<p>Please help, I can’t decide whether to attend Stony Brook or Brandeis and I have less than a week. The thing is that for Stony Brook i will pay 5.5k whereas Brandeis I have to pay around 10k. Also I’m a minority- asian- and I dont know how i will adjust to Brandeis but Stony Brook has soo many asians (not good either). I want to transfer if I go to Stony, might transfer if i go to Brandeis too. What should i choose?</p>
<p>I’ve never been to either school or known anyone who went there. But I know the Brandeis reputation, and Stony Brook seems an unusual comparison with it.</p>
<p>Take the PrincetonReview student rankings with a grain of salt, but they have Stony Brook this year as #3 in the country for “Least Happy Students.” The students’ overall quality of life on a 60-99 scale (think 90-99 is an A; 80-89 is a B; 70-79 is a C; 60-69 is D) is a 62. Students’ rating of academics there is a 70. The student quotes on “Campus Life” read: “Life at Stony Brook depends on whom you surround yourself with,” students tell us. While “a lot of students complain that there’s nothing to do on campus,” others counter that “the problem is that students aren’t willing to put in the effort to find those activities.” One undergrad explains, “There are many activities in campus life. However, you won’t be aware of them at all if you don’t . . . look them up. There are a lot of places where you can go play sports, and most dorms have places to play pool, Ping-Pong, or just watch TV.” The school is home to “lots of student clubs with something for everyone” and Division I intercollegiate athletic teams, but “No one goes to athletic games. It’s really depressing as a pep band member to play to a dead crowd.” Hometown Stony Brook “is basically suburban. It is not the best college town. There are a few clubs and bars in the area that some students go to on Thursday nights. However, you have to have a car to get there. . . . If I want to have fun, I generally have to go into the city [NYC]. The city is about 2 hours away by train.”</p>
<p>Brandeis has a top academic reputation and is just outside the top college town in America. In addition, the entire freshman class lives on campus and the vast majority of students remain on campus there. For me, it’d be well worth the extra cost to go there.</p>
<p>kayler, I responded to your similar question in the Brandeis forum. </p>
<p>FYI, now that you mention you are Asian and are concerned about fit, you should know that there are lots of Asians at Brandeis as well. More importantly, it’s a very welcoming, inclusive environment and very diverse. It has a strong international flavor (in fact the majority of The Brandeis International Business School is international students). </p>
<p>Not sure why you would be thinking in advance of trying to transfer from either of these schools, unless you had your heart set on a college that you didn’t get into. As I mentioned in the other forum, in terms of quality of peers, education , prestige, post-graduate placement and overall experience, I would choose Brandeis over SUNY. Brandeis is a top-tier, exciting intellectual and creative environment inside and outside the classroom. FYI, I’m a Brandeis alum. While not everyone’s cup of tea, it was my first choice over similarly-sized schools such as Tufts and Colgate when I went there and I had friends at Brandeis that chose it over Cornell, Penn and other larger (and more impersonal) schools as well. You might want to clarify what you’re planning on studying and your extracuricular interests so that folks can be more specific in addressing your concerns.</p>
<p>No question that Brandeis is worth the extra … 20,000 in the long run.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies, it definitely helps in my decision =)</p>
<p>brandeis is overrated</p>
<p>BrownBear1, why do you say that? </p>
<p>Kayler, what do you want to major in and what activities do you want to do? </p>
<p>Since I don’t know your academic interest, then I’ll focus on social life. The social life at Brandeis is 20x better than at SUNY Stony Brook. (I know because I live on Long Island.) Stony Brook is a suitcase school. Many students leave for the weekend. You are too far from NYC to enjoy it whereas Brandeis is only 9 miles west of Boston. Yes, Brandeis has a lot of Jewish students, but 20% of the student population identify as a minority. I would recommend checking out the Brandeis Asian American Student Association. ([BAASA</a> : Brandeis Asian American Student Association](<a href=“http://people.brandeis.edu/~baasa/history.html]BAASA”>http://people.brandeis.edu/~baasa/history.html)) or any other cultural club that interests you listed here [Clubs</a> and Organizations | The Intercultural Center | Brandeis University](<a href=“http://www.brandeis.edu/studentaffairs/icc/clubs.html]Clubs”>http://www.brandeis.edu/studentaffairs/icc/clubs.html) E-mail club leaders to find out about their Brandeis experience. </p>
<p>If you were paying full tuition to Brandeis, then maybe I could see considering SUNY Stony Brook but since you have such a good package at Brandeis, I think it should be an easy decision. As a New Yorker, I support the SUNYs, but Brandeis is just in an entirely different league.</p>
<p>go to brandeis. i don’t think you’d regret it.</p>
<p>brandeis has no diversity and is overrated</p>
<p>It would seem that if you were admitted into those 2 colleges that you would have gotten into some other good ones had you applied.
