The College in the
Venetian Gothic style to house Brown's library. Founded in 1764, the College is Brown's oldest school. About 7,200 undergraduate students are enrolled in the college, and 81 concentrations are offered. For the graduating class of 2020, the most popular concentrations were Computer Science, Economics, Biology, History, Applied Mathematics, International Relations, and Political Science. A quarter of Brown undergraduates complete more than one concentration before graduating. If the existing programs do not align with their intended curricular interests, undergraduates may design and pursue independent concentrations. Around 35 percent of undergraduates pursue graduate or professional study immediately, 60 percent within 5 years, and 80 percent within 10 years. For the Class of 2009, 56 percent of all undergraduate alumni have since earned graduate degrees. Among undergraduate alumni who go on to receive graduate degrees, the most common degrees earned are J.D. (16%), M.D. (14%), M.A. (14%), M.Sc. (14%), and Ph.D. (11%). The most common institutions from which undergraduate alumni earn graduate degrees are Brown University,
Columbia University, and
Harvard University. The highest fields of employment for undergraduate alumni ten years after graduation are education and higher education (15%), medicine (9%), business and finance (9%), law (8%), and computing and technology (7%). The two institutions partner to provide various student-life services and the two student bodies compose a synergy in the College Hill cultural scene.
Dual degree program After several years of discussion between the two institutions and several students pursuing dual degrees unofficially, Brown and RISD formally established a five-year dual degree program in 2007, with the first class matriculating in the fall of 2008. The Brown|RISD Dual Degree Program, among the most selective in the country, offered admission to 20 of the 725 applicants for the class entering in autumn 2020, for an acceptance rate of 2.7%. The program combines the complementary strengths of the two institutions, integrating studio art and design at RISD with Brown's academic offerings. Students are admitted to the dual degree program for a course lasting five years and culminating in both the Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) or Bachelor of Science (Sc.B.) degree from Brown and the Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree from RISD. Prospective students must apply to the two schools separately and be accepted by separate admissions committees. Their application must then be approved by a third Brown|RISD joint committee. , designed by
Diller Scofidio + Renfro, hosts the annual Brown/RISD Dual Degree exhibition. Admitted students spend the first year in residence at RISD completing its first-year Experimental and Foundation Studies curriculum while taking up to three Brown classes. Students spend their second year in residence at Brown, during which students take mainly Brown courses while starting on their RISD major requirements. In the third, fourth, and fifth years, students can elect to live at either school or off-campus, and course distribution is determined by the requirements of each student's unique combination of Brown concentration and RISD major. Program participants are noted for their creative and original approach to cross-disciplinary opportunities, combining, for example, industrial design with engineering, or anatomical illustration with human biology, or philosophy with sculpture, or architecture with urban studies. An annual "BRDD Exhibition" is a well-publicized and heavily attended event, drawing interest and attendees from the broader world of industry, design, the media, and the fine arts.
MADE program In 2020, the two schools announced the establishment of a new joint Master of Arts in Design Engineering program. Abbreviated as MADE, the program intends to combine RISD's programs in industrial design with Brown's programs in engineering. The program is administered through Brown's School of Engineering and RISD's Architecture and Design Division.
Theatre and playwriting Brown's theatre and playwriting programs are among the best-regarded in the country. Six Brown graduates have received the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama;
Alfred Uhry '58,
Lynn Nottage '86,
Ayad Akhtar '93,
Nilo Cruz '94,
Quiara Alegría Hudes '04, and
Jackie Sibblies Drury MFA '04. In
American Theater magazine's 2009 ranking of the most-produced American plays, Brown graduates occupied four of the top five places—Peter Nachtrieb '97, Rachel Sheinkin '89,
Sarah Ruhl '97, and
Stephen Karam '02. The undergraduate concentration encompasses programs in theatre history, performance theory, playwriting, dramaturgy, acting, directing, dance, speech, and technical production. Applications for doctoral and master's degree programs are made through the University Graduate School. Master's degrees in acting and directing are pursued in conjunction with the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program, which partners with the
Trinity Repertory Company, a local
regional theatre. In January 2025, The Brown/Trinity Rep Master of Fine Arts Programs in Acting and Directing indefinitely paused its new student admissions, effectively ending the program.
