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July 22, 2022

Brown Alpert Medical School Secondary Application Essay Tips [2022 – 2023]

Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is the only medical school in the state of Rhode Island. For this reason, it offers unparalleled access to all types of clinical settings and hospitals. It has seven teaching hospitals near its medical school campus. Its mission is “The pursuit of health to benefit society.” First and second year medical students can volunteer at the Brown Student Community Clinic. It is ranked #35 for research and #14 for primary care , according to U.S. News and World Report . The secondary application consists of three required essays.

Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University 2022-23 secondary application essay questions

Brown medical school essay #1.

Summarize your activities during the 2022-2023 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

Using an updated copy of your CV or resume and a copy of your AMCAS activities, make a comprehensive list of your current commitments. Include everything within the time frame for which they are requesting information. You can include activities that you are planning, as long as you are certain that you will follow through with them. You can always bring an updated copy of your CV or resume to the interview, especially if your plans change. Be thorough. Include everything you’re doing while applying.

Brown Medical School essay #2

How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)

Using their guidelines, “cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences,” make a list. What has been unusual for you in these areas? Often it is hard to identify this information by yourself, so you may want to talk to a friend, premed advisor, or consultant for ideas. Using your list, identify those qualities or experiences that have resulted in definite skills or abilities that you can share with your medical school class. Focus on those areas that benefit you as well as others.

Brown Medical School essay #3

What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters)

If this question stumps you, I recommend reviewing the CV or life story of a doctor or mentor whom you admire. Often, it’s hard to know what our goals should be when we don’t know what is possible. Give yourself time to read biographies and CV’s of those who inspire you to come up with ideas for your future. Have fun with this one, but set realistic goals!

Applying to Brown Medical School? Here are some stats:

Alpert Medical School average MCAT score: 516

Alpert Medical School average GPA: 3.78

Alpert Medical School acceptance rate: 2.6%

U.S. News  ranks Alpert #35 for research and #14 for primary care.

Check out the Med School Selectivity Index for more stats.

You’ve worked so hard to get to where you are in life. Now that you’re ready for your next achievement, make sure you know how to present yourself to maximum advantage in your Brown Alpert applications. In a hotly competitive season, you’ll want a member of Team Accepted in your corner, guiding you with expertise tailored specifically for you.  Check out our flexible consulting packages today!

Alpert Medical School 2022-23 application timeline

Source: Alpert Medical School website

Related Resources:

• The Ultimate Guide to Secondary Essay Questions from Top Med Schools
• Different Dimensions of Diversity , a podcast episode
• “I’m Smart, Really I Am!” Proving Character Traits in Your Essays [With Sample Essays]

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Brown Medical School Secondaries: Essay Prompts & Tips to Stand Out

• Cracking Med School Admissions

Submitting outstanding and tailored Brown secondaries are vital to receiving a Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University interview.  Brown University is an institution that cherishes individuals who have a vision to change society and who aren’t afraid to pursue out-of-the-box ideas in order to make a positive impact on society. In your Brown Medical School secondaries, you must convey how you will improve healthcare in your future career.   Additionally, our Cracking Med School Admissions team  believes it is imperative to convey how Alpert Medical School at Brown University – and Brown University as an entire institution – will help you accomplish your goals. You will find our blog post on “ Why this medical school ” very helpful. 

Read the Brown secondary essay prompts and more of our Brown secondaries tips below . 

Pre-Writing Advice: Some of the Brown secondaries changed from the previous year. This is no longer a secondary we are encouraging medical school Brown applicants to pre-write their Brown secondaries. 

Our Cracking Med School Admissions team has a track record of helping our mentees receive acceptances to Brown Medical School year after year. We can help you submit strong Brown secondary essays through our secondary essay editing packages ! 

• Personally Tailored Essays
• Edits by Stanford & Harvard-trained Doctors
• We study your application strengths to see what unique attributes we’ll bring to the medical school

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2023 - 2024

Note: Some Brown secondaries changed from last year

• Summarize your activities during the 2023-2024 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)
• How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2,000 characters max)
• Reflect on a situation when you had to change course, and how you did so.  (3000 characters)

How to Get Into Brown Medical School

Brown Pre-Writing Guidance: There have been too many changes in the Brown Medical School Secondary Application essay prompts in the 2023-2024 application cycle. We would  not suggest you pre-write these before the official prompts come out. Additionally, Brown from our experience, Brown does not favor students who submit early – the Brown Medical School Admissions committee is selective in choosing its applicants, so having essays that are tailored to Brown’s philosophy is much more important than the speed of submitting this secondary. Contact Dr. Rachel Rizal and Dr. Rishi Mediratta for help with your Brown secondaries. In general, we want to stress that there is no one right way to writing Brown secondaries, BUT there are many techniques you can employ to stand out! 

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #1: Highlight your leadership, passion to change healthcare, and impact on society. The questions are geared towards learning more about what you did in your extra-curricular activities. Tell stories to convey your impact and leadership. For example, if you conducted research over a gap year, tell a story about a challenge you faced or a patient you met while conducting a clinical trial. 

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #2:     Conveying strong reasons to attend Brown Medical School is super important. You should mention specific career goals and specific opportunities at Brown University that you want to pursue.

• Read our blog post for an example and tips to incorporate “Why Brown medical school” in your secondaries: Why this Medical School? Secondary Essay Example

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #3: Brown University and Alpert School of Medicine is an innovative school. The Medical School Admissions Committee wants medical students who want to change the world and come up with creative ideas in how to improve society. Your essays should reflect how you’ve been innovative in your endeavors, whether it’s through writing composition or your research. To learn more about Alpert Medical School’s curriculum and student life, read: How to Get Into Brown Medical School | Insider’s Perspective

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #4:  For the essay, “ Summarize your activities during the 2023-2024 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career, ” it’s best to write these thematically. One mistake Brown applicants make is the need to write about every single activity they are involved with. We would suggest highlighting fewer important activities and thematically grouping some activities together. 

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #5:  The essay prompt, “ How will your unique attributes, life experiences, and interests add to the Alpert Medical School community? ” is basically a diversity essay. It is extremely important to bring in the following elements: the impact you want to make in healthcare; the impact you already made in healthcare; and innovative ways to improve healthcare. 

• It is extremely important to read our blog post about diversity essays: Medical School Diversity Essays Examples and Tips

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #6: To help you brainstorm the question, “ Reflect on a situation when you had to change course, and how you did so,”  here are examples of topics our Cracking Med School Admissions team has read, which we thought was executed successfully and helped the applicant stand out !

• Innovative changes to a research project.
• Changes to a community service project.
• A change in an approach in helping a patient. For example, a student developed other clinical skills to change your therapeutic approach. Additionally, another applicant discussed how he changed his approach to educating a patient about an important health topic.  
• A change in an approach in helping a community member, such as how to help a homeless individual receive social resources. Additionally, another applicant held a position as a school counselor and discussed how she changed her course in mentoring students from varying backgrounds.

Brown Medical School Secondary Essays Tip #7: We help several students get accepted to Brown each year.  Definitely get our help to stand out on your Brown secondaries! We can help you through our secondary essay packages . And if you have questions, Contact us below.

[ Read more secondary essay tips:   Cornell , Stanford , Harvard , Duke ]

Your medical school application Coaches, Mentors, & Cheerleaders

We Personally Advise Every Student We Work With

Rachel Rizal, M.D.

Changing the trajectory of people’s lives.

Undergraduate Princeton University, cum laude

Medical School Stanford School of Medicine

Residency Harvard, Emergency Medicine

Awards & Scholarships Fulbright Scholar USA Today Academic First Team Tylenol Scholarship

Rishi Mediratta, M.D., M.Sc., M.A.

Advising students to attend their dream schools.

Undergraduate Johns Hopkins University, Phi Beta Kappa

Residency Stanford, Pediatrics

Awards & Scholarships Marshall Scholar Tylenol Scholarship Global Health Scholar

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Brown medical school secondary application essay prompts: 2022 – 2023.

• Summarize your activities during the 2022-2023 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)
• What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3,000 characters max)

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2021 – 2022

• Summarize your activities during the 2021-2022 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2020 – 2021

• Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle?
• Summarize your activities during the 2020-2021 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career.  (2,000 characters max)
• How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community?  (2,000 characters max)
• What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself?  (3,000 characters max)

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2019 – 2020

• Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2019-2020 admissions cycle?
• Summarize your activities during the 2019-2020 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2018 – 2019

• Summarize your activities during the 2018-2019 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)

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Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2017 – 2018

• Summarize your activities during the 2017-2018 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)
• What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: Where do you imagine yourself? (3,000 characters max)
• Imagine that you are approached by a multibillionaire philanthropist who wants to donate a substantial fund of money to a single project with the goal of “fixing the US healthcare system.” He/she asks for your expert opinion on what project this money should go towards; what would you advise and why? (2,000 characters max)
• Often when we talk about medicine, we focus on the individual physician-patient relationship. Why should medical schools train future physicians to care for communities and populations as a whole, and not just individual patients? (2,000 characters max)

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2016 – 2017

• Summarize your activities during the 2016-2017 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)
• How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University community? (2,000 characters max)
• Imagine that you are approached by a multibillionaire philanthropist who wants to donate a substantial fund of money to a single project with the goal of “fixing the US healthcare system.” He/she asks for your expert opinion on what project this money should go towards; what would you advise and why?  (2,000 characters)
• Often when we talk about medicine, we focus on the individual physician-patient relationship. Why should medical schools train future physicians to care for communities and populations as a whole, and not just individual patients? (2,000 characters)

Brown Medical School Secondary Application Essay Prompts: 2015 – 2016

• Summarize your activities during the 2015-2016 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2,000 characters max)

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Medical School Admissions

Secondary application.

Applicants verified by AMCAS will receive electronic mail instructions for the online secondary application.

Once your application is verified by AMCAS, we will send you electronic mail instructions for the online secondary application. No secondary application received after November 1 will be considered, and incomplete applications are not reviewed by the Admissions Committee. The secondary application contains Brown-specific information and requires a nonrefundable fee of $110. If you are applying to the Combined MD-ScM program, you will select that option on your secondary application.  See our FAQ page  for more information about the MD-ScM application and admission process.

Candidates selected for interview are notified by email. All candidates should receive a notice of interview status by early March. Only those candidates who are interviewed will be considered for admission.

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to the most common queries about the application process at The Warren Alpert Medical School.

• Medical School Application

Brown Medical School Secondary Essay Examples

Brown medical school secondary essay prompts ask applicants to address a wide range of subjects. If you’re going to write strong secondary essays for this school, you’re going to need to pay close attention to the medical school application timeline to give yourself enough time to brainstorm and write. Brown, along with most medical schools in the US , will ask for specific information about your experiences, attributes, and aspirations. If you’re having trouble getting started, don’t worry – in this article, we provide sample answers to Brown medical school secondary essays that you can use to guide your own.

Disclaimer: Please note: although we have made every effort to provide the most accurate information, admissions information changes frequently. Therefore, we encourage you to verify these details with the official university admissions office. You are responsible for your own results. BeMo does not endorse nor affiliate with any official universities, colleges, or test administrators and vice versa. 

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Article Contents 8 min read

The ins and outs of medical school secondary essays.

If you’re wondering how to make your medical school application stand out , secondary essays are a great way to achieve that. The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is historically one of the best medical schools in the US. The curriculum offers core clerkships in internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, clinical neuroscience, and family medicine. Brown Medical School is also an institution known for producing physician-scientists primed with research experience in one of their affiliated programs and institutions. With such a diverse curriculum and elective options allowing students to pursue their unique interests, the secondary essays inevitably demonstrate how prospective students will approach such a demanding course load.

Because Brown Medical School also has one of the lowest medical school acceptance rates , a strong secondary essay submission will be necessary. Aside from the other documents you will submit in your application, such as a medical school letter of intent or medical school resume , your secondary essays should relate to the attributes and experiences that demonstrate the potential to become a physician. Medical school is also a rigorous and demanding academic environment, which means you should use your secondary essays to show that your academic history is indicative of your ability to succeed in the program at Brown.

This cycle’s secondary essays ask students to address the following topics (these are not the prompts themselves):

• Activities during the current or past academic year.
• How your attributes will contribute to diversity and inclusion in medical education .
• Aspirations for medical practice.

The Brown medical school secondary essays you write for prompts 1 and 2 should not exceed 2,000 characters, including spaces. For reference, 2,000 characters is about 285–500 words. The third and final prompt has a 3000-character limit, which is about 428–750 words. You should aim to write as close to the character limit as possible; doing so will allow you to include enough detail to demonstrate your point clearly. It will also show that you’re capable of following instructions and that you can write a succinct and structured essay following basic requirements.

Your essays should be formatted according to standard academic essay requirements. You should have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion; information should flow consistently through logical points. When you only have 2,000 or 3,000 characters to convince the admissions committee that you’re worth an acceptance, every word counts. However, don’t try and stuff in words or information, as this will make your essays congested.

