, but totally different.

You think Brown is “crunch granola”?

You have obviously never been there.

I went there. It's not Reed, but Brown will definitely more crunchy/less preppy than Duke. Also much smaller Greek scene. So it really depends what your kid wants.

Smaller greek scene yes. Plenty of preppy kids there. Maybe you don't understand what the vernacular "crunchy/granola" means. Visit UVM for a taste. Brown has plenty of urbane kids in an urban setting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Brown and Duke have very different cultures. Is your kid more preppy (Duke) or more crunchy/granola(Brown)? Dies your kid like watching sports and want a school with a lot of spirit in the traditional sense of the word (Duke)? Does your kid get really stressed about school and therefore would benefit from Brown's more lax grading policy?

Both are great schools but they are super different.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Crunchy/granola versus preppy. Which does she prefer? Both are great schools, but totally different.

You think Brown is “crunch granola”?

You have obviously never been there.

I went there. It's not Reed, but Brown will definitely more crunchy/less preppy than Duke. Also much smaller Greek scene. So it really depends what your kid wants.

Smaller greek scene yes. Plenty of preppy kids there. Maybe you don't understand what the vernacular "crunchy/granola" means. Visit UVM for a taste. Brown has plenty of urbane kids in an urban setting.

True but OP isn't comparing Brown to UVM, OP is comparing it to Duke. It's more crunchy than Duke

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neither school known for engineering. Decide on other factors.

This -- and, don't kid yourself -- engineering is not a flexible program anywhere, not even at Brown (a Brown admissions staffer said this to my DS after he was accepted there). For a STEM kid, data science might be a more flexible option at Brown. More important, though, Brown and Duke are very different in terms of culture. I know two students who transferred from Brown to Duke in the past couple of years because they didn't feel like Brown was a friendly place. One is a preppy sorority type with family roots in the south, so not surprising, but the other is a crunchy kid who plays club ultimate frisbee. Both are much happier at Duke. (And no, I'm not a Duke parent or alum, so no dog in this fight.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Brown and Duke have very different cultures. Is your kid more preppy (Duke) or more crunchy/granola(Brown)? Dies your kid like watching sports and want a school with a lot of spirit in the traditional sense of the word (Duke)? Does your kid get really stressed about school and therefore would benefit from Brown's more lax grading policy?

Both are great schools but they are super different.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Crunchy/granola versus preppy. Which does she prefer? Both are great schools, but totally different.

You think Brown is “crunch granola”?

You have obviously never been there.

I went there. It's not Reed, but Brown will definitely more crunchy/less preppy than Duke. Also much smaller Greek scene. So it really depends what your kid wants.

Smaller greek scene yes. Plenty of preppy kids there. Maybe you don't understand what the vernacular "crunchy/granola" means. Visit UVM for a taste. Brown has plenty of urbane kids in an urban setting.

True but OP isn't comparing Brown to UVM, OP is comparing it to Duke. It's more crunchy than Duke

That's a useless comparison. Toronto, on average is warmer than Buffalo NY. Does that mean you should describe Toronto as "warm"? Especially for someone thinking of moving there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would try to focus on the undergraduate engineering experience. Duke is a true research university while Brown has more of a pumped up liberal arts college atmosphere

More stupid. Brown is also an R1 research university, with a large compliment of graduate programs and more grad students than Duke (3000/2200).

https://graduateschool.brown.edu/about#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_School_of_Duke_University

From their websited:

Brown: 2689 graduate students + 611 medical students = 3300
Duke: They don't break it down individually, but they have 10,612 graduate and professional students.

https://www.brown.edu/about/brown-glance
https://facts.duke.edu/

Duke also has fewer undergrads (6543) compared to Brown (7125), but this difference isn't really meaningful.

Mea Culpa on the number of grad students. Go and update wikipedia please.

Doesn't change the fact that Brown is a full on R1 university, and PP was dead wrong in their main point.

I never said Brown isn’t an R1, I said it is an R1 that uniquely also offers some of the benefits of a liberal arts college. Brown literally says the same thing about itself:

“Brown is distinctively known as a University-College – a major research university where undergraduate education is based in the College, and students and faculty at all levels collaborate across the College, departments and schools.”

https://www.brown.edu/academics/schools-colleges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never said Brown isn’t an R1

BS

Duke is a true research university while Brown has more of a pumped up liberal arts college atmosphere

The upside of a research university for an engineering undergrad are the opportunities to conduct high level research, which liberal arts colleges can’t match

Yeah you didn't use the term R1 - I brought that up to show you are wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would try to focus on the undergraduate engineering experience. Duke is a true research university while Brown has more of a pumped up liberal arts college atmosphere

My experience is that the latter environment is often better for undergraduates because they have top faculty teaching even lower level courses whereas the former will have grad students doing a lot of teaching. The upside of a research university for an engineering undergrad are the opportunities to conduct high level research, which liberal arts colleges can’t match

But Brown also has those opportunities. To me it’s kind of a best of both worlds. Ultimately she can’t go wrong, so once she makes her decision it will work out great

Grad students don't teach at the highest elite level schools like Duke.

