How does student happiness compare at MIT and Brown?

Brown is more likely to feel relaxed and self-directed day to day, while MIT tends to feel more academically intense but also unusually collaborative and close-knit. Brown’s Open Curriculum gives students broad control over their course choices and grading options, which can reduce pressure and let them shape a pace around their interests. MIT’s required core science and engineering curriculum, fast problem-set rhythm, and technical workload create a more demanding baseline for nearly everyone.

At MIT, students often describe the work as hard rather than cutthroat. Problem sets, labs, and exams commonly lead to late-night group work, and peers are known for sharing notes, explaining concepts, and building things together. The pressure comes less from competing against classmates than from keeping up with difficult material and a campus culture where many people are intensely capable and busy.

Brown’s collaboration is also strong, but its atmosphere is more exploratory and less centered on a single academic identity. Students can combine humanities, social sciences, arts, and STEM without a heavy set of distribution requirements, and the campus has a notably informal, creative, and socially open feel. That freedom can be energizing, though it also requires students to create their own structure rather than rely on a prescribed path.

Students who enjoy sustained quantitative challenge, maker culture, and shared academic struggle often thrive at MIT; students who value curricular freedom, intellectual range, and a less structured rhythm often find Brown more comfortable.