This is the official discussion thread for Brandeis Class of 2030 RD applicants. Ask your questions and connect with fellow applicants.
Is Brandeis RD confirmed for today, 2/26?
It would appear they are releasing RD decisions in waves. Some applicants received notice yesterday that their decision would be released today, and others did not. The wording (“The Brandeis University Admissions Committee has completed our review of many Regular Decision candidates …”) also suggests that not all applications have been completely reviewed.
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I saw posts of those accepted in the first RD wave share a lot of merit scholarships so maybe they were considered the top applicants . . . . .
DD accepted neuroscience, $42 K/yr scholarship. Excited but still pricey. 4.0, 4.8, 1540, mid ECs. Would love to hear more about the school.
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Congrats, @Meemom! Were all decisions released this week? Based on the IG post I think decisions were released Tuesday, correct?
Thank you! It was the day they were released - I can’t remember exactly.
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Any parent of an accepted student can join the (unofficial) Brandeis University Parents Community on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/BrandeisUniversityParentsCommunity). Very active group of over 2000 parents who would be happy to answer your questions and share their students’ experiences.
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People are still reporting on the Brandeis subreddit that as of today (March 7), they have not received their decision.
I did join, and scrolled, now kind of wish I hadn’t. I am on another parent fb group for my son, so I know there can be many complaints, but the deeper discussions about post-grad job prospects and university career support were discouraging. Other prospective parents: be forwarned.
I am not going to make excuses or sugar coat because my student was definitely NOT served well by the Brandeis Hiatt Career Center, and the most positive thing I have seen is that they provided helpful feedback on a resume (which was not my student’s experience). That being said, I am also on the Parents FB group for large university with a powerhouse career center, and I have seen a lot of posts along the lines, “My student graduated in May with [insert degree that one would expect to yield a good job], submitted 500 applications, and they don’t have a job yet. Anyone else’s student in the same boat?” And usually a number of parents chime in with similar stories. It is a brutal job market for graduates. On the positive side, plenty of Brandeis parents have reported that - completely apart from any help from the career center - their students have put in a lot of effort and landed excellent jobs and internships (this was true for my student). Brandeis produces students who have very unique profiles (multiple majors/minors, significant non-academic passions, study abroad), and I think that can help them to stand out in a sea of resumes that otherwise look very similar. Brandeis can be a good fit for a very specific type of student, but you have to know going in that your student will be totally on their own for getting internships, research positions, and/or jobs (no matter what the marketing materials for Class of 2030 are saying).
I’d love to hear more about the “specific type of student.” A very helpful undergraduate reached out and shared their experience, so I am bit more informed from the student side. It seems like an excellent school and fit for my daughter, although enrolling at a time of profound change in the curriculum concerns me (not the direction, but the process itself).
I hope you don’t mind a long answer …
Types of students I think would find Brandeis would be a good fit for:
Students who are very intrinsically academically inclined, and NOT competitive. Students who want to learn. Students who are intellectually curious.
Students who have a variety of academic interests. Double major/double minor or triple major is not uncommon due to the comparatively low GE requirements. Also, there are virtually no bars to taking courses in departments you are not majoring in (except some studio art and HSSP).
Students who have significant non-academic passions that they want to be able to pursue. It seems that most students have something they are passionate about outside of their intellectual interests. My sense is that at other schools, high-level athletics is for athletes, high-level music is for music majors, etc. At Brandeis pretty much anyone can pursue anything. There are no barriers to club entry. And it’s worth noting that students seem to be pursuing activities because they want to, not to try to pad their resume or make future-oriented connections.
Students who are kind and accepting and want to help others, and who would like to be surrounded by students with a similar disposition. What originally put Brandeis on our radar was an off-hand comment by a parent in a random conversation to the effect of, “The students we met were the kindest students I have ever interacted with.” And we found that to be 100% true. Not every student is a gem, but the culture is kindness and a desire to help others. The largest group on campus is the group that coordinates local service opportunities (the Waltham group).
Students who find the lack of a spectator sports culture and the lack of an obvious Greek/party culture to be a positive feature. Students who would rather bond over shared interests than a shared keg. Many parents have said that the key to finding friends is to join a club that sounds interesting.
It’s also a good place for students who aren’t quite sure what they want to do, as changing majors is just a matter of filling out a form.