This just isn’t true— my friends who went to Harvard had lots of classes taught by TAs.

I think the post you were responding was a good post (one of the only substantive sensible posts in the last few pages)

That’s because schools like Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, etc. get the very best grad students. Many of the elite undergraduate schools are loaded with graduate TAs. If Duke doesn’t have many TAs, I think it’s more of a reflection of the lack of quality in their graduate programs appeal. If I’m going to get a doctorate, wouldn’t I want to be able to teach students to help advance my career? Do you think the professors at Duke learned their craft by not teaching as grad students while they were getting their PhDs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question for OP: just wondering which other Schools your DD looked at? Brown and Duke are on the list for us to tour. DD interested in engineering/ CS but wants the option to sr least minor in a discipline outside engineering- I know that can be hard to do in a lot of schools…just curious what you found

Thanks for asking! DD was also accepted to UPenn, Cornell, and Georgia Tech for engineering among others. She visited UPenn and Georgia Tech (along with Brown) from those, but decided she liked Brown the best so committed there. Of course the surprise Duke acceptance threw a wrench into all of that.

Wait a minute. Your DD got accepted to UPenn, Cornell, and GT....and the choice now is between Brown and Duke? Seriously? Engineering, then, definitely isn't your family's focus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question for OP: just wondering which other Schools your DD looked at? Brown and Duke are on the list for us to tour. DD interested in engineering/ CS but wants the option to sr least minor in a discipline outside engineering- I know that can be hard to do in a lot of schools…just curious what you found

Thanks for asking! DD was also accepted to UPenn, Cornell, and Georgia Tech for engineering among others. She visited UPenn and Georgia Tech (along with Brown) from those, but decided she liked Brown the best so committed there. Of course the surprise Duke acceptance threw a wrench into all of that.

Wait a minute. Your DD got accepted to UPenn, Cornell, and GT....and the choice now is between Brown and Duke? Seriously? Engineering, then, definitely isn't your family's focus.

I was thinking the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Georgia Tech and Cornell are better than Brown and Duke for engineering.

Between Brown and Duke, well... it seems like you'll have a humanities major... .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Georgia Tech and Cornell are better than Brown and Duke for engineering.

Between Brown and Duke, well... it seems like you'll have a humanities major... .

She’s very interdisciplinary and has never been engineering-or-bust. She liked the well-roundedness of UPenn and Brown when she got accepted. She visited Cornell last year because a cousin is there for graduate school and she didn’t love it, still applied because the engineering is good but did not consider it much after all her acceptances came in. She is very much an engineer, but likes what Brown had to offer in terms of a well-rounded education, which is why she said no to UPenn and GT. On paper Duke is her favorite right now but she wants to visit to finalize.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Georgia Tech and Cornell are better than Brown and Duke for engineering.

Between Brown and Duke, well... it seems like you'll have a humanities major... .

She’s very interdisciplinary and has never been engineering-or-bust. She liked the well-roundedness of UPenn and Brown when she got accepted. She visited Cornell last year because a cousin is there for graduate school and she didn’t love it, still applied because the engineering is good but did not consider it much after all her acceptances came in. She is very much an engineer, but likes what Brown had to offer in terms of a well-rounded education, which is why she said no to UPenn and GT. On paper Duke is her favorite right now but she wants to visit to finalize.

+1 makes sense. Not sure why people on here are acting like Brown or Duke wouldn't provide a great engineering background for those who take advantage of what they offer. Doing a quick Google search shows Brown has some some engineering alumni like Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber) and Aneel Bhusri (CEO and Founder of Workday), while Duke has alumni like David Taylor (Executive Chairman of Proctor & Gamble) and Howie Liu (CEO and Founder of Airtable).

[Anonymous]

To be clear - if you do an ABET accredited engineering program, there will be lots of requirements (calculus, physics, chem, etc.) that are pretty much standard across engineering programs, that take up most of the first two years of college. Add in courses for the engineering major, and there isn't a lot of room left for courses outside engineering, math and science. So - to my mind - you do engineering or you do well rounded (courses in-depth across history, English, psychology, etc.), but hard to do both in 4 years. Dartmouth lets you add a 5th year to their engineering program; only program I know of like that.

My daughter at Cornell Engineering is required to take 6 liberal arts courses. As a CS major, also take 3 specialization / application area courses (for example, linguistics). Could debate whether 9 courses yields well rounded.