Is Emory or Brown better for an open curriculum?

Brown provides substantially more freedom for exploring outside your major. Its Open Curriculum has no university-wide core or distribution sequence, so students primarily need to complete their concentration requirements while choosing the rest of their coursework. That structure makes it unusually easy to combine fields, sample unfamiliar departments, or take courses simply because they interest you.

At Brown, a student concentrating in computer science, for example, can still devote significant space in their schedule to visual art, philosophy, languages, public policy, or music without needing those classes to satisfy preset distribution categories. The curriculum is designed around student-directed planning, though concentrations still have their own required courses and prerequisites.

Emory offers meaningful elective choice, especially once you progress beyond the first year, but Emory College has a more structured set of general education requirements. Students complete requirements across areas such as writing, quantitative reasoning, language, and broad academic divisions in addition to their major. Those requirements can support broad exploration, but they also occupy more course slots.

For a student whose priority is maximum control over course selection outside the major, Brown is the clearer answer. Emory may appeal more to someone who likes having a guided liberal-arts framework while still retaining room for electives.