Writing programs Writing at Brown—fiction, non-fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, electronic writing, mixed media, and the undergraduate writing proficiency requirement—is catered for by various centers and degree programs, and a faculty that has long included nationally and internationally known authors. The undergraduate concentration in literary arts offers courses in fiction, poetry, screenwriting, literary hypermedia, and translation. Graduate programs include the fiction and poetry MFA writing programs in the literary arts department and the MFA playwriting program in the theatre arts and performance studies department. The non-fiction writing program is offered in the English department. Screenwriting and cinema narrativity courses are offered in the departments of literary arts and modern culture and media. The undergraduate writing proficiency requirement is supported by the Writing Center.
Author prizewinners Alumni authors take their degrees across the spectrum of degree concentrations, but a gauge of the strength of writing at Brown is the number of major national writing prizes won. To note only winners since the year 2000:
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winners
Jeffrey Eugenides '82 (2003),
Marilynne Robinson '66 (2005), and
Andrew Sean Greer '92 (2018); British
Orange Prize-winners
Marilynne Robinson '66 (2009) and
Madeline Miller '00 (2012);
Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winners
Nilo Cruz '94 (2003),
Lynn Nottage '86 (twice, 2009, 2017),
Quiara Alegría Hudes '04 (2012),
Ayad Akhtar '93 (2013), and
Jackie Sibblies Drury MFA '04 (2019);
Pulitzer Prize for Biography-winners
David Kertzer '69 (2015) and
Benjamin Moser '98 (2020);
Pulitzer Prize for Journalism-winners
James Risen '77 (2006),
Gareth Cook '91 (2005),
Tony Horwitz '80 (1995),
Usha Lee McFarling '89 (2007),
David Rohde '90 (1996),
Kathryn Schulz '96 (2016), and
Alissa J. Rubin '80 (2016);
Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction-winner
James Forman Jr. '88 (2018);
Pulitzer Prize for History-winner
Marcia Chatelain PhD '08 (2021);
Pulitzer Prize for Criticism-winner
Salamishah Tillet MAT '97 (2022); and
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry-winner
Peter Balakian PhD '80 (2016)
Computer science Brown began offering computer science courses through the departments of Economics and Applied Mathematics in 1956 when it acquired an IBM machine. Brown added an
IBM 650 in January 1958, the only one of its type between Hartford and Boston. In 1960, Brown opened its first dedicated computer building, the
Brown University Computing Laboratory. The facility, designed by
Philip Johnson, received an
IBM 7070 computer the following year. The first undergraduate Computer Science degrees were awarded in 1974. Brown granted computer sciences full Departmental status in 1979. In 2009, IBM and Brown announced the installation of a supercomputer (by teraflops standards), the most powerful in the southeastern New England region. In the 1960s,
Andries van Dam, along with
Ted Nelson and
Bob Wallace invented The
Hypertext Editing Systems,
HES and
FRESS while at Brown. Nelson coined the word
hypertext while Van Dam's students helped originate
XML,
XSLT, and related Web standards. Among the school's computer science alumni are principal architect of the
Classic Mac OS,
Andy Hertzfeld; principal architect of the
Intel 80386 and
Intel 80486 microprocessors,
John Crawford; former CEO of
Apple,
John Sculley; and digital effects programmer
Masi Oka. Other alumni include former CS department head at MIT,
John Guttag; software-defined networking pioneer
Scott Shenker;
Workday founder,
Aneel Bhusri;
MongoDB founder
Eliot Horowitz;
Figma founders
Dylan Field and Evan Wallace (the latter of whom also created
esbuild);
OpenSea founder
Devin Finzer; and
Edward D. Lazowska, professor and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Chair emeritus at the
University of Washington. Between 2012 and 2018, the number of concentrators in CS tripled. In 2017, computer science overtook economics as the school's most popular undergraduate concentration.
Applied mathematics Brown's program in
applied mathematics was established in 1941 making it the oldest such program in the United States. The division is highly ranked and regarded nationally. Among the 67 recipients of the
Timoshenko Medal, 22 have been affiliated with Brown's applied mathematics division as faculty, researchers, or students.
The Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World Established in 2004, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World is Brown's interdisciplinary research center for archeology and ancient studies. The institute pursues fieldwork, excavations, regional surveys, and academic study of the archaeology and art of the ancient Mediterranean, Egypt, and Western Asia from the
Levant to the
Caucasus. The institute has a very active fieldwork profile, with faculty-led excavations and regional surveys presently in
Petra (Jordan),
Abydos (Egypt), Turkey, Sudan, Italy, Mexico, Guatemala,
Montserrat, and Providence. The Joukowsky Institute's faculty includes cross-appointments from the departments of Egyptology, Assyriology, Classics, Anthropology, and History of Art and Architecture. Faculty research and publication areas include Greek and Roman art and architecture, landscape archaeology, urban and religious architecture of the Levant, Roman provincial studies, the Aegean Bronze Age, and the archaeology of the
Caucasus. The institute offers visiting teaching appointments and postdoctoral fellowships which have, in recent years, included Near Eastern Archaeology and Art,
Classical Archaeology and Art, Islamic Archaeology and Art, and Archaeology and Media Studies.
Egyptology and Assyriology Facing the Joukowsky Institute, across the Front Green, is the Department of Egyptology and Assyriology, formed in 2006 by the merger of Brown's departments of Egyptology and History of Mathematics. It is one of only a handful of such departments in the United States. The curricular focus is on three principal areas:
Egyptology,
Assyriology, and the history of the ancient exact sciences (astronomy, astrology, and mathematics). Many courses in the department are open to all Brown undergraduates without prerequisites and include archaeology, languages, history, and Egyptian and
Mesopotamian religions, literature, and science. Students concentrating in the department choose a track of either Egyptology or Assyriology. Graduate-level study comprises three tracks to the doctoral degree: Egyptology, Assyriology, or the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity.
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown's center for the study of global Issues and public affairs, is one of the leading institutes of its type in the country. The institute occupies facilities designed by Uruguayan architect
Rafael Viñoly and Japanese architect
Toshiko Mori. The institute was initially endowed by
Thomas Watson Jr. (Class of 1937), former
Ambassador to the Soviet Union and longtime president of
IBM. Institute faculty and faculty emeritus include
Italian prime minister and
European Commission president
Romano Prodi, Brazilian president
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Chilean president
Ricardo Lagos Escobar, Mexican novelist and statesman
Carlos Fuentes, Brazilian statesman and United Nations commission head
Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Indian foreign minister and ambassador to the United States
Nirupama Rao, American diplomat and
Dayton Peace Accords author
Richard Holbrooke (Class of 1962), and
Sergei Khrushchev, editor of the papers of his father
Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the
Soviet Union. The institute's curricular interest is organized into the principal themes of development, security, and governance—with further focuses on globalization, economic uncertainty, security threats,
environmental degradation, and poverty. Six Brown undergraduate concentrations are hosted by the Watson Institute:
Development Studies, International and Public Affairs, International Relations, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Middle East Studies, Public Policy, and South Asian Studies. Graduate programs offered at the Watson Institute include the Graduate Program in Development (Ph.D.) and the Master of Public Affairs (M.P.A) Program. The institute also offers postdoctoral, professional development, and global outreach programming. In support of these programs, the institute houses various centers, including the Brazil Initiative, Brown-India Initiative, China Initiative, Middle East Studies Center, The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), and the Taubman Center for Public Policy. In recent years, the most internationally cited product of the Watson Institute has been its
Costs of War Project, first released in 2011 and continuously updated since. The project comprises a team of economists, anthropologists, political scientists, legal experts, and physicians, and seeks to calculate the economic costs, human casualties, and impact on civil liberties of the wars in
Iraq,
Afghanistan, and
Pakistan since 2001.
The School of Engineering Established in 1847, Brown's engineering program is the oldest in the Ivy League and the third oldest civilian engineering program in the country. In 1916, Brown's departments of electrical, mechanical, and civil engineering were merged into a single Division of Engineering. In 2010 the division was elevated to a School of Engineering. Engineering at Brown is especially interdisciplinary. The school is organized without the traditional departments or boundaries found at most schools and follows a model of connectivity between disciplines—including biology, medicine, physics, chemistry, computer science, the humanities, and the social sciences. The school practices an innovative clustering of faculties in which engineers team with non-engineers to bring a convergence of ideas. Student teams have launched two
CubeSats with the support of the School of Engineering. Brown Space Engineering developed
EQUiSat a 1U satellite, and another interdisciplinary team developed
SBUDNIC a 3U satellite.