Two years ago, I also would have included “Students who highly value the opportunity to interact with R1 professors who actually enjoy interacting with undergrads.” This was very important to my student, and his Brandeis experience was almost everything he could have hoped for along these lines. However, it has come to my attention that at least two departments (there may be others) are moving away from this model, even though it is still a major talking point for the admissions team. If you want more details, see one of the comments at https://www.reddit.com/r/brandeis/comments/1rojwy6/brandeis_decline/.
I’d also like to take a moment to also connect the above with some of the common perceptions of Brandeis.
1. It’s really competitive. This misconception is based on the outside observation that students study a lot. I know this could be really hard to believe for some people, but the students study a lot because they actually want to learn the material, and often want to learn even more than is required for the course.
2. It’s boring. This misconception is based on the worldview that “not boring” equals football games and parties (and other ways to get drunk). For the most part, Brandeis students are ridiculously busy because, in addition to investing appropriate time learning course material (see above), they are also typically investing many hours each week pursuing their non-academic passions. What may be the most mind-blowing in this respect is that for many Brandeis students, a good social time is hanging out playing board games.
3. Students are “quirky,” with strong negative connotations. I believe this perception is a direct result of the fact that the culture is kind and accepting. Students do not have to conform to certain social norms to be accepted into the social fabric, and so students are free to participate in the community just as who they naturally are, which may mean appearing quirky. There are plenty of Brandeis students who would fit right in at Harvard, but the great thing is that most of those students are very accepting of their peers who have always struggled to fit in. So yes, I would say that Brandeis probably has a higher percentage of “quirky” students, or maybe it is just the case that the quirky students have more freedom to be visible and engaged at Brandeis. Either way, I think a lot of students (and parents) would view that as a feature, not a flaw.
I would be curious to know how my take on things lines up from what you heard from the student.
I hope you don’t mind another long answer, this time to a question you didn’t actually ask …
I wanted to also address the last line in your comment, because I think you are very correct to have this concern, and I want to give you more details that might help you decide how to figure that into your calculation.
The way it is being marketed, the new “Brandeis Plan” (https://www.brandeis.edu/plan/) certainly sounds like a bunch of profound changes to the curriculum and student experience. I think any student joining the Class of 2030 should be totally aware that they are essentially volunteering to be an alpha tester for all these new plans and programs, all of which seem to have come out of nowhere in the last nine months. My sense is that on May 2, 2025, they gathered a bunch of Brandeis administrators in a room and said, “Let’s brainstorm how to increase yield for Class of 2030”, and when they had finished spitballing, the person in charge said, “Great, let’s do it all.”
Given all the changes that are mentioned in the New Plan, the changes that could have the most impact on student experience would be the changes to the Core curriculum requirements. However, on March 3 we got our first official glimpse into the proposals for the “redesigned core curriculum” ( https://www.thejustice.org/article/2026/03/faculty-discusses-revisions-to-brandeis-core-and-debates-reducing-foreign-language-requirement-brandeis), and it turns out that most of the changes were basically relabelling. There are some actual changes in requirements, but, to my thinking, they are very minor and, on the whole, actually reduce constraints. (It is worth noting that the final vote on the changes has not been made public that I am aware of.) I am very glad that the bark in this case was far more than the bite.
With regard to all the other changes mentioned in the New Plan, in my opinion, there is very little that could have a negative impact on student experience relative to current students. Nearly all of the innovations for Career Development (https://www.brandeis.edu/plan/career-development.html) would fall in the category of “It will be nice if it works, but if it doesn’t, things would be no worse than they are right now”. Things like the “new academic structure” and the “second transcript” (an inconceivably useless idea) and renaming the career center will basically have no impact on student experience relative to current students.
One thing I am concerned could have a negative impact on student experience is the microcredentials option (https://www.brandeis.edu/registrar/registration/microcredentials/index.html). According to this webpage, a student wanting a microcredential will have to take two or three courses and then pass an assessment that is not part of the course. But if you look at, for example, Applied Statistical Analysis, for one of the two courses, the eleven choices include PHYS 163a: Statistical Physics and Thermodynamics, PSYC 160b: Seminar on Sex Differences, or PSYC 148a: Applied Statistical Computing in R. It is hard to imagine designing a meaningful assessment such that a student taking any one of these three courses would be appropriately prepared. I truly fear that what will happen is that the “assessment” will begin to drive instruction, and professors teaching courses that are part of the microcredential program will be told to devote some portion of their semester content to covering the material that will be on the assessment. That is really concerning. But my guess is that Brandeis professors would not tolerate being told what to teach, and if this is what it comes to, this new option will quietly disappear, or at least the assessment piece of it.
