<p>i chose duke over brown.
i’m about to graduate from duke, and cannot imagine life had i gone to brown.
as for whoever mentioned brown having more “prestige” because of its ivy league name and cited a sister who attended the lse abroad, and a chance that brown students could get into graduate programs easier because of an ivy name – that’s not true. i have plenty of duke friends who studied abroad at the lse (and oxford) and when i was making my decision, a lot of objective sources (guidance counselors, primarily – not boards like this) were telling me the opposite about grad school placement. brown might be affiliated with the ivy league (which, let’s face it, is a football conference and a not very exciting one at that – that’s not to say that duke’s good at football, but at least acc/d-1 is fun), but because of their academic “structure” and concentrations and lack of requirements, very often it puts you in a worse position when applying to anything. (and by worse i mean “not as amazing”)</p>
<p>you need to be a certain type of person to thrive at brown academically, and honestly, i think i’m really well fit for that environment (even though, i run counter to their theory – that their students are smart and inquisitive enough to take courses across the disciplines, so they will, and i would’ve avoided anything sciencey or hard math) and could’ve been successful, i just wasn’t feeling it. and i didn’t think the student body was right for me. i had a lot of people telling me to look at brown, not too many telling me to look at duke, but when i got in, everyone looked at me like i was insane for even still considering brown given the two choices.</p>