IE Brown Executive MBA Dual Degree Program Since 2009, Brown has developed an Executive MBA program in conjunction with one of the leading Business Schools in Europe,
IE Business School in Madrid. This relationship has since strengthened resulting in both institutions offering a dual degree program. In this partnership, Brown provides its traditional coursework while IE provides most of the business-related subjects making a differentiated alternative program to other Ivy League's EMBAs. The cohort typically consists of 25–30 EMBA candidates from some 20 countries. Classes are held in Providence,
Madrid,
Cape Town and Online. .
The Pembroke Center The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women was established at Brown in 1981 by
Joan Wallach Scott as an interdisciplinary research center on gender. The center is named for Pembroke College, Brown's former women's college, and is affiliated with Brown's
Sarah Doyle Women's Center. The Pembroke Center supports Brown's undergraduate concentration in
Gender and Sexuality Studies, post-doctoral research fellowships, the annual Pembroke Seminar, and other academic programs. It also manages various collections, archives, and resources, including the Elizabeth Weed Feminist Theory Papers and the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archive.
The Graduate School on the Main Green Brown introduced graduate courses in the 1870s and granted its first advanced degrees in 1888. The university established a Graduate Department in 1903 and a full Graduate School in 1927. With an enrollment of approximately 2,600 students, the school currently offers 33 and 51 master's and doctoral programs, respectively. The school additionally offers a number of fifth-year master's programs. Overall, admission to the Graduate School is most competitive, with an acceptance rate averaging at approximately 9 percent in recent years.
Carney Institute for Brain Science The Robert J. & Nancy D. Carney Institute for Brain Science is Brown's cross-departmental neuroscience
research institute. The institute's core focus areas include
brain-computer interfaces and
computational neuroscience; additional areas of focus include research into mechanisms of
cell death with the interest of developing therapies for
neurodegenerative diseases. The Carney Institute was founded by
John Donoghue in 2009 as the Brown Institute for Brain Science and renamed in 2018 in recognition of a $100 million gift. The donation, one of the largest in the university's history, established the institute as one of the best-endowed university neuroscience programs in the country.
Alpert Medical School building on Richmond StreetEstablished in 1811, Brown's Alpert Medical School is the fourth oldest medical school in the Ivy League. In January 2007, entrepreneur and philanthropist
Warren Alpert donated $100 million to the school. In recognition of the gift, the school's name was changed to the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. In 2020,
U.S. News & World Report ranked Brown's medical school the 9th most selective in the country, with an acceptance rate of 2.8%.
U.S. News ranks the school 38th for research and 35th for primary care. Brown's medical school is known especially for its eight-year
Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME), an eight-year combined baccalaureate-M.D. medical program. Inaugurated in 1984, the program is one of the most selective and renowned programs of its type in the country, offering admission to only 2% of applicants in 2021. Since 1976, the Early Identification Program (EIP) has encouraged Rhode Island residents to pursue careers in medicine by recruiting sophomores from
Providence College,
Rhode Island College, the
University of Rhode Island, and
Tougaloo College. In 2004, the school once again began to accept applications from premedical students at other colleges and universities via
AMCAS like most other medical schools. The medical school also offers M.D./PhD, M.D./
M.P.H. and M.D./
M.P.P. dual degree programs.
School of Public Health viewed from across the
Providence River Brown's School of Public Health grew out of the Alpert Medical School's Department of Community Health and was officially founded in 2013 as an independent school. The school issues undergraduate (A.B., Sc.B.), graduate (M.P.H., Sc.M., A.M.), doctoral (Ph.D.), and dual-degrees (M.P.H./M.P.A., M.D./M.P.H.).
Online programs The Brown University School of Professional Studies currently offers
blended learning Executive master's degrees in
Healthcare Leadership, Cyber Security, and Science and Technology Leadership. The master's degrees are designed to help students who have a job and life outside of academia to progress in their respective fields. The students meet in Providence every 6–7 weeks for a weekly seminar each trimester. The university has also invested in
MOOC development starting in 2013, when two courses, ''Archeology's Dirty Little Secrets
and The Fiction of Relationship
, both of which received thousands of students. However, after a year of courses, the university broke its contract with Coursera and revamped its online persona and MOOC development department. By 2017, the university released new courses on edx, two of which were The Ethics of Memory
and Artful Medicine: Art's Power to Enrich Patient Care
. In January 2018, Brown published its first "game-ified" course called Fantastic Places, Unhuman Humans: Exploring Humanity Through Literature'', which featured out-of-platform games to help learners understand materials, as well as a story-line that immerses users into a fictional world to help characters along their journey. ==Admissions and financial aid==