Shedding light on the surge in applications

First in a five-part series

This year, 30,136 students — 20.6 percent more than last year — filled out applications for undergraduate admission, painstakingly responding to the required short answer, "Why does Brown appeal to you?" Now that 2,804 of those students have received offers of admission, translating to a record low acceptance rate of 9.3 percent, University administrators and higher education professionals are left unable to agree on a single response to another pertinent question: Why did Brown appeal to more than 30,000 students? Full story

Honesty is tour guides’ policy

Second in a five-part series

Red brick buildings, wide campus greens, the New Curriculum, the Van Wickle Gates: these ideas represent Brown to the outside world.

On TV and the Web, sifting through images of Brown

Third in a five-part series

For the more than 30,000 students who applied to Brown this year, the popular college admissions Web site College Confidential, whether reliable or not, acted as a prime source of information about the school.

Is Brown's popularity a passing trend or here to stay?

Branding Brown: Fourth in a five-part series

From Serena van der Woodsen of "Gossip Girl," to Brian Griffin of "Family Guy," to the nearly 30,000 students that applied for admission this fall, it seems like everyone wants to go to Brown.

The ‘university-college’ on the hill

In 1980 — long before the University embarked on an ambitious plan to expand its graduate programs, research capabilities and international prestige, when the University's faculty was only two-thirds the size that it is now, when the endowment was one-twentieth the size that it is now and when the University received one-third of the applications it does now — the University viewbook, distributed to prospective applicants, presented a picture of a Brown whose undergraduate and graduate offerings were equally strong.