“Summarize your activities during the current or past academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career.” (2,000 characters)

Through a student organization for pre-medical students, I met with a doctor named Daniel Allena who was offering shadowing opportunities for pre-meds. Dr. Allena owns a GI health clinic; during my time shadowing him, I observed various procedures, such as colonoscopy, barium swallow tests, upper GI series, and small bowel series. I was specifically interested in this field because colon cancer runs in my family. Having witnessed the pain and adversity of invasive and painful treatment, I know that the health care professionals involved in this level of care make all the difference. By exposing myself to a medical setting in which I can envision myself specializing, I learned that not only is it important to uphold the highest standard of patient care, but that it takes patience and understanding to overcome fear and potential communication barriers.

Earlier this year, I was also volunteering at a hospital as an administrative support assistant. My job was to make phone calls to patient families and confirm upcoming appointments or important dates. I also occasionally worked with the treasury branch to collect donations from local patrons in support of our workers. From communicating with patients and their families, I discovered the importance of being clear, focused, and receptive. Many of the patients or patients’ families had questions about treatment or care options, and I was always glad to answer any questions I was qualified to answer or find someone that could. I always made sure to ask if they had any questions or concerns to show that I was available to help. I learned that listening and being available are important ways to show empathy to people who are possibly worried, afraid, and desperate for answers. I also learned that sociocultural factors could change variables of interaction and make it a challenge to communicate; in these situations, I always listen to the best of my ability and do what I can to accommodate the patient’s concerns.

Characters: 1,987

Brown Medical School Secondary Essay Prompt #2

“How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community?” (2,000 characters)

I grew up in a small remote city surrounded by large swaths of farmland close to a cottage area along the lake. The irony is that while the landscape is very beautiful, the circumstances in which some people live aren’t. There’s been a fentanyl and opioid crisis throughout most of my time living there. I was lucky to live on the outskirts of town, where we weren’t directly exposed to most of these issues. There was an unsettling number of overdoses reported each year, a number that has recently been rising. Unfortunately, the municipality and health care system hasn’t been able to adequately address this crisis and get people the help they need.

After moving out of the city and into a much larger and industrial one, a TA for one of my classes passed away from an overdose; I was disheartened when I continued to hear news of other students who were affected by addiction, many of whom didn’t know the markers of addiction until their condition had become severe. Despite efforts to install social outreach programs, opioid-use disorder continues to increase. I believe that there are many reasons for why addiction continues to rise, but accessibility to proper care and medicine remains my primary concern. Another reason that proper care isn’t provided in most communities, including my hometown, is that people aren’t receiving the education they need to prevent an addiction from occurring.

I applied to the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University mainly because of the addiction medicine fellowship program. Once I complete medical school and residency, my goal is to create an addiction and mental health clinic in my hometown. Addiction is a complex disorder that requires expert physicians in every community to treat and educate the people suffering and provide resources for their families. Knowing people who suffer from addiction and haven’t received the help they need incites a strong desire to contribute to solving this problem in my community and beyond.

Characters: 1,989

“What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself?” (3,000 characters)

My goals are to become a neurologist and conduct research on Tourette Syndrome. When I was a kid, I was sitting in class one day when the teacher called on me to explain why I was blinking and moving my lips in a so-called disruptive way. I didn’t realize I was doing this, and I had no explanation for why I was doing it. The teacher called my parents to complain about my behavior. They took me to a psychologist, who couldn’t explain to me or my confused parents what was happening. I went to many different doctors and clinics, most of whom weren’t aware of a condition that could explain my impaired motor function; I went on medication for ADHD, but it wasn’t helping my symptoms.

Eventually, I went to a doctor named Dr. Spurgeon, who referred me to a neurologist, who then confirmed a diagnosis of Tourette’s. She explained in clear and simple terms that I wasn’t fabricating my symptoms, as others suggested, but that my brain and nervous system were causing my motor tics. I was put on the correct medication and referred to another specialist who used habit reversal therapy to treat my physical symptoms, which were often painful. It was the neurologist who resonated with me the most because of how clear and compassionate she was; from my experience with her, I understood the importance of communication, especially with such a misunderstood condition like Tourette’s. Her approach to explaining how my condition works made me feel understood and more comfortable when I was receiving treatment. It also helped me get the accommodations I needed for class.

Are you writing your med school personal statement? Find more tips here:

Because of my experience of being misdiagnosed and misunderstood by some medical professionals, I want to empower individuals in similar situations living with neurological conditions. The Warren Alpert Medical School’s neuroscience research with a patient-centered focus resonates strongly with how I want to approach treating complex disorders like Tourette’s. Brain science courses and the year 3 clerkships covering neurology and psychiatry will provide me with the knowledge and practice I need to achieve these goals. The wide range of learning options and the clinical services in neurology at the School speak to the depth of knowledge and quality of care that I’d like to contribute to.

Another goal I have is to contribute to impactful neurological research. Promoting neurodivergent concerns and communicating care options will bring those who are suffering and their families much needed relief and clarity. To achieve this goal, I would like to become a fellow at the Brown Biology and Medicine Department of Neurology. The program comprises a range of subspecialities, but the one that appeals to me the most is the movement disorders fellowship. The opportunity to conduct research at the Comprehensive Multidisciplinary Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) clinic would help me achieve my goal of understanding complex movement disorders and improve the lives of affected people.

Characters: 2,965

Your secondary essays for the first two prompts should not have more than 2,000 characters; the third prompt can be a little longer but should not exceed 3,000 characters.

You should be writing in standard essay format. That means you should have an introduction, body, and conclusion. Your topic sentence should be clear and interesting, and your points should flow logically and consistently from one to another.

If you can, yes. Starting early can give your more time to plan, write, and revise. If you decide to start writing early, make sure you’re writing for prompts that have remained consistent from cycle to cycle, because they can often change.

You can if it’s applicable. However, don’t just copy and paste without organizing the information correctly. Make sure you don’t mention the name of the other schools you were applying to in the wrong essay.

You should take as much time as you need from the day you receive the prompts to the deadlines provided. You want to make sure you have enough time to edit and get the writing done. If you do submit early, it can show enthusiasm – but you don’t want to sacrifice quality to submit earlier. Consider the medical school application timeline for the schools you’re applying to so you can organize your schedule more effectively.

Use your resume, cover letter, and other application documents as reference. Having them with you as you write will help you plan your essays and help you avoid missing any important information. Be careful not to repeat anything you might have written in other documents.

Research the curriculum. Brown Medical School offers clerkships and research opportunities; think about what appeals to you about these aspects and relate them to your goals as a prospective physician.

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) lists various competencies for entering medical students. Some of these include social skills, ethical responsibility to self and others, and critical thinking.

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Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School Secondary Essay Prompts

These are the secondary application essay prompts for Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School. To put your best foot forward and maximize your chance of an interview invitation, visit our secondary application editing page .

About Brown University Warren alpert Medical school

Secondary Deadline: November 1, 2024 Secondary Fee : $110 FAP Waiver : Yes CASPer Required : No PREview Required: No Screens Applications : No Accepts Application Updates : Yes

To support and promote the health of individuals and communities through innovative medical education programs, research initiatives, and clinical excellence in service to society and to improve the health and wellness of all.

We envision attracting, training, and sustaining diverse individuals who will work together to lead locally, nationally and internationally renowned transformative and socially responsible medical education, research, clinical care, and advocacy. We will inspire and cultivate physician scholars and leaders who positively impact the health of people and society.

Humanism and compassion Integrity, accountability, and collaboration Creativity, innovation, and discovery Inclusiveness, diversity, and equity Dedication to anti-racism Social responsibility, both locally and globally Community engagement and service Commitment to professional development

1) Summarize your activities during the 2022-2023 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career (2000 characters).

2) How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)

3) What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters).

1. Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2020-2021 admissions cycle?

2. Summarize your activities during the 202–2021 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

3. How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)

4. What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters

1. Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2019-2020 admissions cycle?

2. Summarize your activities during the 2019-2020 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

4. What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters)

1. Summarize your activities during the 2016-2017 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

2. How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)

3. What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters)

Disclaimer: The information on this page was shared by students and/or can be found on the medical school’s website. Med School Insiders does not guarantee the accuracy of the information on this page.

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Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University Secondary Questions

Here are the secondary prompts for Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

First Question:  Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle? * NOTE: Interviews occur on Thursdays and/or Fridays beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any significant limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. You may use the text box below to explain your limited availability.  (if none, leave blank) *

Three Required Essays: 1. Summarize your activities during the 2024-2025 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career.  (2000 characters)

2. How will your unique attributes, life experiences, and interests add to The Warren Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)

3. Reflect on a  non-academic  situation when you had to change course, and how you did so.  (3000 characters)

1. Summarize your activities during the 2023-2024 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career.  (2000 characters)

2. How will your unique attributes, life experiences, and interests add to the Alpert Medical School community?  (2000 characters)

3. Reflect on a situation when you had to change course, and how you did so.  (3000 characters)

2021-2022  

• Summarize your activities during the 2021-2022 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career.   (2000 characters)
• How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)
• What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters)
• Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2019-2020 admissions cycle?
• Summarize your activities during the 2019-2020 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)
• Interviews occur on Thursday’s and/or Friday’s beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any significant limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. You may use the text box below to explain your limited availability. (if none, leave blank) (500 characters)
• Summarize your activities during the 2018-2019 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

For all programs:

• Interviews occur on Thursdays and/or Fridays beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. (500 characters)
• Summarize your activities during the 2017-2018 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

For Regular MD only:

• For MD-ScM: Imagine that you are approached by a multibillionaire philanthropist who wants to donate a substantial fund of money to a single project with the goal of “fixing the US healthcare system.” He/she asks for your expert opinion on what project this money should go towards; what would you advise and why? (2000 characters)
• Often when we talk about medicine, we focus on the individual physician-patient relationship. Why should medical schools train future physicians to care for communities and populations as a whole, and not just individual patients? (2000 characters)

Good luck to everyone applying!

• Summarize your activities during the 2016-2017 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)
• Summarize your activities during the 2015-2016 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)
• Imagine that you are approached by a multibillionaire philanthropist who wants to donate a substantial fund of money to a single project with the goal of “fixing the US healthcare system.” He/she asks for your expert opinion on what project this money should go towards; what would you advise and why?
• Often when we talk about medicine, we focus on the individual physician-patient relationship. Why should medical schools train future physicians to care for communities and populations as a whole, and not just individual patients?

Related posts:

• Creighton University School of Medicine Secondary Questions
• Emory University School of Medicine Secondary Questions
• George Washington University Medical School Secondary Questions
• Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University Secondary Questions

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Brown University - Secondary Essay Prompts

Access our complete list of all Secondary Essay Prompts from Brown University in Providence , RI for the 2018 - 2023 admissions cycles.

1 . Summarize your activities during the 2023-2024 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career.

2 . How will your unique attributes, life experiences, and interests add to the Alpert Medical School community?

3 . Reflect on a situation when you had to change course, and how you did so.

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Health Careers Advising

• Apply to Professional School

There are a few different types of essays that will be part of your application to health professional school. All schools require at least one essay, often called the Personal Statement, where they ask you to explain your motivation for your chosen healthcare career. They may also require different essays based on your personal circumstances or the specific programs to which you are applying.  

The prompt for the personal statement essay is essentially looking for your motivation for your chosen career. For example, the prompt in AMCAS is “Use the space provided to explain why you want to go to medical school (5300 characters)”. The other health career prompts are very similar and the goal is for you to show your journey and suitability for a healthcare career. This can be a very challenging essay to write as you want to highlight your strengths, explain your motivation, show how your experiences have shaped your motivation, and convince the schools that you are suited for this career. This is your first real opportunity for the schools to hear your voice which makes this an important essay. 

Health Careers Advising offers a number of resources to help you in the writing process. We recommend that you begin by watching our two info sessions as they provide a great deal of information. The first session is focused on a process to help you begin brainstorming about the essay. The second is a more detailed session on what to include and factors to consider as you write. Once you have submitted your essay as part of your Health Careers Advising Dossier (HCAD), we will provide feedback during your comprehensive appointment. You can also work with our writing specialists at every step of the writing process.

All of the application services have a space for you to enter your activities and provide a description for them. These descriptions need to include information about what you have done in that activity as well as include a little about what you learned or why that experience was important to you. This is not a place to provide a bulleted list of your tasks but it is also not a place to tell a story about a particular event within that activity. Instead, write a summary of what you did and then provide some reflection on the activity. 

On AMCAS, you will need to choose 3 of your activities as your Most Meaningful Experiences. For these 3 activities, you will write two short essays. The first essay is simply the description of what you did. The second essay, typically described as the Most Meaningful Experience Summary, should be much more reflective. This is a space for you to explain why this experience was meaningful, explain how it shaped your path to medicine, and/or explain what you gained from the experience. We have also created an info session on filling out the AMCAS application to help you with this process. 

