We’re onto Princeton with our “School Like” series. In this series, we’re taking schools that are considered reach schools (yes, for everyone—no matter what your GPA or ACT scores are, any Ivy or equivalent will always be a reach), breaking them down into their most distinct parts, and giving you a list of schools that possess those same qualities, “vibes,” or personality. These are schools that you may not have heard of before, or perhaps that you have heard of but hadn’t previously considered. Consider this your charge to think outside the box and have an open mind.

We’re exploring Yale as we continue our “Schools Like” series where we’ll highlight different popular, elite colleges (read: Ivies and reach schools) and give you a list of schools that we’ve found to be similar.

Our “Schools Like” series is where we take a school—a “dream” or a reach school—and give you a list of schools that are similar to that one school. “How could they be similar AT ALL?” you ask, when you’ve been wearing your mom’s Dartmouth sweatshirt since you were 4? Here’s a secret: there are only so many qualities that a school can have, and there is inevitably a ton of overlap when there are literally thousands of institutions of higher education in the U.S.

Columbia University is next up in our “Colleges Like” series. We’re starting with all of the Ivy League schools—you know, all of the classic “reach” schools—breaking them down into their essential parts, and giving you a list of schools that we’ve found share those qualities. We know what makes a great match based on years of experience helping hundreds of students enroll in college.

We’re continuing our “Schools Like” series with Brown—the crunchy, liberal, social justice-warrior of the Ivy League family. We’ll take your reach school, boil it down to what makes it most unique, and give you a slew of schools to contemplate that also possess some of those same qualities. Over and above its culture (one that tends to attract extroverts), what makes Brown stand out is its open curriculum. It’s not for everyone, but those who work well with flexibility and desire creativity within academics truly thrive and love the lack of definitive structure, core classes, or even the requirement to choose a major (though students must choose a “concentration). It’s a free-spirited, liberal arts-focused, creative intellectual student’s Disneyland. The only requirement that Brown imposes on its undergraduates is that they must pass a writing course.

This is the first of our “Schools Like” series, where we’ll break down those super-duper reach schools into actually digestible components, and then offer you a list of some schools that are similar, comparable, and/or possess a lot of the same qualities.