Brown is an Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island, and is home to what is widely considered one of the best undergraduate colleges in the country. Brown stands out among the cohort of elite schools, though, because it is distinctly different. Whereas most top schools have a liberal arts curriculum that requires breadth, Brown approaches things differently. They offer a truly unique educational experience centered around an open curriculum that encourages students to explore broadly while deepening into their passions to their heart’s content.
It's not all warm and fuzzy, though. Brown is deeply academic, which may sound obvious for a college…but Brown is different. 80% of Brown students pursue another, higher level, degree within 10 years of graduation. Brown has an exceptional placement rate for medical school and law school. The university is known for attracting students who know what they want to study, but who also love to explore. They know that what they learn outside of their focus will inform and direct their future, and embrace the possibility to discover.
Brown offers first-year applicants Regular Decision and Early Decision application options. Getting in isn’t easy. The overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was 5.7%. The Early Decision acceptance rate, however, was triple that at just under 18% in 2024. This was the highest ED acceptance rate in six years, but is unlikely to have been a fluke. As colleges try to increase their yield rate and waste less time on applications from students who won’t, ultimately, pick them anyway (and, yes, this is even true for the Ivy League), the ED round is like candy. Students have already committed. They are nearly certain to come, save family emergencies or stand-out circumstances.
This means that applying Early Decision is critical if Brown is your top choice school. There is nearly no excuse for not applying to Brown Early Decision if you want to go to Brown. It is simply critical to apply early if you want to get in. But simply applying to Brown ED doesn’t get you into the university.
What is Early Decision at Brown?
At Brown, Early Decision is serious business. Brown admitted 37.5% of first-years for the Class of 2029 in the Early Decision round. They look for ED applicants who will form the foundation of the first-year class, coming from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, and exhibiting a diverse array of interests. So, there is no one perfect ED applicant profile for Brown, but there is one ideal approach to crafting an Early Decision application — be wholly and entirely yourself, but through a lens calibrated for Brown.
What is this lens calibrated for Brown? It’s all about passion, self-awareness, direction, and drive. Also grades and scores, but hopefully that’s obvious. Either way, we’ll get into it further below. In this post, we break down exactly what you need to be doing to prepare for your Brown Early Decision application and what critical steps you need to be taking to amplify your chances of admission from years before applying to the moment you press submit.
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First, you need to ask (and answer) why you are thinking of applying ED. We love early admissions options, but they aren’t for everyone or every situation. To get into Brown ED, you must have all of the components of a strong application — which we’ll break down next — by the early Fall of senior year. You would have substantive senior year grades to counter-balance a sophomore year slump. So, you need to be a serious candidate and ready to make a serious commitment.
What can you do to increase your chances of admission Early Decision to Brown?
If you are trying to increase your chances of admission to Brown Early Decision (which is why you are reading this post, obviously), the number one is to be prepared by starting early. Number two is to seek out informed expertise.
For most applicants, they first think to share their Brown application with their family, and then their friends. Both groups can give valuable feedback, because they know you well, but they also probably haven’t gotten into Brown as an undergraduate in the past three years. Even if a sibling or friend has gotten into Brown recently, college admissions is not a cookie cutter stamp-and-repeat process. It’s personal, especially for a college so obsessed with intellectual individuality as Brown.
A huge part of writing your perfectly personalized application to Brown is tackling it strategically bit-by-bit. Each puzzle piece matters, and requires a unique angle. We’ve broken down the parts below, along with what you need to be doing to increase your chances of admission to Brown Early Decision.
Applying to Brown Early Decision raises your chances of admission, but only if you are a qualified applicant. This means having outstanding grades that serve as the foundation of an impressive application. To accomplish this, you need to do well, but not just in whatever courses you can cruise through. Brown wants to see you acing the hardest courses you have access to. Yes, even in subjects you aren’t personally in love with.
Early decision applicants must pursue a holistic course load that shows a passion for the liberal arts philosophy of learning across all major subjects in such a way that one informs the other.
So, if Brown is your first choice, you cannot drop a subject just because you don’t like it. You must continue taking language, science, math, English/writing, and history/social studies through senior year. This is not optional, and don’t argue that focusing in while in high school actually exemplifies their Open Curriculum. Brown doesn’t want students who silo themselves — they want to see breadth of interest alongside depth of passion.