If you are applying to MD-PhD programs, there are two additional essays you will need to complete. The first is the MD-PhD essay, which asks you to state your reasons for pursuing the combined MD-PhD degree. You will have already written your personal statement which focuses on your motivation for medicine, so this essay should focus on why the combined degree is important to you. It is important to not just write about why you want the PhD portion of the degree but instead why having both is critical to the work you want to do.

The second essay is Significant Research Experience Essay. This should not be a list of all of your research experience, but instead the 1-2 that were most significant for you. You will need to include your research supervisor’s name and affiliation, the duration of the experience, the nature of the problem you studied, and your contributions to the research effort. You should also explain why these experiences were meaningful to you.

Each medical school has additional essays that you must write before the school will consider your application complete. The topics and prompts for these essays are determined by the individual school and many of them change slightly each year. You will receive the school’s secondaries after your primary application has been processed and verified. It is very important that you complete these within 7-14 days of when you received them as this is an indication of your interest in that particular school. Because of this short timeline to write the essays, many students pre-write the essays using the prompts they find from previous years. This can be a good approach, but it is important to note that the prompts may change annually. We have also created an info session that provides more tips and suggestions on filling out your secondary essays to help you with this process. 

In 2024 AMCAS changed their disadvantaged status essay to what is now known as the Other Impactful Experience Essay (learn more about the change in this AAMC Update ) The new prompt is as follows: “To provide some additional context around each individual’s application, admissions committees are interested in learning more about the challenges applicants may have overcome in life. The following question is designed to give you the opportunity to provide additional information about yourself that is not easily captured in the rest of the application. Have you overcome challenges or obstacles in your life that you would like to describe in more detail? This could include lived experiences related to your family background, financial background, community setting, educational experiences, and/or other life circumstances.”

We encourage you to consider if this question applies to you. The schools do not expect all applicants to complete this essay, but it gives you an opportunity to explain any major challenges or obstacles that you have had to overcome in your path to a healthcare career. While this is the exact prompt for AMCAS, other application services may have similar essay prompts. We are happy to provide feedback on this essay during your comprehensive advising appointment. 

Medical schools need to know if you were ever the recipient of any institutional action resulting from unacceptable academic performance or a conduct violation. The specific AMCAS prompt for this is as follows:

If you were ever the recipient of any institutional action by any college or medical school for unacceptable academic performance or conduct violation, you must answer Yes to the question about institutional action, even if such action did not interrupt your enrollment or require you to withdraw. Furthermore, select Yes even if the action does not appear on, or has been deleted or expunged from, your official transcripts as a consequence of institutional policy or personal petition. Examples of institutional actions include, but are not limited to, academic probation, academic standing warnings, suspension, residence hall policy violations, and ethics policy violations.

If you have had any institutional action, including academic warning status or conduct reprimands, you must answer Yes to this question and provide an explanation of what occurred. Medical schools recognize that people make mistakes and that these are often opportunities for growth so answering Yes will not automatically disqualify your application. It is important to acknowledge any mistakes and then highlight how you have changed since then and what you learned from the experience. We are happy to help with these explanations during your comprehensive advising appointment. It is also important to note that even if you do not report your institutional action, it will be shown on a dean’s certification if your schools request one. This is very damaging to your application because it will appear that you lied on your application which will make the schools question your ethical behavior. 

Frequently Asked Questions

While many of the secondary essay prompts are similar, there are often nuanced differences between the essays and these will require slightly different responses. While you can use similar experiences, we recommend that you carefully read each prompt and tailor your response to the specific question being asked. 

There is a good bit of variation in the timing of when secondary essays are sent, so do not panic if you have not received yours yet. This is even true if others who applied to the same school have received their secondaries. In that instance, you will likely receive yours in a few days. 

We have an info session specifically created to help you get started with the process of writing a personal statement. 

Yes, the language on AMCAS clearly states that you need to report it. Here is the language from the application:

You must indicate whether you have ever been convicted of, or pleaded guilty or no contest to, a misdemeanor crime, excluding (1) any offense for which you were adjudicated as a juvenile, (2) any convictions that have been expunged or sealed by a court, (3) any misdemeanor convictions for which you completed any probation and for which the court dismissed the case (in states where applicable), and (4) any offense you are not required to disclose pursuant to a state-specific law.

No, the medical schools do not consider your application complete until you have submitted all of their secondary essays.

• Secondary Essay Prompts

Secondary Essay Prompts – Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

Secondary Essay Prompts for the The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

Below are the secondary essay prompts for the The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI.

2019 – 2020

• Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2019-2020 admissions cycle?
• Summarize your activities during the 2019-2020 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)
• How will your unique attributes (e.g., cultural or socioeconomic background, lifestyle, work experiences) add to the overall diversity of the Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters)
• What are your aspirations for your medical practice? Fast-forward to 15 years in the future: where do you imagine yourself? (3000 characters)

2018 – 2019

• NOTE: Interviews occur on Thursday’s and/or Friday’s beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any significant limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. You may use the text box below to explain your limited availability. (if none, leave blank) (500 characters)
• Summarize your activities during the 2018-2019 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

Below are the secondary essay prompts for the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

2017 – 2018.

• The Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University strives to ensure that its students become respectful physicians who embrace all dimensions of caring for the whole person. Please describe how your personal characteristics or life experiences will contribute to the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University community and bring educational benefits to our student body. (1000 characters)
• Is there any further information that you would like the Committee on Admissions to be aware of when reviewing your file that you were not able to notate in another section of this or the AMCAS Application? (1000 characters)
• Why have you chosen to apply to the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and how do you think your education at Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University will prepare you to become a physician for the future? (1 page, formatted at your discretion, upload as PDF)

For all programs:

• NOTE: Interviews occur on Thursdays and/or Fridays beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. (500 characters)
• Summarize your activities during the 2017-2018 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

For Regular MD only:

For MD-ScM:

• Imagine that you are approached by a multibillionaire philanthropist who wants to donate a substantial fund of money to a single project with the goal of “fixing the US healthcare system.” He/she asks for your expert opinion on what project this money should go towards; what would you advise and why? (2000 characters)
• Often when we talk about medicine, we focus on the individual physician-patient relationship. Why should medical schools train future physicians to care for communities and populations as a whole, and not just individual patients? (2000 characters)

2016 – 2017

MedEdits  advises against using outdated prompts for the current season.

• Summarize your activities during the 2016-2017 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters)

Secondary essay webcast with Dr. Jessica Freedman, founder and president of MedEdits Medical Admissions.   Read more about Dr. Freedman.

Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University

Topics covered in this presentation:

• When should I submit my secondary essays?
• Pay attention to the word/character limits.
• Can I recycle secondary essay prompts for multiple schools?
• Identify topics that you left out of your primary application.
• And, much more.

Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University Admissions Requirements

Learn more about this school:

Secondary Essay Prompts for Other Schools

Do you want to see secondary essay prompts for other medical schools?

Select a school below:

Secondary Essay Prompts By School

*Data collected from MSAR 2022-2023, 2022 Osteopathic Medical College Information Book, and institution website.

Disclaimer: The information on this page was shared by students and/or can be found on each medical school’s website. MedEdits does not guarantee it’s accuracy or authenticity.

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Secondary Essay Prompts – University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine

Secondary Essay Prompts – Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Secondary Essay Prompts – Mayo Medical School, Rochester, MN

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How to Ace Your Brown University Secondaries

By Eric Eng

In the vast landscape of medical school applications, navigating the Brown University secondaries is a critical and challenging step, marking a defining moment in the journey of any aspiring medical professional.

Known officially as The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University , this Ivy League institution is recognized globally for its world-class medical education and research programs. Today, we dive deep into understanding the secondary application process at Brown University, providing you with insights and tips to enhance your chances of securing that coveted acceptance letter.

Understanding Brown University Medical School’s Secondary Application Process

Now let’s take time to understand the process of Brown University secondaries.

Importance of Secondaries in the Admissions Process

Although it may be tempting to view secondary applications as something to simply “get through” and finish, avoid this mindset. The admissions team views secondaries with the same level of importance as they do your primary application: as a window into who you are as a person and a candidate for medical school.

While your primary application provides an overview of your achievements and qualifications, secondaries offer an opportunity to demonstrate how you fit specifically into Brown University’s community. Admissions staff will carefully review your responses to the secondary essay prompts, which will require a thoughtful, well-crafted response.

It is important to note that the secondary application process is not just about demonstrating your academic achievements. Admissions staff are looking for well-rounded individuals who can contribute to the school community in a meaningful way. This means that your responses should not only highlight your academic achievements but also your personal experiences and interests.

For example, if you have experience volunteering at a local hospital, be sure to highlight this in your essay. This will demonstrate your commitment to helping others and your passion for the medical field.

Timeline for Submitting Secondaries

Timing is key when it comes to submitting Brown University secondaries. The sooner you complete and submit your application, the higher your chances are for acceptance. Brown University’s medical school requires that you submit your secondary application within two weeks of receiving it. Keep in mind that “receiving” means the date you get the notification email, not the actual day you retrieve and begin the application.

It is important to note that the two-week timeline is not a suggestion but a requirement. Failure to submit your secondary application on time may result in your application being rejected. Therefore, it is important to plan ahead and ensure that you have enough time to complete the application and submit it before the deadline.

Tips for Staying Organized During the Application Process

It is crucial to develop a system for staying on top of your Brown University Medical School secondary application deadlines and requirements. This will help you submit your application on time without sacrificing the quality of your responses.

One useful tip is to create a timeline for completing your application. This timeline should include deadlines for each section of the application, such as essay prompts and recommendation letters. By breaking down the application into smaller, manageable tasks, you can ensure that you are making progress and staying on track.

Consider creating a spreadsheet that includes deadlines for each school you’re applying to, noting when you invite reviewers, and when you send in essay prompts to them. Alternatively, use a tracking app that will notify you when a deadline is approaching.

If you’re applying to multiple schools, it’s essential to keep track of your essay responses and ensure they are tailored to the specific school’s prompts. One possible approach is to keep a document for each school’s application that includes your essay responses and any additional notes about the program or your candidacy for the school.

Another tip is to ask for feedback from others. This can include family members, friends, or even a professional editor. Getting feedback from others can help you identify areas for improvement and ensure that your responses are clear, concise, and well-written.

Ultimately, the key to a successful secondary application is to be honest, thoughtful, and authentic. Admissions staff are looking for individuals who are passionate about medicine and who are committed to making a difference in the world. By demonstrating your unique qualities and experiences, you can increase your chances of being accepted into Brown University’s Medical School.

How to Approach Brown University Secondaries’ Essay Prompts

Are you interested in applying to Brown University Medical School? If so, it’s essential to understand the essay prompts and how to approach them. Brown seeks to assess whether you’re a good fit for their medical school, so your responses should demonstrate your interest in their approach to medical education and commitment to the practice of medicine.

Analyzing the Essay Prompts

Before you begin writing your responses, it’s important to read through Brown’s essay prompts carefully and analyze what they are looking for. Brown’s essay prompts are designed to help the admissions team learn more about you and what makes you unique.

One of the essential things to do while writing an essay is to research the program and figure out how it aligns with your values and professional aspirations. Make sure to reflect on Brown’s five cornerstones: Science, Compassion, Diversity, Leadership, and Collaboration.

Tips for Writing Compelling Responses

With all the insights you’ve gained from analyzing the essay prompts, it’s time to start putting your thoughts into writing. Here are some tips to help you develop compelling and articulate responses:

• Answer the Prompt: It might seem obvious, but make sure you’re actually responding to the essay prompt. Don’t go off-topic.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Sharing personal anecdotes is often more effective than simply saying something. Sharing a specific story from your life that illustrates your point can infuse messaging with authentic feeling.
• Be Specific: Provide concrete examples to support your ideas. Avoid vague or general statements that could apply to anyone.
• Avoid Overusing Passive Voice: Although it can be tempting to rely on “passive voice” (e.g. “It was decided”), it’s not as effective in demonstrating action or accountability. Use active voice instead.

Remember, you want to stand out from other applicants, so use specific examples and language that shows your unique qualities and experiences.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Your Essays

While writing your essays, make sure to avoid simple mistakes that might distract from a potentially strong essay response:

• Misspellings or Grammatical Errors: Make sure to proofread your work before submitting. A typo or common grammar error may prompt the admissions team to dismiss an otherwise strong essay.
• Generic Responses: Avoid writing bland essay responses that could apply to any school or program. Ensure that your answer reflects both what Brown medical school stands for, and why it’s a good fit for you.
• Disorganized Responses: Don’t pack in too much and make your response confusing or difficult to read. Keep to the prompt at hand.

By keeping these tips in mind, you can craft compelling and articulate responses to Brown University secondaries’ essay prompts. Good luck!

Strategies for Addressing Specific Brown University Medical School Essay Topics

Now with all that information in mind, it is important to strategize how you address specific prompts in your Brown University secondaries.

