What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$0 to $44,937 a year, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $87,648 a year. Average need-based aid package: $73,841.Aid and debt
47.5%
receive need-based grants
$36,263
average debt at graduation
26
students got merit aid
about 0% of undergraduates
$20,886
average merit award
Getting In
Admit rates
6.3%
admitted overall
17.9%
admitted Early Decision
4.8%
admitted Regular Decision
Early Decision
Early Decision applicants were admitted at more than 4x the Regular Decision rate, and Early Decision is binding: you commit to attend if admitted.
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Some of that gap reflects who applies early (recruited athletes, legacy applicants and highly committed students concentrate in that pool), so it isn't proof that applying early would raise any one student's own odds.
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1470–1550 · 77% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 33–35 · 28% of the class submitted
93% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- Class rank
- GPA
- SAT/ACT scores
- Personal essay
- Recommendations
- Special talent
- Character
- Important
- Extracurriculars
- Considered
- First-gen status
- Legacy status
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Not considered
- Demonstrated interest
What this means for you
Brown rates course rigor, your essay, and your recommendations as Very Important, and your activities as Important.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. Choose recommenders who can be specific about you, not just confirm your transcript. And depth and leadership in a few activities matter more than a long list.
Brown doesn't consider demonstrated interest in admissions at all — visits and follow-up emails won't move the needle here.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Brown just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Brown essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
66.4% of Brown classes have fewer than 20 students.
66.4%
under 20 students
20.6%
20 to 49
13%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Brown CDS 2025–26, I-3.
8:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
81.8%
first-years from out of state
75%
live on campus
3%
of men in fraternities
3%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White28.2%
- Asian22.1%
- Hispanic10.7%
- Unknown / other10.6%
- Multiracial7.3%
- Black7.2%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Brown CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
74.8% of Brown students graduate in 4 years.
74.8%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
95.6%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
98.8%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
92.3% finish in 6 years, against 95.6% of all students.
A 3.3-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Providence.
Providence is Rhode Island's capital and, at just under 191,000 people, New England's third-largest city — compact enough to cover mostly on foot.
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Brown's campus sits in College Hill, a walkable historic neighborhood it shares with RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), a short walk from Federal Hill's Italian restaurant district downtown. It's a real small city with its own identity rather than a satellite of Boston, though Boston is close enough (about an hour by car) to be a regular day trip.
The City
Mid-size city
Providence, RI
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
John Hay
Private secretary to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, later served as U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.
Class of 1858
Janet Yellen
First woman to chair the Federal Reserve (2014–2018) and first woman to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary (2021–2025); graduated summa cum laude in economics.
Class of 1967
Dara Khosrowshahi
CEO of Uber since 2017, after leading Expedia for over a decade; graduated in electrical engineering.
Class of 1991
Emma Watson
Actress best known for playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, graduated in English literature.
Class of 2014
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
Campus Dance
Traces back to 1856 senior 'Class Day' celebrations on the Green; dancing became the central feature by 1886. Now held during Commencement/Reunion Weekend, it draws thousands of alumni across generations, capped by the midnight Senior Sing on the steps of Sayles Hall.
Spring Weekend
A campus-wide weekend of concerts, contests and shows each spring, founded in 1950 as the successor to the university's wartime-lapsed Junior Week and Promenade tradition, which dated back to 1898.
Josiah's
The campus snack bar is named for Josiah Stinkney Carberry, a fictional professor invented as a 1929 prank and 'known' for his made-up field of psychoceramics — the study of cracked pots — a joke the university has kept alive for nearly a century.
Weekend escapes from Providence
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Providence
Newport, RI
About 45 minutesGilded Age mansions, the Cliff Walk, and a compact, walkable sailing town on Narragansett Bay.
Cape Cod, MA
About 1 hour 15 minutesBeaches and classic New England summer towns.
Boston
About 1 hourA bigger city for the weekend, straight up I-95.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Rhode Island T.F. Green International (PVD)
About 15 minutes from campus
For international flights: Boston Logan International (BOS) — about 1 hour by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Providence Bruins AHL
- Rhode Island FC USL Championship
- Boston Red Sox MLBAbout 1 hour away
- Boston Celtics NBAAbout 1 hour away
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Providence's own economy is modest, so Boston — about an hour north — is the real internship market for finance, consulting and tech, while Brown's own teaching hospitals anchor a local health care and biotech presence.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Rhode Island Hospital
- Brown University Health
- CVS Health
- Citizens Financial Group
- Bank of America
Boston, about 1 hour north by road
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Brown admits 6.3% of applicants overall and 17.9% through early decision, and requires the SAT or ACT — a score is part of the application here, not an option. Its defining structure is the Open Curriculum, adopted in 1969: there are no distribution or core requirements outside a student's concentration (major), just 30 courses and a completed concentration to graduate, and any course can be taken Satisfactory/No Credit instead of a letter grade — an S carries no GPA effect, an NC doesn't appear on the transcript at all. That freedom to explore comes with a real trade-off: only 74.8% of students graduate in four years, well behind the 95.6% who finish within six — a wider gap than most peer Ivies, plausibly a byproduct of a curriculum built around exploration rather than a fixed sequence. Financially the school is generous: 100% of demonstrated need is met, 47.5% of undergraduates receive need-based aid, and graduates who borrow leave owing $36,263 on average. Socially, Greek life is a small minority presence (3% of men, 3% of women) against 75% of undergraduates in college housing, and the surrounding campus sits in Providence's College Hill neighborhood — a walkable small city rather than a big-city grid.