Elizabethtown College

Elizabethtown College (visited 11/18/14)

We asked the student panelists to complete the sentence, “I’d like to thank E-town for ___.” Here’s what they said:

• letting me excel on a personal level.
• preparing me for my next step in life.
• allowing me to discover myself and my talents.
• providing me with a 2^nd home.
• encouraging me not to give up.

The admissions office sent us on tour with only 2 counselors per guide; we asked lots of questions and get a good sense of the students who thrive here. 87% of students live on this attractive, residential campus. Dorms have free cable hook ups, and the school recently refurbished all dorm lounges and study spaces. There are several living options, including special interest floors such as Friends of Asia (“We cook food, watch movies, whatever”) or the new 4-person apartments. The dining hall gets good reviews and is “known for its carrot cake.” Our tour guide’s favorite meal is the cheese-steak wrap.

People need to want to engage here or they won’t last, but it’s also “easy to get over-engaged,” said one of the students. Freshman-to-sophomore year retention is solid at 82%. Some students transfer out because of money; others because they didn’t know enough about the college before they came. “You have to know it’s small. It can be overwhelming when you can’t be anonymous,” said a singer from the a cappella group I spoke with after dinner.

People are simply nice here. I spoke to several students who were not part of the formal admissions presentation. They were gracious with their time and genuinely excited to be telling me about their experiences. Two different students – one tour guide and another from the a cappella group – said, “People hold doors for each other.”

Performing Arts are huge. Sock and Buskin is the theatrical group; Emotion, the coed Dance Group, is the largest club on campus with 150 participants. The Band Director is “the world’s nicest person,” said my tour guide who plays saxophone in the 80-member, non-audition concert band. There are 2 other groups that require auditions, 3 choirs (2 requiring auditions), and 3 a cappella groups (including the “All male, All Attractive” group that performed at dinner). All the a cappella groups were invited to the International Championship of A Cappella last year! Non-music majors can get music scholarships as long as they continue to participate in groups.

All students complete at least 2 unique Signature Learning Experiences (capstones, internships, study abroad, or research). Advisors help pair students with significant, meaningful experiences. They want outcomes to equate to real-world success. Alumni report a great deal confidence in the workplace because of these. The school does a survey every year, and they report on every student, unlike a lot of other schools.

In order to help guarantee success, they developed Momentum, a program for First Gen (40% of the population), students with financial need, and traditionally underrepresented students. This 1-week summer program helps them get accustomed to campus, teach study skills, etc. The retention of these students is as strong or stronger than the other students on campus.

Academics are generally strong here. “You’re going to work!” The president teaches a class and was asked if he could cut back on the homework: “The other professors are killing us.” The Education program got rave reviews, especially since they start working in classrooms during freshman year. The OT program. is also well regarded. Students really appreciate that academics are intertwined: “nothing is hanging out there by itself. We can see how it works together.” Favorite classes include:

• Geophysics
• A class on the Amish (“We went to dinner at a family’s house and attended a church service. I never would have expected to do this when I came in here”)
• Humor, Irony, and Despair in Modern Literature
• FYS on Myths and Reality of Boyhood (A psych class)
• Medieval Magic Then and Now
• Basic Acting

The smallest classes ranged from German (“The 2 of us met in the professor’s office”) to English (16). Largest classes included General Bio (32), American National Government (35), and Anatomy Lecture (40) – which included work in the Cadaver Lab!

The school motto, “Education for Service,” leads to deep community involvement. Moving Forward Together is a mentoring group that works with at-risk high school students. One of the big traditions is Into the Streets, a massive service day in October. Town-gown relations are strong. “Lucky Ducks is a favorite restaurant.” Amtrak is also in walking distance making travel easy.

On campus activities are strong. Popular traditions include Mr. E-Town and Thanksgiving Dinner/Tree Lighting. Soccer is the most well-attended sport (men’s and women’s). The gym is small but conveniently located in the Student Center basement. One area our tour guide sees for improvement at E-Town would be an expansion of the gym.

The Admission Office wants to “enroll graduates” so they look for the “Trinity of Fit”: Academic Match, Co-curricular Fit (what will they contribute?), and Social Match (work ethic, integrity, persistence, level of interest). Rolling Admissions begins September; a couple majors have hard deadlines (OT: 12/15 deadline and requires an interview; Music Majors must apply early enough to schedule the required audition). Students in the top 10% or have a 3.5/4.0 (if their school doesn’t rank) don’t have to submit test scores unless they apply to a program which requires them. In this case, scores will only be used for entrance into the program, not for admission to the college.

Students are assigned a Financial Aid Counselor who stays with the student for all 4 years. E-town recently increased their financial aid by $3.1 million (including 8 full-tuition scholarships through the Stamps Foundation). “We want to spread the good news out a little bit: scholarship letters go out 2-3 weeks after acceptance.” Loan indebtedness averages $27,000 at graduation.

© 2014

Brown University

Brown University (visited 3/21/14 and 4/30/19 — scroll to the bottom for additional notes from the most recent visit)

Student-made sculpture on campus

Although we arrived late for the info session, we arrived in time to hear the Director of Admissions say that Brown looks for students with “Conspicuous academic success, an unusual level of independence in and out of school, and who are unusually devoted to scholarly life. The key word there is ‘unusual’ – if we could define it, it wouldn’t be unusual anymore.”