Scores
In 2024, Brown returned to their pre-Covid standardized test policy for the 2024-25 admission cycle. Today, all applicants are required to submit either an SAT or ACT score. There are no minimum scores for consideration, but that doesn’t get you off the hook for studying. While most schools as well-respected as Brown don’t have technical minimums, they functionally do.
SAT: The vast majority of admitted applicants submit scores above 750 for both Math and Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.
ACT: We recommend that, unless there are extremely unique circumstances, students only apply to Brown with an ACT score if they achieve a 35 or 36.
With the wide variety of test prep options available to students, including free ones, there is no excuse not to work hard to raise your scores to reach Brown’s high bar if it is your dream school and you are going to use your Early Decision option on it.
Activities
Brown doesn’t simply look for smart kids. They look for truly unique applicants — and the best way to show that is through your choices outside of the classroom. We encourage our students to pursue their passions with a particular focus on leadership and community. Leadership doesn’t mean that you are always in charge, but having top responsibility for something is important. For example, if you are on a robotics team, you may not be the team Captain, but you are the head of the build team. Or, if you do Model UN, you may not be the most senior club member, but you are in charge of training new recruits. Again, what matters most isn’t having the most responsibility, but doing the most with it.
On the community front, many people defer to assuming that means ‘community service,’ or volunteering. It can, but it doesn’t have to be. A community-minded approach can shine through in your activities via mentorship, outreach, or even facilitating service opportunities for others.
Overall, the application readers should see your core interests, including what you want to major in, shine through in the activities you give time to.
Essays
Brown eliminated alumni interviews in 2022, so the essays are even more critical than they were before. The essays are your opportunity to get your personality and priorities across, and a chance to tell your story. “Your story,” isn’t just one thing, though. It’s a collection of experiences and narratives that come together between your main college essay and the Brown supplement.
The college essay comes first, both in priority and in timeline. We work our students to develop stories for their college essay even before the end of junior year, but writing starts nearly as soon as school lets out. We give our students a mid-August goal for a solid essay draft, and work with them to accomplish that goal. While this is earlier than most students even start, it isn’t arbitrary on our part.
Supplements come out in late summer, typically in August, so drafting a strong main essay ahead of supplements gives our students the initial framework, or scaffolding, for their application. Then we develop those key traits and points of emphasis further in the supplements, creating the fully developed idea of not just what an applicant has done — but of who they are.
To get into Brown, you need to emphasize personality traits across your activities, leadership roles, and writing. For each student, these traits will be a little different. What matters most isn’t emphasizing what you think Brown wants, but who you truly are. This is where working with an expert in college admissions who is also a brilliant writer is key. Not only can we help you identify what Brown must know about you, but also craft the story that best communicates what makes you exceptional as an Early Decision applicant.
Last, Apply Early
There are three potential ED outcomes for applicants: accepted, denied, or deferred. Obviously accepted is the preferred result, but it’s important to note that, for the class of 2029, 17.8% of applicants were deferred. This is a very reasonable deferral rate, and means that deferred applicants actually do still have a chance of getting into Brown.
Brown doesn’t let students in ED who they wouldn’t let in RD unless there are exceptional circumstances, like athletic recruiting. So, simply applying ED doesn’t make up for a weak application. You need to have an exceptionally strong application, an impactful story and narrative, and apply ED. Oh, and strategy. If it isn’t already abundantly clear, strategy is a must.
Work with Us
A key piece of any college admissions strategy is knowing how to respond to the “wildcards” that come with every school. At Brown, one of the key wildcards is the issue of gender imbalance among the applicant pool. In a 2024 interview, Dean of Undergraduate Admission Logan Powell confirmed that two-thirds of the first-year applications Brown receives come from students who identify as women, but they strive to maintain a gender balance on campus. When we work with students, we keep this in mind when crafting their ideal application strategy.
Another wildcard at Brown is that they truly strive to admit students from a wide range of backgrounds over filtering most strongly for grades, scores, and extracurriculars. Part of this is because Mr. Powell himself came from a low-income background, and he wants to see more students like himself at Brown. Some students see this as a reason to emphasize a trauma or challenge out of context. We work with our kids, though, to focus their application on the things that have made them who they are — and that make them an excellent Brown applicant.
Finally, if you are seriously considering the Brown|RISD Dual Degree program or the PLME program, please know that external support for your application from someone who truly understands these programs is of extreme importance. The acceptance rates for each are miniscule.
Ultimately, our students get into Brown at an astonishing rate because we invest in knowing Brown. If you’re serious about applying to Brown Early Decision, get in touch.
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