I’m sure you’ve seen them. They move in huddled masses around the Main Green, led by backward-walking, overly enthusiastic undergrads. They crowd the Faunce Arch like a high school hallway between classes. These past two weeks, our campus has been flooded with prospective students and their families on tours of Brown.
These potential future Brunonians stand on the bad end of an inconceivable void. In that void is a mysterious, supremely selective admission process that annually swallows the hopes of most applicants and handsomely rewards a lucky few. Many of the fortunate ones will descend on College Hill later this month to get just a taste of the life their admission offers.
Thousands of students toil away for the entirety of their high school careers with the faint hope of attending Brown. More than 90 percent of them are ultimately rejected, having worked hard through what is, for many of their peers, four years of care-free youth, all in the pursuit of an impressive resume and a 4.0 on their AP course-filled transcripts.
Reflecting on the harsh demands applicants face, I can’t help but think that the hardest part of making it to graduation at Brown is being allowed to pass through the Van Wickle gates in the first place. The dichotomy of this cutthroat admission process and Brown’s notoriously relaxed academic and social environment is shocking. Our University is that of the open curriculum, shopping period and the naked donut run. Yet the pressure to be a competitive applicant at our selective institution forces students away from the ideals of free expression on which we thrive. What may explain this apparent contradiction is what Brown represents to an accomplished but weary applicant: an escape from the rigid standardization of their academic lives, a realm where they can dip their feet wherever curiosity leads.
Many applicants find themselves constructing shiny personal narratives to sell their essays and interviews, confining the wide array of emotions and interests that make up the human experience into a tidy, appealing niche. These students adopt the persona of a focused young scholar, set on a 30-year plan for professional success, only to be greeted by a campus that values eclectic tastes and all but mandates excursions into fields apart from one’s concentration.
As any attempt to describe a lifetime of dreams and fears to an anonymous admission officer is necessarily going to be oversimplified, I see no practical alternative to this system. But no incoming student should feel bound by what they have sold themselves as in the past. Instead, future students should allow themselves to be filled with the many inspirations and views this thriving ecosystem fosters.
The beauty of Brown is that it is a place where ambitious students can focus on pursuing the highest levels of scholastic excellence without forgoing the vast array of experiences that a major university provides. This environment can thrive because admission is so selective. By assembling the brightest, most creative students in the country, the University has created a community of intrinsically motivated scholars eager to embrace pursuits outside of the classroom.
I am sure I speak for many students here when I say I am glad to be on the other end of the void between applicant and Brunonian. The jitters of pursuing college acceptance are gone, and any worries I have today pale in comparison to the pleasure of participating in this chaotic, magnificent community of complex characters and brilliant minds. It may be impossible to eliminate the unpleasant struggle that is applying to Brown, but I argue that participation in the life of this campus is the greatest reward imaginable.
Ronan O’Shea ’19 can be reached at ronan_oshea@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
