Brown University

In brief

Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, is the seventh-oldest institution of higher learning in the US. It was founded as Rhode Island College in Warren, moved to Providence in 1770, and in 1804 took the name of the Brown family, its longtime benefactors. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #24 in the United States and #54 in the world. It admitted 5.4% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1545 and a median ACT score of 34.

Its founders, a group of Baptist ministers working with Quakers, Congregationalists, and Anglicans, wrote into its charter that there would be no religious test for entrance.

Where Brown’s influence is strongest

Brown’s influence is spread across the humanities, mathematics, and the social sciences. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Literature: #13 in the US (#30 in the world)
• Mathematics: #14
• History: #16
• Education: #19
• Computer science: #20

Its highest-ranked specialties in our data are:

• #4 in the US: feminist philosophy
• #6: algebraic geometry
• #7: applied mathematics
• #8: computational neuroscience and gender studies

By comparison, Brown sits further back in psychology (#49), criminal justice (#60), and nursing (#62).

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

Brown is linked to seven Nobel laureates, among them the physicists Leon Cooper and J. Michael Kosterlitz, the physiologist Craig Mello, and the economists George Stigler and Vernon Smith. Its faculty and alumni also include the psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck, the novelists Jeffrey Eugenides and Edwidge Danticat, the actors Laura Linney and Emma Watson, the radio host Ira Glass, the media executive Ted Turner, and former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen. Our full lists of Brown’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is Brown hard to get into? Yes. It admitted 5.4% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 740–780 on the SAT reading section and 770–800 on math.

What does Brown cost after financial aid? Tuition is $74,650 for 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $10,079 in 2024–25; it ranged from about $39 for incomes below $30,000 to $48,459 for incomes above $110,000.

How do Brown graduates do? 95.6% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 99% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $99,974.

What is Brown best known for academically? By our influence data: literature, mathematics, and history, plus specialties such as feminist philosophy and algebraic geometry.