I would have to say that after living all over the country, Brandeis would probably give you a little more reputation behind your degree.
Plus, you are so close to so many top universities if you really wanted to transfer.</p>
<p>I would go to Stony Brook.</p>
<p>Yeesh… sulsk, just because you live on Long Island doesn’t mean you’re an expert on Stony Brook. You could hardly be more wrong if you tried. Have you ever even been to the Stony Brook campus? Or are you just another Long Island kid who thinks they know what it’s like because their brother’s friend’s ex-girlfriend’s brother went to SBU 10 years ago and you heard he didn’t like it?</p>
<p>kayler, Stony Brook is not a suitcase school. At all. Over 90% of freshmen live on campus, and studies of students’ ID card usage show over 80% of resident students are on campus on an average weekend. That means that the average number of people on Stony Brook’s campus on the weekends (not even counting students like me who live off campus, but spend most weekends hanging out there) is more than double Brandeis’s entire student body. Hardly a negative in Stony Brook’s column.</p>
<p>As far as student life in general, the best way I can think of to sum things up is that there really is something for everyone at Stony Brook, and if you put yourself out there it’s completely impossible to get bored. There are always events going on, always parties to go to, always new people to meet and new things to try. The student body is exceptionally diverse by nearly any measure you can come up with–racially, ethnically, religiously, socio-economically, and intellectually. As I wrote in another thread for someone making a similar decision: If you like big parties, we have those. If you like hanging out with your friends and talking about the nature of consciousness until 4am, you’ll find plenty of people to do that with. If you like staging Improv Everywhere style awesomeness, you’ll be in good company. If music or theater or art is your life, we’ve got your people (and your practice rooms/performance spaces/darkrooms!). If you want to learn archery, ballroom dancing, capoeira, belly dance, crew, rugby, or taiko, if you want to Take Back the Night, fight for queer rights, or work on a political campaign, if you want to write a play in 24 hours, or race a boat you built out of cardboard and duct tape–we have clubs and events for all of those. If you want to paint yourself red and freeze your butt off at the football game, you won’t be alone, and if you’d rather stay in and talk about how awesome bacterial genetics is, you won’t be alone either. There are even people who’re up for all of the above. I’ve gotten to know an amazing number of brilliant, interesting and fun people at Stony Brook, and I wouldn’t trade my experience here for anything.</p>
<p>Comparatively, Brandeis is very lacking on the diversity and variety front. It’s also a much smaller school, which can be a bad thing or a good thing depending on what kind of experience you’re looking for. In terms of research opportunities in the natural and social sciences, Stony Brook wins hands down. In terms of course selection, you’re bound to have a lot more options at Stony Brook unless your major academic interests are Judaic Studies, Hebrew, and the Middle East.</p>
<p>It would be easier to help with your decision-making process if you gave us a clearer idea of what your concerns were. What are you thinking about studying? What hobbies and ECs are important to you? What are the main things you’re looking to get out of college?</p>
<p>Finally, it’s an incredibly bad idea to start off somewhere with the intent of transferring. Coming in with that mindset you’re bound to shortchange wherever you are, and your experience will definitely be poorer for it.</p>
<p>Pseudonym misrepresents the student and course diversity at Brandeis. You can certainly find your niche at a large, and, in my opinion, impersonal state university like Stonybrook (22,000 students), whether or not it’s a commuter school. But it is, as Sulsk suggests, in a different league from the education offered at Brandeis. In terms of quality of peers, education , prestige, post-graduate placement and overall experience, Brandeis is a top-tier, exciting intellectual and creative environment inside and outside the classroom. Its reputation reflects that, and, in my opinion, is underated. While Stony Brook undoubtedly is much better than its lesser reputation, you need to make the best choice for yourself. We are all in agreement, however, that it’s a bad idea to begin your college career with the idea of transferring.</p>
<p>Brandeis offers a better liberal arts education (which i find overrated). Stony Brook has an edge in the hard majors (sciences). Brandeis lacks in diversity in an extreme way. It’s predominatley a jewish school such as tufts. It’s in waltham so you would have to take a train or bus to boston. Personally i feel that Brandeis is really overrated. Stony Brook is a good choice and great value. Brandeis is very expensive and not worth it.</p>
<p>“It’s predominatley (sic) a jewish school such as Tufts.”</p>
<p>First, of course, BrownBear1 ignores the diversity that sulsk discusses above and the fact that Brandeis is less than 50% Jewish. Moreover, if BrownBear1 has a problem with significant Jewish populations in college, then that would rule out not only Tufts and Brandeis but also Penn, NYU, Harvard and many more. I trust this is not anti-semitism on BrownBear’s part.</p>