Discussing Your Interest in Brown’s Unique Curriculum

Brown’s ‘Scholarly Concentrations’ curriculum is one of the most unique aspects of the medical program at Brown University. It allows students to specialize in a particular discipline or problem in medicine, providing them with the opportunity to tailor their education to their interests and career goals. This program encourages students to participate in research, community-based initiatives, and develop a personalized course of study.

If you are interested in this program, it is important to demonstrate your enthusiasm and commitment to this unique aspect of the Brown medical school experience. To write effective responses, take a close look at your interests and explore opportunities that will enable you to continue further that interest. Have you conducted medical research, joined student groups that have perspective on public health advocacy? Use this as a way to showcase your interest and experience.

For example, if you are interested in pursuing a career in pediatrics, you might consider specializing in child health as part of Brown’s Scholarly Concentrations program. You could discuss your interest in this area of medicine and how you plan to use this program to further your career goals. Alternatively, if you are interested in global health, you might consider specializing in international health and using your education to work with underserved communities around the world.

Demonstrating Your Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Brown University is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive community, and this is reflected in the medical school’s admissions process. As a prospective student, it is important to consider these factors when writing your responses. Review the school’s inclusion initiatives and find ways to demonstrate your commitment to these ideals in your responses.

Take time to examine the impact of your experiences and how they’ve influenced your approach to medicine and patient care. Specifically, reflect on aspects of your worldview that might make you a stronger physician candidate. For example, if you have experience working with underserved communities, you might discuss how this experience has shaped your understanding of the importance of cultural competence in healthcare.

It is also important to consider how you plan to contribute to the diversity of the Brown medical school community. This might involve discussing your interest in working with diverse patient populations or your involvement in organizations that promote diversity and inclusion in healthcare.

Highlighting Your Research Experience and Interests

The university encourages medical students to engage in research, and this is reflected in the school’s curriculum and opportunities for students. It is important to highlight research experience in your Brown University secondaries. Utilize your essay response to highlight your past research efforts and interests, and consider how you can apply that experience to your future studies at Brown University’s medical school.

Make sure to articulate the outcomes of your past research experience, detailing what you learned and how you applied this knowledge. Then, consider how this research has informed your future goals and how that fits with the Brown experience. For example, if you have conducted research on the genetics of cancer, you might discuss how this experience has led you to pursue a career in oncology and how you plan to use your education to make a difference in this field.

It is also important to consider the unique research opportunities available at Brown University and how you plan to take advantage of them. For example, if you are interested in neuroscience, you might discuss your interest in working with the Brown Institute for Brain Science and how this experience could further your career goals.

Tips for Revising and Editing Your Secondary Essays

As you work on your secondary essays for medical school, it’s important to take the time to revise and edit your work. Here are some tips to help you refine your responses and make them as strong as possible.

Seeking Feedback from Trusted Sources

One of the best ways to improve your essays is to get feedback from people you trust. This could be a supervisor, professor, former coworker, or family friend who has experience with writing or the medical school application process. Ask them to evaluate the strength and clarity of your responses and provide direct opinions on areas that require improvement. It’s important to keep an open mind and be receptive to constructive criticism, as this can help you identify blind spots and make necessary adjustments.

When seeking feedback, it’s also helpful to provide context about the school you’re applying to and the specific essay prompts you’re responding to. This can help your readers understand your goals and tailor their feedback accordingly.

Ensuring Clarity and Coherence in Your Writing

Another key aspect of revising essays in Brown University secondaries is ensuring that your writing is clear and coherent. While drafting your response, take note of any areas where your thoughts seem muddled or unclear. Consider revising your sentences or paragraphs to improve the flow of your writing and make your ideas more accessible to your readers.

Once you’ve completed your essay, it’s important to re-read it multiple times before submitting it. This can help you identify any issues or inconsistencies and polish your prose for reader appeal. Try reading your essay out loud to yourself or having someone else read it to you, as this can help you catch errors or awkward phrasing that you might miss when reading silently.

Avoiding Redundancy and Overused Phrases

Finally, it’s important to avoid using overused phrases or elements that don’t add value to your essay. Common phrases like “I am passionate about medicine” or “I have always wanted to be a doctor” can come across as cliched or insincere, and may not help distinguish you from other applicants.

Instead, try to use your experiences or unique perspectives to express why you genuinely care about medicine and why you would be a good fit for Brown University’s medical school. Consider using specific examples or anecdotes to illustrate your points and make your essay more engaging and memorable.

By following these tips, you can improve the quality of your secondary essays and increase your chances of standing out to admissions committees. Good luck!

Applying to medical school is an arduous process, and the Brown University secondaries represent one of many important milestones along the journey. Though challenging, this stage of the application provides an incredible opportunity to showcase your dedication to medicine, commitment to service, and ability to thrive within Brown’s diverse, collaborative, and innovative medical community.

Remember, the pursuit of a medical career is as much about the journey as the destination. Embrace each step, including the secondaries, as a learning experience that not only brings you closer to your goal of attending medical school but also shapes you into the compassionate and skilled healthcare professional you aspire to be. Here’s wishing you all the best in this endeavor!

How AdmissionSight can help you with college admissions

AdmissionSight is a college consulting firm that provides personalized assistance to students throughout the college admissions process. Here are some ways that AdmissionSight can help you:

Admissions strategy: AdmissionSight can help you develop a strategic plan for your college application process. Our professional consultants can assist with identifying schools that are a good fit for your academic, extracurricular, and personal goals and help you plan and prioritize your application strategy.

Application review: AdmissionSight can review your application and provide feedback on how to improve it. We can offer suggestions on how to make your application stand out and highlight your strengths and unique qualities.

Essay coaching: AdmissionSight can help you craft compelling essays that showcase your personality, goals, and achievements. We can guide you through the essay writing process and provide feedback on your drafts to help you refine your writing.

Interview preparation: AdmissionSight can provide interview coaching to help you feel confident and prepared for your college interviews. Our experts can offer tips on how to present yourself professionally and how to answer common interview questions.

Extracurricular planning: AdmissionSight can help you plan and develop your extracurricular activities to make them more impactful and meaningful. We can suggest activities that align with your interests and goals and provide guidance on how to demonstrate your leadership and initiative.

Overall, AdmissionSight can provide valuable guidance and support throughout the college admissions process to help you maximize your chances of getting accepted into the college of your choice .

With a high success rate of over 75%, we have built a strong network in the past decade. Book an initial consultation today, free of charge!

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Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School Interview Feedback

• Jul 3, 2024

anyone having issues logging into the portal for secondaries?  

can someone share the prompts?  

Basalganglia4life

HonorPlant said: anyone having issues logging into the portal for secondaries? Click to expand...

Basalganglia4life said: when did you receive a secondary? Click to expand...

thunderlight8

darchen02 said: share prompts pls Click to expand...

HonorPlant said: I literally cannot log in. Click to expand...

Eldenring22

Supercoolkid2000.

• Jul 4, 2024

please post the prompts  

Yung_Zymogen

• Jul 5, 2024

Would someone be able to post the prompts?  

• Jul 7, 2024

Received an email stating they were having issues and the system will be fix Monday and those who submitted will get to see the secondary  

pikachu8923

• Jul 9, 2024

Official 2024-2025 Alpert Questions: Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle? * NOTE: Interviews occur on Thursday’s and/or Friday’s beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any significant limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. You may use the text box below to explain your limited availability. (if none, leave blank) * 1. Summarize your activities during the 2024-2025 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters) 2. How will your unique attributes, life experiences, and interests add to The Warren Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters) 3. Reflect on a non-academic situation when you had to change course, and how you did so. (2000 characters) (3000 characters) Please note that the last one IS **3000** characters!! So it is different from the prior 2. @chilly_md  

pikachu8923 said: Official 2024-2025 Alpert Questions: Do you have significant limitations on your interview availability for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle? * NOTE: Interviews occur on Thursday’s and/or Friday’s beginning in mid-September and finishing in February. Please detail any significant limitations on your availability during this time, such as international travel, work or courses. You may use the text box below to explain your limited availability. (if none, leave blank) * 1. Summarize your activities during the 2024-2025 academic year. Describe how your activities are preparing you for a medical career. (2000 characters) 2. How will your unique attributes, life experiences, and interests add to The Warren Alpert Medical School community? (2000 characters) 3. Reflect on a non-academic situation when you had to change course, and how you did so. (2000 characters) (3000 characters) Please note that the last one IS **3000** characters!! So it is different from the prior 2. @chilly_md Click to expand...

BiomedEGR777

OOS +1 today  

Med School Applicant

BiomedEGR777 said: OOS +1 today Click to expand...

Hey just a heads up for anyone who’s still waiting on a secondary: Brown has a primary care/population medicine combined degree option, and if you select that you’re interested in it, you have two additional essay prompts: 1.) In your opinion, what is one of the most pressing concerns in healthcare? If given unlimited resources, how do you envision beginning to tackle this issue? (2000 characters) 2.) Describe your vision and goals for your primary care medicine career and any experiences that have helped develop it. How might you accomplish the dual roles of improving individual health and the health of populations? (2000 characters)  

findingdory

Neuroscie23 said: +2 Click to expand...

dori2425 said: When were you guys verified? Click to expand...

[For my premed family member] +1 OOS secondary received today Submitted 5/31, Verified 6/21.  

Anyone else not received secondaries yet?  

whocoven said: Anyone else not received secondaries yet? Click to expand...

Me! submitted 5/28 and verified 6/7  

for the question "Reflect on a non-academic situation when you had to change course, and how you did so." would talking about research be fine, or would that be considered academic?  

Plain-spoken Texan

Neuroscie23 said: for the question "Reflect on a non-academic situation when you had to change course, and how you did so." would talking about research be fine, or would that be considered academic? Click to expand...

wysdoc said: That’s the epitome of academic Click to expand...

• Jul 10, 2024

For the third prompt, would not knowing what to do with my life for several years after graduating college, and then moving into healthcare and deciding on medicine be considered non-academic? I know returning to school was the end result of changing course, but most of the essay is about the initial challenge and reflection that got me there.  

Zirah said: For the third prompt, would not knowing what to do with my life for several years after graduating college, and then moving into healthcare and deciding on medicine be considered non-academic? I know returning to school was the end result of changing course, but most of the essay is about the initial challenge and reflection that got me there. Click to expand...

firefriedchicken

if we fulfill the pre-reqs through courses, we're leaving the "alternative courses" section blank right  

OOS Secondary received this morning (10:30 EST)  

+1 INTL this morning too  

PassionFruit57

+1 OOS  

when they ask for interview availability, does that mean its in person only this year?  

bsajeev said: when they ask for interview availability, does that mean its in person only this year? Click to expand...

libero16 said: MSAR says virtually Click to expand...

antiquekitkat

• Jul 15, 2024

anyone else still waiting on a secondary? I've been verified since 7/3. starting to get worried.  

Me! Primary submitted 6/28, but only added this school on 7/11. OOS  

PassionFruit57 said: +1 OOS Click to expand...

scatteredbrainiac

antiquekitkat said: anyone else still waiting on a secondary? I've been verified since 7/3. starting to get worried. Click to expand...

SubwayFiveDollarFootlong

• Jul 17, 2024

For the third question, could I talk about being a re-applicant or is that considered academic as well?  

do y'all think i could talk about how i kept gaining weight and then changed to a weight loss regimen to lose weight for prompt 3  

Baller27 said: do y'all think i could talk about how i kept gaining weight and then changed to a weight loss regimen to lose weight for prompt 3 Click to expand...

would be it ok to talk about an experience from high school  

Basalganglia4life said: i think it is less the situation and more the reflection. Like how/what this challenge taught you about yourself. How you can apply these learnings to the future? I think the main thing they want in these challenge questions is how you have developed inner strength and resilience Click to expand...

• Jul 18, 2024

goge69 said: I talked about my weight gain journey lmao Click to expand...

+1 OOS just now!  

scatteredbrainiac said: same. we will get it tho. don't worry Click to expand...

+1 OOS for listing prerequisites, should we list ALL courses that fall in each category, or just enough to satisfy their minimum requirement? Some schools tell us to just list the minimum requirement but Brown doesn't have a specific rule.  

Similar threads

• Apr 12, 2024

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Extracurriculars.

How to Write the Brown University and PLME Essays 2023-2024

Brown has one of the more extensive supplemental essay packages out there, with three 250-word supplements and four shorter responses required for all applicants. In addition to these seven prompts, applicants to the dual degree program with Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) will need to explain their interest in the program through a 650-word personal statement, and applicants to the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME) will need to do the same through three 250-word essays.

Even if you aren’t applying to either of these specialized programs, you still have seven prompts to respond to, so make sure you leave yourself enough time to give your Brown application the attention it deserves. In this post, we’ll break down how you want to approach each prompt, so you can be confident that your essays will help set you apart even within one of the most competitive applicant pools in the country.

Read these Brown essay examples written by real students to inspire your writing!

Brown University Supplemental Essay Prompts

All applicants.

