Brandeis University

In brief

Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, was founded in 1948 as a research university open to all at a time when Ivy League schools limited the number of Jewish students. It is named for Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice of the US Supreme Court. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #45 in the United States and #125 in the world. It admitted 40.5% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1455 and a median ACT score of 32.

Its founding was led by Rabbi Israel Goldstein, whose group bought the campus of the defunct Middlesex University; Albert Einstein helped with the early campaign before withdrawing.

Where Brandeis’s influence is strongest

Brandeis’s influence is led by sociology, where it ranks in the US top 15. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Sociology: #15 in the US (#41 in the world)
• Philosophy: #26
• Mathematics: #33
• Psychology: #39
• Economics and social work: #41 each

Within those fields, Brandeis is a national leader in several specialties:

• #2 in the US: women’s studies (only Harvard ranks higher), humanistic psychology (only Brooklyn College ranks higher), and international business (only Harvard ranks higher)
• #4: virtue ethics
• #5: Jewish studies

Brandeis has no engineering or nursing school, so it ranks low in those fields.

How we measure influence: these ranks come from the citations and recognition earned by a school’s faculty and alumni in each discipline, not from surveys or admissions statistics. See our methodology.

Notable people

Brandeis is associated with the Nobel laureates Roderick MacKinnon, Michael Rosbash, and Jeffrey Hall, the Turing Award winner Leslie Lamport, and the Fields Medalists Edward Witten and Heisuke Hironaka. Its faculty and alumni also include the philosophers Herbert Marcuse, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Michael Walzer, and the activist and scholar Angela Davis. Our full lists of Brandeis’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is Brandeis hard to get into? Moderately. It admitted 40.5% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 690–750 on the SAT reading section and 700–770 on math.

What does Brandeis cost after financial aid? Tuition is $70,957 for 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $17,007 in 2024–25; it ranged from about $10,028 for incomes below $30,000 to $50,519 for incomes above $110,000.

How do Brandeis graduates do? 81.0% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 87% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $85,519.

What is Brandeis best known for academically? By our influence data: sociology, philosophy, and mathematics, plus women’s studies, where only Harvard ranks higher in the US.