The other thing that could have a negative impact on some students’ experience is the idea that Brandeis will be *requiring* students to have “at least one internship, apprenticeship or comparable applied learning experience” (https://www.brandeis.edu/plan/career-development.html). If Brandeis is going to make this type of thing a requirement for graduation, it almost has to fall to the university to make an opportunity available to every student. However, there are plenty of students who have gone to the career center for help with securing internships, and the career center has not been able to help them one bit. So how does the university think they are now going to be able to find an internship, apprenticeship, or “comparable applied learning experience” for every student in the Class of 2030? I fear that for students who can’t arrange their own internship, etc., Brandeis’ catch-all answer might be to send them to work the counter at Chick-Fil-A, just to be able to check the box. This new requirement could also be a problem for students who would not have wanted an internship, etc. as part of their four college years; now they have to fit that in because the university says so. But for most students (who would naturally seek at least one internship or research position just because they know that is a good way forward for them), this requirement basically adds nothing and costs nothing.
I think it’s also worth noting that Brandeis didn’t make an internship, etc. a guarantee (like Fordham, see https://www.fordham.edu/academics/undergraduate-education/fordham-internship-promise/), but a requirement. There’s a huge difference on both sides. A guarantee would promise an internship, etc. to every student that wants one, but wouldn’t require an internship, etc. of students who don’t. But Brandeis made it a requirement, so students seem to be on the hook for providing for themselves a piece of the graduation requirement, and students whose trajectories or interests don’t include an internship, etc. have to do it anyways. I personally think their word choice was strategic; they want the appearance that Brandeis will make sure every student has an internship, etc. (because how could they require something they are not promising to provide?), but without actually promising an internship (likely because they know their career center is not really effective enough to make that happen).
The one thing I would strongly emphasize is that no one should choose to come to Brandeis *because* of the attractiveness of all that the New Plan claims it will provide, and especially not because of all verbal hype about career development changes (https://www.brandeis.edu/plan/career-development.html). I just don’t think they are going to be able to deliver any effective change in career development. For example, they are proposing to add a “career advisor” for every student, but if you scroll through past comments on the Facebook Parents group you will see that the general academic advising staff is viewed even more negatively than the career center. (It is important to note, however, that the UAH’s and the major academic advisors tend to be outstandingly helpful.) If the Brandeis administration can’t get knowledgeable, helpful, effective people in the roles of general academic advising staff, why should anyone think they will be able to get knowledgeable, helpful, effective people in the roles of general career advising staff?
I think the clearest evidence that Brandeis is really not up to the challenge of implementing the Career Development piece of the New Plan is the total lack of progress even in something as small as improving company representation at the Spring Career Fair. It seems that the biggest change between the disappointing career fair of spring 2025 (https://www.thejustice.org/article/2025/02/career-and-internship-failure-brandeis-career-fairs-are-falling-short) and the equally disappointing career fair of spring 2026 (https://www.thejustice.org/article/2026/03/letter-to-the-editor-noah-baumann-aaron-klein) might have been the presence of a booth for a local Chick-Fil-A looking to fill kitchen positions. If they wanted to show a new commitment to providing students with an effective career center, they could have easily started with that. But they didn’t. Are they really going to be able to flip a switch and overnight go from an incredibly ineffective career center to one that matches the expectations set by the Career Development part of the Brandeis Plan?
But overall, if it were my student, now that the proposed changes to the Core requirements have been made public and are actually minimal, I would probably not let concerns about the upcoming changes motivate a decision to go elsewhere if Brandeis really feels like clearly the best fit and your student can clearly articulate why.
Thank you so much. This truly does describe my daughter. Can you share the department, in addition to math, that is using more lecturers?
Thank you very much for this reply as well. Change can be exciting, and hard.
In the last 6 semesters, CS has used lecturers for 16 out of 24 sections of the two lowest level classes (10a - Python and 12b - Java). The Java class (which is the initial course for majors) has been taught only by lecturers for the last 3 semesters. Lecturers have also been teaching a few of the higher-level CS electives. I haven’t tried to analyze any other departments, so I really have no idea if these two departments are outliers, or if this is a general trend.
Frankly, the school and fit sound amazing and the only thing holding us back would be finances. We will await other decisions and look at her options.
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Any idea when next wave of RD decisions will be released?
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