Prompt 1: Brown’s Open Curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. Tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might use the Open Curriculum to pursue them while also embracing topics with which you are unfamiliar. (200-250 words)

Prompt 2: Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)

Prompt 3: Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. Students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. Whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (200-250 words)

Prompt 4: What three words best describe you? (3 words)

Prompt 5: What is your most meaningful extracurricular commitment, and what would you like us to know about it? (100 words)

Prompt 6: If you could teach a class on any one thing, whether academic or otherwise, what would it be? (100 words)

Prompt 7: In one sentence, Why Brown? (50 words)

RISD Dual Degree Applicants

Prompt 1: The Brown | RISD Dual Degree Program draws on the complementary strengths of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) to provide students with the opportunity to explore diverse spheres of academic and creative inquiry, culminating in a capstone project that interrelates the content, approaches, and methods from two distinct learning experiences.

Based on your understanding of the academic programs at Brown and RISD and the possibilities created by the BRDD program’s broadened learning community, specifically describe how and why the BRDD program would constitute an optimal undergraduate education for you. As part of your answer, be sure to articulate how you might contribute to the Dual Degree community and its commitment to interdisciplinary work. (100-650 words)

PLME Applicants

Prompt 1: Committing to a future career as a physician while in high school requires careful consideration and self-reflection. Explain your personal motivation to pursue a career in medicine. (250 words) 

Prompt 2: Healthcare is constantly changing as it is affected by racial and social inequities, economics, politics, technology, and more. Imagine that you are a physician and describe one way in which you would seek to make a positive impact in today’s healthcare environment. (250 words) 

Prompt 3: How do you envision the Program in Liberal Medical Education helping to meet your academic, personal and professional goals as a person and future physician? (250 words)

All Applicants, Prompt 1

Brown’s open curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might use the open curriculum to pursue them while also embracing topics with which you are unfamiliar. (200-250 words) . .

This is essentially a “ Why This Major ” essay, designed to understand your academic interests and how you might take advantage of the Open Curriculum.

The first step is to take the time to ponder what it is about your selected subject that you really gravitate towards, and try to establish exactly why you want to study that subject (or subjects). The prompt urges you to think about why you are excited by your academic interests, so push yourself to think beyond “I’m really good at it” or “I have an excellent teacher.” 

The short essay is only 250 words, so aim to focus your interests on a maximum of two areas. Once you have established your key interests and taken the time to ponder why you’re drawn to them, examine your reasoning and try to find an underlying connection between the two fields. Alternatively, consider presenting an interdisciplinary field that connects the two subjects, and emphasize the opportunities presented at Brown through its particular courses/programs/majors that would allow you to pursue your interdisciplinary interests. If there isn’t a connection between the two subjects, that’s totally okay, too!

While this prompt might appear to only ask about your academic interests, it is also asking what you would like to study while at Brown (it is a Brown supplemental essay, after all). Admissions officers also want to know how you’ll use Brown’s resources (and the Open Curriculum) to achieve your academic goals.

But what about those who are undecided? There’s no need to worry if you’re not sure what you’ll study. You can simply mention your top 1-2 interests and why Brown is a good fit for you to develop those interests. It might be helpful to know that Brown is one of the few universities that allows you to construct your own major; if applicable, you can mention your desire to turn your multiple interests into a unique interdisciplinary major.

Below are several examples to illustrate meshing two seemingly contrasting interests into a potential future academic pursuit at Brown:

Example 1: Perhaps you’re interested in biology and geology. You could weave your interests together by emphasizing your insatiable curiosity for understanding both living and physical systems, and reference an example of something your desire to understand systems-thinking has led you to do in the past, or reflect on how this experience challenged your assumptions, etc. Your narrative could incorporate experiences that illustrate your interest in each subject – you can talk about a science fair project you worked on, a class you struggled in but overcame, a lab experiment you participated in, or a younger student you tutored, etc. Focus on the common reasons you are attracted to both subjects. You can mention the opportunity to pursue the joint Geo-Bio degree offered through the Department of Earth, Environment, and Planetary Sciences at Brown, without abandoning your interests in poetry and anthropology through the opportunities presented by the Open Curriculum. 

Example 2: Let’s imagine that you are interested in politics, activism, or community work, but you also are passionate about music and have been playing piano for many years. You could discuss your experiences on a political internship or your role in your school’s model UN, and discuss the opportunities available at Brown, through the Brown in Washington program or the Swearer Center for Public Service. However, you could also discuss the piano concert you organized and performed in to fundraise for your community’s homeless shelter. Whenever possible, selecting an example that bridges your seemingly contrasting interests can create a very compelling essay. You could conclude by explaining that you are aiming to use the Open Curriculum to explore the impact of music on the influence of political campaigns and a candidate’s perception, or on exploring the connection between music, Alzheimer’s, and memory, etc. 

All Applicants, Prompt 2

Students entering brown often find that making their home on college hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the brown community. (200-250 words).

Brainstorming Your Topic

While the phrasing is a little different, this is essentially a Diversity Essay . You want to share something about who you are that sets you apart from other applicants to Brown, and explain how it would make you a valuable addition to Brown’s campus community.

Before you start brainstorming which part of your identity you want to write about, do remember that the way colleges evaluate race specifically will be different this year, and moving forward, after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June. Schools are not allowed to factor race into their broader admissions strategies, but they can consider it on an individual level through the essay. So, if your racial identity is an important part of who you are, this is a good opportunity to share it with admissions officers.

Of course, you are also welcome to write about a different part of your identity. The things that make us diverse aren’t just race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and the other features that normally first come to people’s minds when they hear the word “diversity.” Even the prompt itself casts a wide net, with the phrase “an aspect of your growing up.” In addition to the features just listed, that could also refer to hobbies, interests, your family culture, and pretty much any lived experience. Less traditional topics in this vein could include:

• Teaching yourself Elvish, the fictional language from Lord of the Rings
• Biking to school every day while your friends drove or took the bus
• Baking all the birthday cakes in your family from the time you were seven
• Raising chickens in the backyard of your suburban house

The only real rule here is that you choose a part of your identity that will help Brown admissions officers better understand who you are, and what you’ll look like as a college student. So long as that’s the case, anything is fair game.

Tips for Writing Your Essay

Once you’ve selected a topic, the thing you want to make clear in your actual essay is how this “aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you .” Like “aspect of your growing up,” “inspired or challenged” gives you a lot of flexibility, but what Brown admissions officers are saying is that they want to understand not just what sets you apart from other applicants, but why that thing is crucial to understanding who you are as a whole.

In other words, you don’t just want to say “I live with my grandparents, who spent most of their lives in Germany, and don’t speak very good English.” You want to go deeper, explaining how this dynamic made you feel, and how it shaped your personality and overall perspective on the world.

There’s no one right way to do that—only you know how this piece of your identity has impacted you. The most important thing is to just be honest, rather than trying to structure your response around what you think Brown wants to see. If you try to force a connection to a particular value, that disconnect will show. To illustrate our point here, compare the following two excerpts from hypothetical essays:

Excerpt 1: “I sometimes felt awkward when I had friends over, as my grandparents could do little more than wave and stumble over a heavily accented ‘How are you?’ But I always got over my embarrassment quickly, because cultural heritage is something to celebrate, since the only way we can learn is from engaging with those who are different from us.”

Excerpt 2: “When I was little, I didn’t see any issue with my grandparents not speaking English: they were my family, and that was all that mattered. But when I got older and started having friends over, their perplexed reactions to my grandpa’s heavily accented ‘How are you?’ caused me to feel a twang of shame—and then, a pinch of anger with myself, for being ashamed of my own family.”

While celebration of cultural differences is of course a wonderful thing, in the first excerpt the writer seems to be skipping ahead to their appreciation of this value, and glossing over a more complicated emotional journey in the process. 

In the second example, on the other hand, they are unafraid to be vulnerable, and share their true feelings about this experience. As a result, we have a much clearer sense of both who they are and how they became that person, which are exactly the questions admissions officers want you to answer in your essays. Plus, if they talk later on about the appreciation for cultural difference they eventually took away from this experience, we will have seen exactly how they developed this appreciation, which will make their connection to this value feel much more genuine.

One last tip here: try to rely on specific anecdotes as much as possible to illustrate your points. Both excerpts above draw on a tangible example of a moment (having friends over and their grandparents being unable to greet them) that made them wrestle with their identity. That specificity gives us a much clearer sense of how this student grew through this experience, whereas a general line like “Sometimes, I was proud of my heritage, but other times I was embarrassed” would leave us with a lot of questions about what caused the student to feel this back-and-forth.

Mistakes to Avoid

The biggest potential pitfall in a diversity essay is only sharing part of your identity, and not taking the next step outlined above of explaining how it’s relevant to understanding what kind of  college student you’ll be. If you don’t get to this deeper level of reflection, admissions officers may find themselves saying “Okay, we know [x] about you, but how does that help us figure out whether or not you’re a good match for Brown?”

All Applicants, Prompt 3

Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (200-250 words) .

This essay prompt is very similar to the extracurricular essay archetype. However, there is a subtle difference in that this prompt allows you to discuss out-of-school activities and academic subjects. This would be a good place to demonstrate your love for a specific topic or activity that you included in other parts of your application. Or, if there is a very important part of your personality that hasn’t been captured by the rest of your application, you can write about that here. 

Pick a topic that genuinely interests you. Don’t write an essay about how you love titrating acids and bases to sound “impressive” or “intellectual” if you groan every time you walk into the chemistry lab. Admissions officers have read enough essays to tell when a student’s tone and details depict a genuine interest in a topic. You are given so much freedom, so you really should write about whatever brings you joy. Maybe you love trying styling hair and nothing brings you as much joy as when you are backstage at your school show and you are styling, braiding, and pinning all of the actors’ hair. A topic like this is unique to the student, and since they are genuinely passionate about hairstyling, it will shine through in their writing.

A strong extracurricular essay will either show your emotions and state of mind when you participate in your activity, or how that activity has helped you develop new skills and personality traits. A great essay will do both. Like the other prompts, there is a limited word count to convey not only why you enjoy this activity so much, but how you have improved as a result of this activity. Here’s an example that accomplishes both of these:

“It was a hot day in New Orleans and the crowd stuffed together certainly didn’t make things better. Necks were craning to see the spectacle in the middle of the circle. I tugged on my dad’s shirt, and he placed me on top of his shoulders for the best seat in the house. My heart raced every time the daring performer threw a sword up – I really thought he’d eventually slice his hand open. But it was perfect every time. By the end of our trip, I had tried my hand at juggling everything from toothbrushes to balls of socks. My mom was not as enthusiastic when I collected everybody’s knives at dinner to mimic the juggler’s final trick. When I finally got a juggling kit for my next birthday, I devoted every second of my free time to practicing moves I saw on YouTube. With more and more practice, I could tell how long it would take for an object to reach its zenith just by the weight in my hand. At times, the level of control and focus I put into juggling is exhausting, but if I lose focus for one second, I run the risk of serious injury. Some tricks have taken years to perfect, but the gratification when I’ve mastered a new skill makes all my patience worth it. Nothing will be as thrilling as the day my audience’s hearts race with me as I catch a sword in my hand.”

While this example is a little over the word count, the student’s passion for juggling is clearly evident. The reader sees what sparked this student’s interest, how it has developed, and how juggling has affected the student. By tying the conclusion back to the anecdote at the beginning, the essay has a satisfying conclusion that makes the reader feel this student is highly motivated by their passion and dreams, which is exactly what Brown is looking for.

All Applicants, Prompt 4

What three words best describe you (3 words).

This prompt is as clear, straightforward, and short as you could ask for, but with supplemental essays, that unfortunately doesn’t automatically mean writing your response will be easy. Obviously, you have no space to elaborate on why you chose the three words you did, so you need to give yourself time to think deeply about your words.

The best advice we can give is to, as you brainstorm, remember two of the main purposes of the college essay. First, to set yourself apart from other applicants with strong academic and extracurricular resumes. Second, to give admissions officers information that can’t be found elsewhere in your application.

Keeping these two ideas in mind will hopefully help you use your three words as effectively as possible. For example, you don’t want to use flattering but vague adjectives like “smart,” “talented,” “funny,” or “creative” because those are words that most other applicants to Brown would also use to describe themselves. You also want to avoid highlighting a feature of yourself that already comes across in another part of your application—if your activities list says that you’ve earned 10 varsity letters, admissions officers already know you’re athletic, so don’t waste one of your precious three words on repeating that here.

Instead, try to pick descriptive, precise words that pick out some feature of your personality that, for whatever reason, doesn’t yet come across in your application. Only you know how to apply that advice to yourself, but here is a list of words that communicate a clear, tangible personality trait, and thus would teach admissions officers something substantive about who you are:

• Sentimental
• Adventurous

Hopefully, this list gives you a clearer sense of what kind of words you should be considering. You only have three, so use them wisely!

All Applicants, Prompt 5

What is your most meaningful extracurricular commitment, and what would you like us to know about it (100 words).

