How should I compare the admissions difficulty of Georgia Tech and Brown?

Brown is typically more difficult to gain admission to overall, because it attracts an exceptionally broad, academically elite applicant pool and has very limited space in each entering class. Georgia Tech is also highly selective, particularly for non-Georgia residents and applicants to computing- and engineering-related majors.

The most useful comparison is to separate overall institutional selectivity from program-specific selectivity. Brown evaluates applicants for a small undergraduate liberal arts and research university, with substantial emphasis on intellectual curiosity, academic distinction, writing, and contribution to its open curriculum community. Georgia Tech’s pool is more concentrated in STEM, and applicants must show convincing preparation for a rigorous technical curriculum; competition can be especially intense in computer science and popular engineering fields.

Residency is a major differentiator at Georgia Tech. Georgia residents benefit from the institution’s public-university mission and tend to face a different admissions context than out-of-state applicants, while Brown uses the same highly selective national process regardless of state residency. An out-of-state applicant pursuing computer science or engineering at Georgia Tech may therefore experience admissions difficulty closer to Brown’s than the schools’ overall reputations suggest.