How do Brown and Dartmouth compare in study abroad flexibility?

The main tradeoff is breadth versus structure: Brown gives students more latitude to use outside study-abroad providers and design an academically customized semester, while Dartmouth’s options are more tightly centered on its own faculty-led and partner programs. Brown’s Open Curriculum can make it easier to fit overseas coursework into a concentration without a large set of distribution requirements. Dartmouth’s quarter-based D-Plan, meanwhile, can make it unusually practical to choose the specific term when you are away.

At Brown, students can pursue Brown-run programs, approved external programs, exchanges, and in some cases petition for a program not already on the approved list. That creates substantial freedom for a student seeking a particular country, language-immersion model, internship component, or specialized academic focus. The key planning issue is getting courses approved toward your concentration and ensuring that the program’s calendar works with Brown’s semester schedule.

Dartmouth offers a distinctive set of off-campus programs, including Language Study Abroad and Foreign Study Programs, that are often led by Dartmouth faculty and designed to carry Dartmouth credit. Those programs tend to be academically cohesive and closely connected to departments, which can be a major advantage for language study or a focused field. The D-Plan also lets students be on and off campus in different terms, so an abroad term may be easier to place around internships, research, or a sophomore summer than at a conventional semester-calendar college.