This is a textbook example of the “Extracurricular” essay , which is one you may well have already written for another school. If you do already have a version of this essay on hand, you are welcome to write about the same topic. However, you will still need to dedicate time to this prompt, as this essay’s word count is likely much lower than that of your other essay (usually, this kind of prompt has a word count in the 200-250 range), and you don’t want your essay to feel like an abridged version of another one. We’ll get into how to avoid that in the next section.

If you haven’t yet written this kind of essay, or if you have but want to write about something new, note that “most meaningful” can be read in a variety of ways. Perhaps you are inspired to write about classic extracurricular activities, like a sport, a club, volunteer work, or a part-time job. Those are all fantastic options, but you can also write about more unconventional activities if none of those things feel quite right, as “extracurricular activity” can refer to just about anything you do outside of the classroom.

For example, you could write about how you make trinkets out of the feathers that get left at your bird feeder. You could also write about your neighborhood’s caroling group, and how going door to door each year is your favorite part of the holiday season. Or you could describe teaching baseball to your much younger neighbor after watching you practice made him want to learn the sport.

While you probably don’t do any of these things, hopefully these examples of more unusual activities help you brainstorm things you do in your own life that could work for this prompt. Remember, like any college essay, the point of this prompt is to help admissions officers better understand who you are, so as long as your activity will help you do that, it’s fair game here.

If you’re writing about the same topic as another essay, you can certainly use that other one for inspiration, and potentially even use some of the same lines. There are only so many hours in the day, and recycling previous work can be a good time-saver.

However, you want to make sure this essay feels like a cohesive, independent unit, not like a Frankenstein’s monster pieced together from parts of another essay. So, don’t just pluck enough sentences to get you to 100 words and call it good. Rather, think about the ideas you express in that essay, and try to capture those same sentiments in a smaller package. 

As noted above, that may involve using a sentence or two from the other essay, but you will almost certainly need to generate new sentences, or rephrase existing ones, and of course pay attention to the structure to make sure the flow, progression from one idea to the next, and so on all make sense.

If you’re starting from scratch, the most important thing to do is make sure you answer the second half of this prompt: what do you want admissions officers to know about this activity? In other words, don’t just tell them “I do [x] in my free time.” Rather, explain how this activity has helped you grow, so that Brown admissions officers can see why your involvement in it is relevant to the kind of college student you’ll be.

Obviously, you don’t have a ton of room to do this, but you still want to rely on the old adage for college essays, “show, don’t tell,” as much as possible. Usually, that means describing specific anecdotes or life experiences in enough detail that you don’t have to tell your reader directly how the activity shaped you, because they can see it for themselves. Here, you don’t have the space to provide a ton of detail, but you still want to at least reference tangible examples to illustrate your points, as otherwise your essay may end up feeling cheesy or impersonal.

To see the difference between the two approaches, compare these two example responses:

Example 1: “ When I started volunteering at the Everett animal shelter, I wasn’t that excited about a lot of the tasks I had to do. I mainly just wanted something to do on the weekends. But as time went on, I started to find joy and fulfillment in duties that had previously just bored me. Now, I have a much more positive outlook when I try new things, because this experience taught me that learning and growth can happen in a lot of different ways–often ways you never even expected up front.”

Example 2: “My first day volunteering at the Everett animal shelter, I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose and try to hold in my vomit as I scrubbed the cages of kittens and puppies that weren’t yet potty-trained. But gradually, I stopped noticing the smell as much, and instead started paying attention to how joyful the animals were afterward to be able to play freely, without avoiding soiled areas. Today, I try to approach everything in my life with the mindset that even tedious or gross tasks can be fulfilling if you consciously focus on the greater purpose of what you’re doing.”

The ideas conveyed in these two examples are the same. But the second one includes a specific example of a task they found unpleasant (cleaning cages), and describes what exactly made them start to change their mindset (seeing the animals happy in their clean cages). As a result, we get a more engaging story, which teaches us not just what the student learned from this experience, but also how they learned it.

The main thing you want to be on the lookout for here is using your space inefficiently, since you already have so little of it. Specifically, remember that this essay is not the only thing in your application, so you want to give your reader new information about yourself, rather than repeating details that can already be found elsewhere.

For example, if you already wrote your Common App essay about your experiences volunteering at the animal shelter, you’ll want to pick a different topic for this essay. Even if you feel you can shine a different light on the experience, you’ve already spent 650 words on it. Use these 100 to introduce Brown admissions officers to something entirely new about yourself.

Additionally, remember that, if you’re writing about something that appears in your activities list, admissions officers already know how long you’ve been involved in it, and how often you do it. So, an introductory line like “During my sophomore year, I started volunteering at the animal shelter every week,” is a waste of 13% of your space, as admissions officers already know that. 

Even if you choose an extracurricular that doesn’t appear in your activities list, you don’t really need to provide these kinds of factual details unless they’re essential to understanding the point you’re trying to make. For example, maybe you were feeling overwhelmed your freshman year of high school, and teaching your neighbor baseball helped remind you that you do have things you’re good at. Otherwise, those words could be used more efficiently.

All Applicants, Prompt 6

If you could teach a class on any one thing, whether academic or otherwise, what would it be (100 words).

You’re not even a high school graduate yet, and here Brown is dropping you into a professor’s shoes—what an amazing opportunity! As you think about which course you’re going to offer, note that Brown is casting an incredibly wide net with this prompt: you can teach about any subject, even a non-academic one. Admissions officers want to see your creativity, because once you get to college, you will be able to take a much, much wider variety of classes, and admissions officers want to see that you’re ready to take advantage of that freedom.

Plus, like with any college essay, your goal here is to share a side of yourself that isn’t reflected in any other part of your application, and the looser nature of this prompt makes this a great opportunity to share something that wouldn’t appear in a transcript or activities list. So, don’t be afraid to think outside the box and have some fun! Do you have any interests that are a huge part of your life, but unrelated to your academic or extracurricular passions? Tell us about them here! Is there something you’ve always been inexplicably fascinated by, to the point that it’s shaped how you’ve grown up? This is the place to describe it!

To give you a sense of just how creative you can get, here is a list of example topics you could write about:

• Using statistics to account for potential injuries when drafting your fantasy football team
• Theories and conspiracies about how the pyramids were built
• The incredible variation in Italian food from one region to another
• The chemistry behind making the perfect, sticky-but-not-too-sticky, sushi rice
• Extreme climates, like a desert in Chile that hasn’t gotten rain in hundreds of years

While the prompt only explicitly asks what you would teach about, the thing to bring out in your response is the implied “and why” at the end. You don’t want your response to be just about the history of making sushi rice. While that might be informative, it won’t help Brown admissions officers visualize you as part of their campus community.

Instead, use your topic as a lens to shine light on some feature of your personality. In other words, ask yourself what your interest in this subject says about you overall. For example, maybe dealing with the randomness of injuries to highly drafted players in your fantasy league has helped you accept that some things are ultimately outside of your control, no matter how hard you try to account for them. Alternatively, perhaps learning about the most extreme climates on earth makes you feel awe for the variety present in nature, which in turn inspires you to think about the variety of things you could do with your life.

The most important thing is that your interest in this topic is clearly connected to your growth and development. If that connection is vague or doesn’t seem particularly logical, your response may feel disjointed or impersonal. But so long as your explanation is honest and thoughtful, admissions officers should come away from your essay with a more comprehensive, nuanced understanding of what makes you tick, both intellectually and personally.

Really, the only thing you want to avoid in your response is not taking advantage of this opportunity to be creative. Even if you want to write about a conventional academic subject, like math or English, approach it from an unusual angle, like the example listed in the “Brainstorming” section about using statistics to help you in your fantasy football draft. That will prove to admissions officers that you aren’t just smart, but also curious and imaginative, and also show them a new side of you—the side that plays fantasy football—that probably doesn’t show up anywhere else in your application.

All Applicants, Prompt 7

In one sentence, why brown (50 words).

While writing the supplements for the other schools on your list, you have likely come across this “Why This College?” prompt. However, because Brown is giving you only 50 words, the usual approach to this kind of essay—citing several school-specific resources and explaining how they’ll help you achieve your goals—doesn’t work, as you just don’t have room to do that.

That being said, you still want to be precise in your response. The classic rule for this kind of essay, that you shouldn’t be able to swap in another school’s name and still have your response make sense, still applies. And 50 words is more than you think. While you don’t have space to incorporate academic, extracurricular, and social opportunities at Brown the way you normally would, you can still highlight one particular resource at Brown that interests you and give admissions officers a sense of why you’re drawn to it. 

Here’s an example of a response that accomplishes everything laid out in the previous paragraph:

“Brown’s spirit is making interdisciplinary connections, which I would do through the Brown in Bologna program by further exploring the Italian culture my grandparents preserved even after immigrating to Boston, and simultaneously informing myself about another country’s educational system so that I am better prepared to solve global educational inequalities.”

This response is exactly 50 words, and uses them efficiently to show admissions officers this student is a good fit for their school by explaining how they would take advantage of the opportunities available at Brown. To do the same in your own response, just make sure that you choose a resource that directly and concretely connects to your goals for college, rather than something you’re only sort of interested in. If you don’t already have a clear sense of what you want to say, 50 words isn’t enough to explain why you might be interested in something—you need to already know you are, and why.

One last note: “the Open Curriculum” doesn’t work as the kind of school-specific resource we’re talking about. While this is one of the school’s most famous distinguishing features, remember that the point of any college essay is to help set yourself apart from other applicants, and anyone who applies to Brown is at least somewhat drawn to the Open Curriculum. 

To give admissions officers a clear sense of how you personally would fit into Brown’s campus community, you’ll need to get more specific, by instead referencing a research opportunity, particular academic offering, or study abroad program (as in the example above). Then, explain how that resource reflects the broader culture of Brown, and how it connects to your own priorities and hopes for your time in college. Fitting all of this in isn’t easy, but again, it can be done. We believe in you!

RISD Applicants, Prompt 1

The brown|risd dual degree program draws on the complementary strengths of brown university and rhode island school of design (risd) to provide students with the opportunity to explore diverse spheres of academic and creative inquiry, culminating in a capstone project that interrelates the content, approaches, and methods from two distinct learning experiences., based on your understanding of the academic programs at brown and risd and the possibilities created by the brdd program’s broadened learning community, specifically describe how and why the brdd program would constitute an optimal undergraduate education for you. as part of your answer, be sure to articulate how you might contribute to the dual degree community and its commitment to interdisciplinary work. (100-650 words) .

The Brown-RISD Dual Degree program is an intense, highly selective (2-3% acceptance) program in which students must get accepted to both Brown and RISD based on their respective criterion, and then be approved by a joint committee. Students in the program exhibit an intense degree of intellectual rigor, as well as a broad ranging curiosity for both an arts and liberal arts education. The key here is to convince the readers that you are a good fit in this specific program, rather than as a Brown student who takes a few RISD classes or a RISD student who takes a few Brown classes.

In this essay, you must be specific about why you would be a better fit spending five years getting degrees from both Brown and RISD rather than getting one degree from either of the schools. You must show that it is necessary for you to get both degrees, and how you would like to use the knowledge you gain from both schools in your future. It’s incredibly important to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of your goals, as this is specifically called out in the prompt.  

With 650 available words, this essay should feature the same depth as your Common App essay, and should complement it. Although the two should not overlap in content, you can definitely expand on topics you briefly touched on in one essay in the other. Here are a few possible avenues you could explore in this essay:

(1) Students in the program stretch the gamut of possible Brown + RISD major combinations: furniture and applied mathematics, computer science and industrial design, and comparative literature and painting. The program prides itself on this diversity, so explain how your passions and interests are disparate, but also connected to your overall identity. Talk about how being surrounded with other Brown-RISD students will foster your wide-ranging intellectual and artistic curiosities even further.

(2) If you ultimately want to become an artist, you could talk about how important the liberal arts have been and will be for you. Maybe you find literature critical for escaping into the worlds you want to create visually, and you want to dive deeper during your undergraduate years.

(3) Maybe you want to study both biology and industrial design, because you want to base your design work on biomimicry. You could talk about how you would draw equally from both fields, and how you want to design better transportation devices that take from the best methods of nature.

(4) Say you’ve always been interested in your Korean heritage and finding ways to express that through art. As a result, you want to study East Asian history at Brown, where you will understand the context that your parents immigrated out of, and textiles at RISD, where you can craft bojagi (Korean wrapping cloth) with a sensitivity to its historical context.

(5) Maybe you’ve always been passionate about both art and liberal arts, but have no concrete connection between the two, and that’s also perfectly fine. You could talk about how you want to further explore and hone in these passions, so that by your second year of undergrad, you’ll have a stronger idea of what specifically you want to study.

Your art portfolio, Common App essay, and other supplemental essays will also speak volumes about who you are, so make sure to use this essay to highlight parts of yourself previously unmentioned. You’ve also probably spent the previous essays explaining “why Brown,” so use this essay to delve deep into why you would thrive in an arts and design centered environment in conjunction with Brown’s liberal arts curriculum.