Brown has the most flexible curriculum of the Ivies. There are no required classes, so people want to be in the classes they register for. Our tour guide said, “people are very in control of their lives here.” One of her favorite classes was her FYS – Italian Studies; she loved the integration, and she really got to work on her writing. Another guide told me that she choose Brown because “I wanted a place to balance me out. Everyone here has a passion.” One thing they would both change is the advising. “There’s almost too much. Everyone has different opinions and they think they’re right!” In addition to an academic advisor, there are resident advisors and meiklejohns (a peer advisor).

When the university was founded in 1764, it was criticized for being so large – with 7 students! Now, even with 6,500 undergrads, they manage to keep academic classes relatively small. They have one 500-seat lecture hall, but only 4% of classes have more than 100 students; 70% have 20 or fewer students.

Campus is relatively spacious but walkable. Simmons Quad (complete with a statue of Marcus Aurelius) is the physical center of campus. From there, you can walk anywhere from that point in 7 minutes (less if you hustle!). This is only one of several Greens around campus. The Quiet Green (named for obvious reasons) has plugs on the lampposts so students can use their computers outside The main gates from the road open twice a year – once for the new freshmen to come through (“People applaud; it’s kind of a cool way to be welcomed to campus!”) and again for seniors to leave at graduation. They aren’t supposed to go through the gates except those two times “or they won’t graduate or get married.” This quad also is home to the College Bell which rings when Brown wins a football game or a major world event happens – “both equally rare,” said the tour guide.

Greek Quad

Behind the Quiet Quad is the Main Quad; this looks more like a traditional college quad and hosts many of the college events including the much-anticipated yearly Spring Fling. They also have a “Greek Quad” with the Greek dorms. The school charter says that only half of the house can be Greek. The rest of the rooms have to be reserved for Independents. About 10% of the student body is affiliated.

Although housing is guaranteed all four years, 70% of seniors choose to live off campus. “Some off-campus housing is closer to academic buildings than the dorms are,” said one of the students. Juniors can move off, but it’s harder to do this so most wait until senior year – and they aren’t unhappy on campus. Our tour guide said, “I don’t leave campus much. There’s too much going on here.” Although it’s difficult to have cars (parking in Providence is limited), it’s easy to get around town, take day trips, or travel to get home. The bus and the train stations are a 10-15 minute walk from campus. A bus ticket to Boston costs $10 making it an easy and cheap outing.

Pick-up Quiddich game

Sports and Arts are both big on campus. There are 37 varsity sports (gymnastics recently won championships) as well as lots of intramurals including inner-tube water polo and cornball. Brown students can cross-register for 4 classes at RISD “but that’s pretty loose. I know someone who took 8.” Not surprisingly, they have a bunch of a cappella groups (what bigger school doesn’t anymore?) including ARRRcappella (pirate acappella), Jockappella, and more. There also have 3 improv troupes, and anyone can take part in theater productions. They own the largest Hutching-Votey organ in the world, and they hold four Midnight Organ concerts on “the 4 scariest nights of the year”: Halloween, the nights before fall and spring finals, and the night before the first classes in the fall.

Hutching-Votey Organ

Not surprisingly, there are multiple libraries around campus. “The Rock” is the main library, shortened from The John D. Rockefeller Junior Library. Apparently, the Foundation was so annoyed that it was being shortened to The Rock that they wrote a letter to the Brown student body to say that they couldn’t call it The Rock; “Brown students in the ‘60s, being Brown students, told them that they were happy to stop using The Rock and would commence calling it The John. The Foundation changed their stance quickly!”

Science Library

The Science Library, voted the ugliest library several years running, is the tallest point on campus with 14 floors; “the joke is that the books get more basic as you go up” (even the tour guide admitted to this being a bad science/PH scale joke!). However, it has been used as a huge Tetris game! Brown also has 3 “sacred libraries” which don’t allow books to be checked out. One has the largest collection of tin soldiers in the country (world?), flowers from Lincoln’s funeral, and apparently 3 books bound in human skin.

Brown ranks in the top 50 most expensive schools at $58K a year. “The Good News is that we have gobs of money!” said the admissions rep. “If the family makes less than $100,000 a year, there will be no loans; less than $60,000 there are no loans or EFC.”

© 2014

Brown University (visited 4/30/19)

“We’ve driven by who the students are. They’re the best thing about Brown,” said one of the admissions reps.

The admissions committee wants to know how the kids will stand out, who will take advantage of the open curriculum, and who wants to make connections between subjects. The curriculum “makes you really figure things out,” said one of the students. People who are excited about that will thrive here. “We nerd out about what we’re studying. You don’t usually get to take academic risks in high school because there are so many things you have to do,” said another student on the panel.

Admissions is need-blind, and they now have a home for DACA/undocumented students. They also introduced the Brown Promise which removes loans from Financial Aid packages. This has made Brown a much more attractive choice. This year, their admission rate dropped to 6.6% overall with 4.6% in regular round. The Dean of Admission talked about the fraud at some of the other schools. “The work we do is of the highest integrity based on fairness. They may not like the outcome, but it’s fair. It’s as holistic and contextualized as possible. The ones we admit are the ones who have earned it. We work closely with the athletic departments and have done internal audits to be confident that no one was involved.”

They dropped the writing SAT requirement and saw a 14% increase in First Gen applicants. They also saw a 21% increase in ED apps. Although they admitted about the same number as in previous years, they admitted a higher number of those who were deferred to Regular. This year, they offered applicants the option to submit a 2-minute video instead of an interview. More did this in the Regular Decision round; ED applicants went more towards interviews.

© 2019