Hi! I just got off Brown’s waitlist and i was wondering how the outdoor activities are st brown? Things like hiking or mountain biking are what i’m interested in and i want to know if that’s possible to do at Brown. My other option is calpoly slo which is very good for outdoor activities but not as good academically obviously. Any help would be great!
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The answer may depend on the radius you would be considering for such activities. Brown’s immediate environment is urban. Rhode Island lacks mountains, with the highest point in the state reaching 812 feet in elevation. For comparison, Bishop Peak, in SLO, reaches 1,559 feet.
At Brown, you’re right in the middle of a city, but not terribly far from the beach, and there are some small ski hills within about an hour. I used to go to Wachusett, near Worcester, for an easily accessible ski day; at other times of year, they have hiking/biking trails. There are other places in central Massachusetts and Connecticut for these kinds of activities, too. The mountains aren’t as high in RI, but you can also find opportunities closer to Providence: 10 Best mountain biking trails in Rhode Island | AllTrails, 10 Best trails and hikes in Rhode Island | AllTrails. To get to the kinds of outdoor activities you’re looking for, you would need a car (and then places for hiking or mountain biking are really not far away), but the Brown Outing Club organizes trips, which might work for you. Check them out: https://brownoutingclub.com/
Can you walk from your dorm to a hiking/biking area? No. But I’ll bet that you can find ways to pursue these activities.
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What’s your major at CPSLO? Brown is a great school (I know some alums) but I’m not sure that it is uniformly better for every single subject. CPSLO is pretty great for hands-on experience in a wide range of engineering majors, for example.
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Rhode Island is called the Ocean State, so it is largely coastal plain with some rolling hills. There are not going to be mountain biking opportunities like what you can experience in the west. The mountains in New England are to the north and in the western part of the region. There are lots of opportunities for extended wilderness hikes in the White Mountains National Forest of New Hampshire, the Green Mountains National Forest in Vermont, and the Adirondack Park in NY, all of which are about a 2.5-3 hour drive from Providence. They also offer lots of opportunities for mountain biking. There are shorter day hikes available in Rhode Island & nearby Massachusetts both in state parks and along national seashore. Some fun hikes are actually on islands off the New England coast and accessible by ferries - Block Island in RI, Martha’s Vineyard in Mass, and Nantucket, also in Mass.
Biking is very popular in southern New England. It’s just not mountain biking. There are bike trails scattered all over Rhode Island, some of them passing through Providence, including the East Coat Greenway. They are a mix of on and off road The East Coast Greenway is a project that’s been developing over many years, identifying a 3000 mile network of biking trails. Riding the entire length can be your long term goal. 
That along with hiking the 2000 mile Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia to Maine and enters New England in Connecticut.
An accessible bike hike is the 86 mile Southern New England Trunkline Trail - Airline Trail combination which runs from Franklin, Massachusetts through the NW corner of Rhode Island to Portland, CT. It’s a rail trail almost entirely off road except for a couple of short sections in Connecticut which run on streets through small towns. Mostly it runs through beautiful forested areas. Its eastern terminus in Franklin, Mass is a half hour drive from the Brown campus - or a 2 hour bike ride. 
Once you spend time on the East Coast, you might find that you take up some new outdoor activities like kayaking or canoeing, either of which can be paddled right through downtown on the Providence River where they have “WaterFire” activities on Saturday nights. It’s a relatively small River and motorized craft are banned. You can also paddle a kayak on extensive Narragansett Bay right from town. The boat launch is a 10 minute walk from the Briwn campus. You’re only on campus for about 8 months per year, so you won’t be cut off entirely from your favorite hiking and mountain biking spots in California.
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Also worthy of note is that Brown has a hiking club, the BOC (Brown Outdoor Club).
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It’s not just hiking…
Posting for my current Brown student:
Brown has an Outdoor leadership training program (BOLT) that is an amazingggg backpacking program. It centers around a 5 day late August trip to the White mountains in new hampshire for rising sophomores (and transfers) led by juniors/seniors. In addition to doing the trip as a sophomore you can get trained to lead the trip as a junior and then as a senior you can lead the training— so pretty much you can be involved for 3 years (4 total backpacking trips if you stick with it+ 2 fall hiking trips). You learn so much about hiking, technical skills, the environment, and it is one of the best community environments/spaces I have ever been a part of. ALSO! Its is a great way to befriend other avid hikers, which has also led me to doing many trips that I would not have if I didnt do Bolt. Basically, BOLT is worth coming to Brown for, definitely check it out.
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Thank you everyone much appreciated!
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