PLME Applicants Only

Brown’s Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME) is a prestigious 8 year BS/MD program in which accepted students are automatically accepted into Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School. For more about PLME, check out our comprehensive guide .

PLME Applicants, Prompt 1

Committing to a future career as a physician while in high school requires careful consideration and self-reflection. explain your personal motivation to pursue a career in medicine. (250 words).

The Program in Liberal Medical Education (as well as other accelerated medical programs) is a huge commitment for 17 and 18 year olds, who are essentially saying that they know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. As a result, Brown admissions officers want to accept candidates whom they believe have tangible reasons as to why they want to become doctors. These reasons may include clinical and laboratory experience, as well as a general passion to improve the well being of others.

In this prompt, reflecting on past experiences is critical. Whether that is shadowing a pediatrician at your local hospital for a summer, volunteering with an organization like the Red Cross, or doing lab research on pancreatic cancer, let the admissions team know that you have past experiences engaging in clinical or laboratory work, and that these experiences have increased your desire to enter the medical profession.

Moreover, bring in your past experiences with the healthcare field, such as seeing a loved relation hospitalized, if they instilled within you a desire to eventually enter and better the industry. As a warning, however, it is easy to fall into the cliche of witnessing an older relative, usually a grandparent, pass away due to illness, and afterwards deciding to pursue medicine as a career. In cases such as these, make sure to make the experience as unique to you as possible, and use this experience as a jumping off point to other activities you have done pertaining to the health field.  

Afterwards, brainstorm the key values you hold for your life. If you are not sure of your values, think back to how you have spent your time: if you’ve spent significant amounts of time volunteering out of goodwill, or caring for family members, or tutoring your peers, chances are, your values may center around caring for others in need, and looking beyond yourself, both of which are critical components of good doctors. A love for interacting with other people and learning about them is a key component in being a doctor, so make sure to illustrate this point through your experiences. Using concrete things you’ve done in the past to color your values is much more powerful than just stating “my values are helping those in need.”

You could even talk about other extracurriculars you’ve tried, but simply did not enjoy as much as health-related activities, to further cement how being a doctor is the only foreseeable career route you see yourself being fulfilled and satisfied in. Overall, just go off your past experiences in health related fields, your current ideas and beliefs, and your future dreams and goals.

PLME Applicants, Prompt 2

Healthcare is constantly changing as it is affected by racial and social inequities, economics, politics, technology, and more. imagine that you are a physician and describe one way in which you would seek to make a positive impact in today’s healthcare environment. (250 words).

Your essay should look to the future and answer how you will address a specific issue you see in health care today. Maybe you are concerned with high maternal mortality rates among mothers from lower socioeconomic statuses, and you want to work as an OBGYN in underprivileged areas to provide mothers with more attentive care. Possibly you are interested in developing a pill that will instantly stop bug bites from itching, because after years of your family’s annual camping trip you know how pesky bug bites can be.

Once you identify this specific aspect of health care which you are interested in and why you are interested, you should go into detail about how you hope to improve this issue. A student who already has experience with their issue might write about how in high school she tried to deter students from vaping by forming a Students Against Nicotine club at her school. However, once she has a medical background, she plans to specialize in respiratory illnesses so she can give talks at schools about the science behind what vaping does to a person’s lungs. Another student might not have prior experience with racial disparities in health care, but they know that they want to address the toxic stress minority communities face which contributes to major health complications. This student could discuss their plan to popularize a method for identifying and prescribing toxic stress as a medical condition.

It’s important that your response to this prompt includes what you are interested in doing as a physician, where you learned about this issue or what sparked your interest in this specific topic, and how you plan to make a difference one day. You can further strengthen your response by describing how specific resources and opportunities (classes, researching with professors, clubs and organizations, etc) at Brown will allow you to reach your goals and address the issue. Given the limited amount of space, it’s okay if you aren’t able to include resources at Brown, because a bigger focus should be on your aspirations and how you plan to solve a problem.

One common mistake that students will make when it comes to this prompt is creating a potential impact in medicine that is not strongly reflected in the rest of their application. You don’t necessarily need to have worked in a hospital or a lab to connect the issue you are interested in to your application, but you could have attended lectures and seminars on the topic, taken a class at a university about it, or read scientific journals and papers that discussed it. However, don’t claim you want to investigate the impact of biased artificial intelligence radiology tools in providing care for people of color without being able to explain where your interest and knowledge of this issue came from. 

PLME Applicants, Prompt 3

How do you envision the program in liberal medical education helping to meet your academic, personal and professional goals as a person and future physician (250 words).

The Program in Liberal Medical Education is designed to foster intellectual exploration among its cohort of undergraduates, so you definitely want to talk about how your academic interests don’t simply reside in the biological sciences. Talk about how although you want to become a doctor, there are numerous other facets of your identity that don’t fit in the narrow pre-med curricular path. Explain how these interests can be cultivated at Brown, and how they will ultimately allow you to become a better doctor.

Many of the students in the PLME program don’t major in traditional pre-med fields during their undergraduate years, as they are freed from doing so (outside from a few pre-med requirements). Students can thus craft an interdisciplinary education that allows them to pursue interests outside of the narrow pre-med curriculum. Overall, there are so many different academic fields that tie back to the core of being a doctor, and so make sure to express that fully. Here a few examples:

(1) If you have a strong passion for the humanities, mention that, and then talk about how topics like literature and anthropology allow you to grow in empathy and understanding for the world around you. For example, you could talk about your passion for Hispanic cultures, and how you want to continue learning Spanish to form better patient-doctor relations with underserved Hispanic communities in your hometown.

(2) If you’re interested in computer science, talk about your experiences coding, and how you want to be better equipped as the medicine field ultimately will become more technology oriented. You could talk about how you want to be at the forefront of the burgeoning connection between artificial intelligence and health outcomes, and how being in the program will allow you to do so.

(3) There are plenty of classes you can point to that merge the biological sciences with the humanities. Using Brown’s online course catalog, you can pull up titles such as “Medicine and Public Health in Africa,” “Pain and the Human Condition,” and “Health, Hunger, and the Household in Developing Countries” to find courses that interest you and illustrate how you need these intersectional courses to become the doctor you want to be.

(4) You could even mention interdisciplinary programs at Brown’s Warren Alpert medical school, such as its Scholarly Concentration program, which allows students to pursue areas such as Medical Humanities, Medical Technology and Innovation, and Advocacy and Activism. You could also mention the medical school’s Narrative Medicine classes, or its unique MD-ScM program, which combines primary care and population health.

Personal goals and professional goals are often one and the same, but make sure you have personal goals that extend beyond the confines of a career (as mentioned in the previous prompt). Yes, you’d like to become a doctor, but the PLME environment is exactly the one that you need to thrive as a curious human. Talk about your need for Brown’s Open Curriculum to thrive not just as a future doctor, but as an intellectual being who cares about the world. Talk about how being a part of the PLME would allow you to best prepare for the two halves of your career in medicine, science and human interaction, and why you would thrive in this profession that simultaneously juggles both.

Regarding professional goals, you could talk about how being a part of the PLME would mean the rare once in a lifetime chance of satisfying all your intellectual curiosities in undergrad while being able to go to medical school and become a doctor.

Where to Get Your Brown Essay Edited 

Do you want feedback on your Brown essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools.  Find the right advisor for you  to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Brown University 2024-25 Supplemental Essay Prompt Guide

Early Decision: Nov 1

Regular Decision Deadline: Jan 3

Brown University 2024-25 Application Essay Question Explanations

The Requirements: 3  essays of 250 words; 4 short answers

Supplemental Essay Type(s): Why , Community , Activity, Diversity

Brown’s Open Curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into their academic pursuits. Tell us about any academic interests that excite you, and how you might pursue them at Brown. (200-250 words)

This prompt sounds simple enough: describe what you want to study and why you like it—but not so fast. First things first: the Open Curriculum , a.k.a. the requirement-less Holy Grail, coveted by many applicants. It’s not enough to say, “I want to go to Brown because of its uniquely flexible curriculum.” You need to explore exactly how this curriculum—among Brown’s many other assets—will benefit you specifically. Is it because your areas of interest are so varied? Is it because greater flexibility will help you manage a learning difference? While you might be tempted to get technical or poetic, this essay will be more personal and memorable if you can share a story. What excites you and why? When was the last time you got drawn down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and what was the topic? While you don’t need to recount the unabridged origin story of your interest, try to zero in on a formative experience: the best book you’ve ever read, the first time you spoke French to an actual French person, that one time when you used PEMDAS in the real world! Then marry the concrete details of your story with Brown’s academic offerings, and you’ll knock your response out of the park!

Students entering Brown often find that making their home on College Hill naturally invites reflection on where they came from. Share how an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you, and what unique contributions this might allow you to make to the Brown community. (200-250 words)

Brown wants to accept students from a range of backgrounds who will contribute to their University community, so tell admissions about what makes you you and how you will be a meaningful addition to the student body. Think about times when you were challenged by or found strength in your identity, background, or skills. Maybe you were the only South Asian family in a predominantly white area and found inspiration by practicing classical Kuchipudi dance, which you intend to continue at Brown. Perhaps your aging grandparent moved in with you, and the changes to your household prompted you to take on more responsibilities, sparking a passion for leadership. What do you hope to share with others about your lived experience? How will you incorporate this element of your identity into your college experience? Show admissions that you’re eager to make your mark in their community. Bonus points if you can reference a specific component of the Brown experience (think clubs, the curriculum, volunteer opportunities, etc.) to demonstrate your interest and fit.

Brown students care deeply about their work and the world around them. Students find contentment, satisfaction, and meaning in daily interactions and major discoveries. Whether big or small, mundane or spectacular, tell us about something that brings you joy. (200-250 words)

Try not to overthink your response to this question. Admissions even goes so far as to say that the focal point of your response can be big or small. So, go with your gut. Maybe, you love watching the sunset on your grandmother’s porch over a pitcher of lemonade and a game of checkers. Or, perhaps, you want to tell admissions about the look on your sister’s face everytime you agree to a custom makeover (neon eyeshadows only). If you want to write about something bigger, maybe it’s the app you’re building to help people find volunteer opportunities in their community or the scientific discovery you made last spring. Whatever it may be, be true to yourself, and you’ll ace this response.

Help us get to know you better by reflecting briefly on each of the questions below. We expect that answers will range from a few words to a few sentences at most:

What three words best describe you (3 words), what is your most meaningful extracurricular commitment, and what would you like us to know about it (100 words), if you could teach a class on any one thing, whether academic or otherwise, what would it be (100 words), in one sentence, why brown (50 words).

Short answers like these give you a chance to show something that isn’t apparent in the other parts of your application, such as different aspects of your personality, background, and interests. The key to nailing this section is brainstorming. Free your mind and spend a few minutes jotting down as many answers as you can think of for each prompt. Literally set a timer and force yourself to keep your pencil moving (or fingers typing) for the entire time. The more you go with your gut, the more likely you are to come up with a unique and truly personal answer; in the end, that’s really what admissions is looking for. Sure, many applicants play extracurricular sports, but how is your relationship to your sport unique? For the final question, consider not only the research you’ve done on Brown, but also how you’ll fit in with the unique campus culture. The point is not to waste time agonizing over what you think admissions wants to hear, but to think about who you are as a person. Trust yourself. 

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Center for Middle East Studies

Welcoming new director elias muhanna.

We are delighted to announce that Elias Muhanna , Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and History, has assumed the role of director of the Center of Middle East Studies (CMES). He is a scholar of Classical Arabic Literature and medieval Islamic history, with a focus on the encyclopedic traditions of the Islamic world, the history of the Arabic language, and the cultural production of the Mamluk Empire. Muhanna is a frequent commentator on contemporary politics and culture in the Middle East, and his essays and criticism appear regularly in the mainstream press. He has written for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, The Nation, and other periodicals. Welcome, Professor Muhanna!

Department of Orthopaedics

Women's orthopedic leadership forum.

The Orthopaedic Department and Brown AMS's Women's Orthopedic Leadership Forum hosted a Women in Orthopedics dinner on August 14, 2024 for ladies of ortho and interested students to spend some taco-filled quality time together and develop mentorship relationships between women at different stages of school, training, and practice.

The Orthopaedic Department and Brown AMS Womens' Orthopedic Leadership Forum is comprised of orthopedic surgeons, orthopedic residents, and students interested in a career in orthopedics.

Pictured left to right: Drs. Gwynne Bragdon, Vanessa Lund, Braidy Shambaugh, Lauren Piana, Sydney Rozenfeld, Sarah Criddle, Amanda Gambalas, Carrie Hinchman, Emma Landes, and Julie Katarincic.

