Brown University was founded in 1764 as a private Ivy League research university. It is among the oldest universities in the country and one of the colonial institutions licensed prior to the American Revolution.
The university was the primary college in the country that admitted students no matter what their religious affiliations are. In 1847, the engineering program was established Brown was among the early institutions that offered doctoral programs in the country. in 1887, it expanded its masters and postgraduate studies. After some students lobbied for the adoption of a new curriculum, Brown passed the Brown Curriculum in 1969. In this new curriculum, the compulsory general education distribution requirements were discarded. Students were allowed to take any course and became the maker of their own syllabus. Pembroke College, which was an affiliate institution of Brown, became formally part of the university. The campus is now home to dormitories and classrooms for students of Brown University.
Admission is never easy at Brown with an acceptance rate of 6.6 percent. The university is composed of the College, the Graduate School, and other schools concerning medicine, engineering, and public health. Brown is affiliated with the Rhode Island School of Design and the Marine Biological Laboratory.
Brown University’s primary campus is in the College Hill Historic District in Providence. Brown is nestled in a historic architectural district. Benefit Street houses collections of restored and renovated seventeenth and eighteenth-century buildings.
Brown owns the most extensive institutional land in the city. The main campus is made of more than 200 buildings. You can get to the main campus through three steep streets which are the Angell, Waterman, and College. College Street is extra beautiful and is the venue for Commencement processions and the Convocation.
The Van Wickle Gates has a pair of smaller side gates that are always open. The large gate only opens twice a year for the Convocation and Commencement. The gates open inward to welcome the procession of new students. During Commencement exercises, the gate opens outward for the parade of the students. There is a superstition circulating in the university that a student who walks through the central gate time before the Commencement will not graduate and will only be corrected if you walk back to the gate.
The Front Green, the Main Green, and Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle comprise the core green space of the campus. The historic buildings on these green spaces are all beautiful and most photographed. They feature sculptures made by known artists such as Guiseppe Penone and Henry Moore.
The John Hay Library was founded in 1910 and is one of the oldest libraries in the university. The library is now a storehouse of Brown’s archives, manuscripts, and special collections. One of the most popular collections is the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection which is known as the first American collection of the soldiers’ history and iconography.
The College, founded in 1764, is the oldest school of the university. It offers more than 70 majors, which include humanities, social science, life science, and physical science.