<p>The fact that Brandeis was founded by the Jewish community as a completely non-sectarian school and that the hallmark of its founding was non-discrimination makes these comments even more distastful. Perhaps it has been forgotten that our finest colleges were founded originally by religious groups. To paraphrase another poster on this site, Harvard and Yale were Puritan institutions, Brown was Baptist, Princeton was Presbyterian, Columbia–Anglican, Duke is Methodist, etc. etc. Brandeis is no different. It is not a religious institution (in contrast to many Catholic and Fundamentalist colleges and universities). It simply was and still is funded primarily by the Jewish community–originally to counter the quota system which systematically limited Jewish enrollment at other top schools. The incredible thing is how fast Brandeis has risen to the top ranks of academia. True, it is not yet equal to Harvard or Yale in most fields—and it is certainly far less rich than those institutions–but considering it is only 60 years old–it has done incredibly well.</p>
<p>B77,</p>
<p>Do you know what you’re talking about? Harvard, Penn, NYU are predominatley jewish? I dont think so. Brandeis, tufts, and Yeshiva are predominatley jewish hence their backgrounds. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but it does show the lack of diversity. I’ve read in prior posts where Branedeis is mentioned as a “World Class Research Institution” which is completely not true. Brandeis is just another school who played the USNews regiments to have the ranking they do now.</p>
<p>Brownbear</p>
<p>If you go to the [Hillel:</a> The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life](<a href=“http://www.hillel.org%5DHillel:”>http://www.hillel.org) site, you will find the percentages of Jewish students at most colleges. Here are the approximate percentages of Jewish students at some of the schools you have mentioned:</p>
<p>Tufts–31%
Penn–31%
Harvard–25%
NYU—26%</p>
<p>I don’t know where you are getting your information from, but many fine schools have a relatively large number of Jewish students and I personally don’t think that it reflects a lack of diversity at the schools.</p>
<p>Stony Brook and Brandeis both have a number of fine departments, with Stony Brook holding the edge in the sciences. Brandeis, however, is far from a one dimensional school and it is not limited to good departments in Hebrew, Judaic Studies and the Middle East, as you insinuated. Brandeis is strong in many areas, including the sciences, anthropology, and math and it is certainly a school that has strong research opportunities.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, Brandeis is a great school (I’m seriously looking into one of their grad programs myself) and I know people who had great experiences there. Some people will do better at a smaller school with more hand-holding, and that’s fine. For some people a bigger school means more opportunities and greater variety while a smaller school is stifling and limiting, and for others a larger school is overwhelming while a smaller school is more comfortable–it’s all in what type of experience you’re looking for. But in terms of educational quality, intellectual environment, creativity and peers, Brandeis isn’t at all the clear winner some people are making it out to be. An “exciting intellectual and creative environment inside and outside the classroom” is a phrase that describes Stony Brook well too.</p>
<p>I didn’t say Brandeis wasn’t diverse, but the level of diversity at Stony Brook is hard to match, and very few schools (especially private schools) can compete on that front. The wide variety of people I’ve had as classmates at SBU has been a huge asset to my education. When you’re a “majority minority” campus, it’s a lot less likely for non-white students’ perspectives to be marginalized, glossed over, or tokenized. A non-traditional-aged student who raised two kids and a first-generation college student who grew up on food stamps will add important perspectives to a sociology class on family structures or that you can’t get from a textbook–and Stony Brook has a critical mass of those kinds of perspectives such that one person’s point of view won’t be taken as representative of their whole demographic. It’s not that Brandeis is a monoculture, but that Stony Brook’s diversity is unusually impressive. My point about course offerings was similarly intended–it’s not that Brandeis’s are inadequate or that they don’t have many strong departments, but rather that a wider course selection is a significant benefit of going to Stony Brook. I singled out “Hebrew, Judaic Studies and the Middle East” because those are areas where Brandeis has a special expertise and a far superior course selection to Stony Brook (and I say that as someone interested in Hebrew, Judaic Studies, and the Middle East), while in most other fields Stony Brook will offer many more options in a given semester.</p>
<p>according to the hillel site, Brandeis has a 52% jewish community. That is exceedingly large and diversity would be a pretty big issue given their small community.</p>
<p>Brandeis is better</p>