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The Brown Student Account Payment System -- payments.brown.edu -- allows actively enrolled students to manage and make payments towards their student account balances. Students may also create Authorized Users (e.g., parents or guardians) to access and pay their student account balances. For more information about the Brown Student Account Payment System, authorized user setup, and the student account billing schedule, visit  Student Accounts and Billing

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• By International Wire Transfer:  Flywire is Brown University's preferred method of payment for international student account payments. Students/families are able to track payments via Flywire's dashboard and receive notifications when the payment is received by Brown University. Visit  Brown.flywire.com  to make an international student account payment.
• Installment Payment Plan:  The Installment Payment Plan (IPP) enables Undergraduate, Graduate, Medical students, and their families to make interest-free monthly installments to cover each semester’s tuition, housing, meals and required fees. 
• Third-party Payment:  Third-party payment may be received from a domestic or foreign company, corporation, state or government agency that has been granted special billing arrangements to cover tuition and other fees for students that they sponsor.  Third-party payments should have a letter from the sponsor including the student name, student Banner ID number and semester to which the funds should apply. Payments must be made in USD and payable to Brown University.  All checks must be mailed to Brown University Cashier Office, Box 1911, Providence, RI 02912.
• Financial Aid:  The  Office of Financial Aid   assists undergraduate and graduate students in understanding all aspects of the financial aid application processes for federal, state and institutional need-based grants and loans.  The  Alpert Medical School (AMS) Office of Financial Aid  is dedicated to assisting students who may not have the financial resources to meet the full cost of attending medical school.

Repay a Federal Perkins or Institutional Loan

Online loan payments.

Federal Perkins and institutional loans are repaid to Brown University's Student Financial Services. Brown partners with ECSI to provide online account access for these payments. For more information about ECSI and how to set up your online account, visit  Repaying Federal Perkins or University Loans

ECSI Payment Login

Repay Another Type of Loan

If you are looking to repay a Federal Direct loan (such as Direct Subsidized, Unsubsidized, or PLUS Loan), or looking for general loan repayment information, refer to Repaying Your Loans . 

Overpayments

Brown University will only accept payments to cover current educational expenses that appear on the student account. Brown reserves the right to return any overpayments made in excess of the balance due or retain the overpayment to be applied to future charges.  Only loans and scholarships disbursed to the student account, in excess of the current tuition and fees, are an exception to this policy.

Undergraduate Admission

Application checklist for transfer applicants.

• Transfer Applicants

Application Checklist

• Application fee of $75 or a fee waiver.
• Common Application (Transfer Application).
• Brown’s supplemental essays are submitted through the Common Application.
• Official copy of your high school transcript.
• Official copy of your college transcript(s) and final grades from all previous college coursework. This should include grades from your most recently completed semester or quarter work and a list of your current course enrollments. If you are not currently enrolled in college, please submit an official copy of all college transcripts. The Common Application provides the ability for you to upload your college transcript, which Brown will consider unofficial. You must submit your official transcript by asking your Registrar to submit your transcript directly to our office.
• College Report (Report of Good Standing) Please ask the appropriate college administrator to complete the College Report. The administrator must print it and scan and email the completed document to  [email protected].
• Two instructor evaluations from faculty who have taught you at your current college. Alternatively, we will accept evaluations from TAs who have been your instructors. These letters must be submitted through the Common Application or sent via email to [email protected] or by fax to 401-863-9300. Material sent by email or fax should include the applicant's name, date of birth and college or university. Letters sent by email should be sent as PDF attachments. If there are not two faculty members or TAs from whom you are able to request an evaluation, you may replace one of the required letters with a recommendation from a teacher from your senior year of high school.
• Mid Term Report , also found on the Common Application. If you are currently enrolled in college, you should list your current courses and then ask each of your professors to provide a progress grade. Please upload the completed Mid Term Report through your Brown Applicant Portal. If you are not currently enrolled in college, email [email protected] to request this item be waived as there are no in-progress courses to report. Please monitor your application checklist to confirm this item is updated. 
• Brown is test optional for transfer applicants through the 2023-2024 admission cycle, meaning that test scores are not a required component of the transfer application this year. If you would like to include test scores for review in your application, testing must be completed by September (spring entry application) or February (fall entry application) to ensure receipt of scores. You may use your Brown Applicant Portal to self-report test scores that were not included on your Common Application. More information on our standardized testing policies can be found on our website .
• Financial Aid Applicants must submit the appropriate financial aid documents when they apply. For more information visit the Office of Financial Aid .

We understand that the cost of applying to college can be prohibitive for some applicants and their families. If the application fee constitutes a financial hardship, we will accept a fee waiver in lieu of the application fee itself. The College Board provides fee waivers to students who take the SAT, and these fee waivers are accepted by our office. We will also accept a fee waiver in the form of a letter (printed on college letterhead) from a dean, advisor or financial aid officer at your home institution certifying that the application fee constitutes a financial hardship.

Important Notes on Submitting Documents

• Applicants should submit the majority of their application using the  Common Application  website.
• All official documents (high school and college transcripts, the College Report, and Instructor Evaluations) must be submitted to the Office of College Admission by the institutions or parties that created those documents and should be submitted through the Common App. If this is not possible, they may also be submitted by email to [email protected] or by fax to 401-863-9300. In the rare circumstances that none of these alternatives are possible, materials can be mailed to Brown University, Office of College Admission, Box 1876, Providence, RI, 02912. You may submit your official college transcript either by sending a request to your Registrar through the Common Application or asking your Registrar to submit your transcript directly to our office. Please note that we cannot accept official documents that have been sent to our office by applicants themselves with the exception of the Mid Term Report, which you may upload through your Brown Applicant Portal.
• By mid-March or mid-October (depending on which application deadline you have chosen), the Office of Admission will send transfer applicants a username and password that they can use to check the completeness of their application and upload optional supplementary material through the Brown Applicant Portal.
• It is likely that any document received by our office will not be entered into our application database until a week after it has been received. If you have recently submitted a document, please understand that it may take a week or more before it is listed on your application checklist as having been received. In early October or early March we will email you to let you know if any required documents are missing from your application file.

Advance-CTR

The clinical & translational research seminar series returns for fall 2024.

Spend one lunchtime a month with distinguished speakers and Advance RI-CTR Awardees

The Advance RI-CTR Clinical and Translational Research Seminar Series returns this September 12 th with a talk by Gaurav Choudhary, MD: "Pulmonary Hypertension: Definition, Epidemiology and Novel Therapeutic Targets."

The series showcases clinical and translational research from across Rhode Island,  featuring the best of both worlds: outstanding science from expert investigators across the translational spectrum, alternating with Advance RI-CTR's awardees, presenting their early research. 

Seminars are held virtually, September-May, on the second Thursday of each month from noon to 1pm ET. 

See the Flier Register

U.S. military sexual assault rates 2 to 4 times higher than govt estimates, study says

The number of sexual assaults in the U.S. military is likely two to four times higher than government estimates, according to a new study out of Brown University.

The study, completed by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, compared Defense Department data on sexual assaults with data that was not from the DOD to estimate sexual assault figures in the military since 2001.

“During and beyond the 20 years of the post-9/11 wars, independent data suggest that actual sexual assault prevalence is two to four times higher than DoD estimations — 75,569 cases in 2021 and 73,695 cases in 2023,” the authors wrote in the report , which was released Wednesday.

Defense Department figures estimate that there were approximately 35,900 cases in 2021 and around 29,000 military personnel assaulted in 2023, the study said.

The Brown report said that independent studies show higher estimates of the number of active-duty service members experiencing sexual assault, and it compared those studies with Defense Department numbers.

“This report highlights a middle range — two to four times higher than DoD estimates — as likely providing the most accurate numbers,” it said.

A Defense Department spokesperson said it would "be inappropriate to comment on the methodology of studies not conducted by the Department."

 "The department continues our sustained progress to build strong command climates and prevent sexual assault, assist sexual assault survivors with recovery, and hold alleged offenders appropriately accountable," the spokesperson added. "Sexual violence will not be tolerated, condoned, or ignored within our ranks. Everything we are doing in this space is focused on helping us make lasting, meaningful change."  

Among those mentioned in the report is Vanessa Guillén, a soldier at Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos), Texas, who had reported sexual harassment at the base and who officials say was later killed by another soldier, Spc. Aaron Robinson.

Guillén’s April 2020 killing sparked calls for military reform and, in 2022, Congress passed the “I Am Vanessa Guillén Act” that changed the way the military handles sexual abuse-related investigations and allegations.

Another soldier at Fort Hood,  Elder Fernandes, died by suicide in 2020 after experiencing what the Army said was "abusive sexual contact."

The Costs of War Project report comes a year after a Pentagon report found that reports of sexual assault at the nation’s three military academies rose more than 18% from 2021 to 2022, hitting a new high.

A 2021 Congressional Research Service report said there was some evidence that a majority of sexual offenses in the military are not being reported.

The I am Vanessa Guillén Act removed military commanders from the equation when it comes to sexual assault investigations and puts the investigation in the hands of independent prosecutors.

The Costs of War Project report calls that change "the largest change to the UCMJ since the military created its own legal system in 1950," referring to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The report faults the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as putting the long-standing issue of sexual assault, racism and other discrimination secondary to force readiness.

"In the Secretary of the Army’s own words, going to war has prevented the military from institutionally reckoning with its shameful longstanding epidemic of sexual assault," the authors wrote.

Phil Helsel is a reporter for NBC News.

Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

News from Brown

Summer Experiences

Every May, Brown students leave the classrooms of College Hill behind to pursue a wealth of transformative summer opportunities — from internships and fellowships to research projects and entrepreneurial startups.

Natan Rodrigues Ferreira: Taking to the stage to broaden access to bilingual community theater

Through a summer internship with Rhode Island Latino Arts and Trinity Rep, the rising Brown senior is helping to stage a free, outdoor bilingual performance series for Rhode Island communities.

Natan Rodrigues Ferreira (second from left) performs in “¡Alguien Más!” at the Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island in Providence’s West End. Photo by Brenda Subilhaga

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —While acting in a comedy is fun, it can be more challenging than playing a serious character, according to rising Brown senior Natan Rodrigues Ferreira, who has dedicated his summer to the dramatic arts.

As an intern with Providence-based Teatro en el Verano, which translates to theater in the summer, Ferreira is bringing free, bilingual Spanish/English outdoor theater performances to communities across Rhode Island. As both a performer and an intern, his responsibilities include rehearsing and performing, as well as setting up and breaking down each traveling show.

Ferreira, who is studying visual art and theatre arts and performance studies at Brown, plays a character named Felipe in“¡Alguien Más!” This summer production offers a telenovela twist on George Bernard Shaw’s 1987 play, “You Can Never Tell.”

I think this shows that when you remove the barriers of belonging to the space and financial concerns, you can convince more people to try out theater and discover they enjoy it.

“Even though people usually praise the dramatic performances, I tend to believe that comedies are even harder to play,” Ferreira said. “It’s been a fun experience learning to trust the gags, learning to trust the lines, the script and the director’s view, and not play the comedy itself.”

Produced by Rhode Island Latino Arts and Trinity Rep, the Teatro en el Verano production follows the Calderon family siblings as they return to Rhode Island after years in New York City and urge their mother to reveal the identity of their father. The bilingual play celebrates Hispanic and Latino culture and nods to Brazilian heritage with opening music from “A Grande Família” (“Big Family”), a popular Brazilian sitcom.

“For every single scene, I work to understand my objective in that scene, my obstacle, and my strategy to pass by my obstacle,” said Ferreira, who is from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and moved to the United States to attend Brown. Ferreira said he draws inspiration from actors like Bryan Cranston in “Malcolm in the Middle,” and he uses research to glean insights for his own art.

Natan Rodrigues Ferreira performs with Teatro en el Verano. Photo by Brenda Subilhaga

This marks Ferreira’s second summer with Teatro en el Verano, a program that was founded in 2016 and offers free summer performances in Providence, Central Falls, Pawtucket, Newport and Woonsocket. At the various performance locations, Ferreira has enjoyed the curious responses and audience engagement.

“I think this shows that when you remove the barriers of belonging to the space and financial concerns, you can convince more people to try out theater and discover they enjoy it,” Ferreira said.

He said his summer experience has been an extension of his studies in Brown’s Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies , through which he first learned about the internship opportunity.

“It’s been a fun experience getting to experiment with another side of my acting skills, and I am learning a bunch of insight and just knowledge on how to do this job,” said Ferreira, who aspires to become a working actor and writer after graduation.

As an intern with Providence-based Teatro en el Verano, Natan Rodrigues Ferreira (second from right) is helping to bring free, bilingual English outdoor theater performances to communities across Rhode Island. Photo by Brenda Subilhaga

In addition to acting, Ferreira has also worked on campus as an arts administration and events coordinator for the Rites and Reason Theatre in the Department of Africana Studies, where his duties include cataloging props, books and files, managing donations and overseeing storage.

As he prepares for his senior year at Brown, Ferreira is excited to continue to learn and grow as an emerging thespian, with the support of faculty mentors.

“My Brown professors are part of the industry, even though they choose to be part of academia too,” Ferreira said. “They introduce you to so many people and so many opportunities."

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