Is Brown or the University of Washington better for an open curriculum?

Brown is the clearer answer if your priority is the most academic freedom in the undergraduate curriculum. Brown’s Open Curriculum is one of its defining features: there are no general education requirements, students can take courses across departments without a core checklist, and the grading system even includes the option to take some classes Satisfactory/No Credit. At the University of Washington, you can explore a lot because it is a large university with a huge course catalog, but undergraduates still work within general education requirements and major prerequisites.

Brown fits students who want to shape nearly all of their education from the start. If you like the idea of mixing fields in a highly self-directed way, such as combining computer science, philosophy, visual art, and public health without spending much of your schedule on distribution requirements, Brown is built for that. That freedom is real, but it also assumes you are comfortable making your own structure and choices.

UW makes more sense for students who want broad options within a more defined university framework. Because it is a major public research university, it offers tremendous variety in departments, research areas, and interdisciplinary opportunities. But that is different from an open curriculum. You still have Areas of Knowledge and other university requirements, and getting into the major itself can shape how free your path really feels.

If you mean open curriculum in the literal sense, Brown stands out by a wide margin. If you mean access to many subjects and pathways at a large university, UW is flexible in that broader sense, but it is not designed around the same level of undergraduate curricular freedom.